Spiritual Gifts Assessment

Every Christian has been gifted and talented by God in certain ways that can benefit the Church as a whole. Churches would do well to find out what their members’ gifts are, and help them find their place in ministry.

Some gifts are recognized early because they are obvious; other gifts are recognized when the Holy Spirit points them out; but too much of the time, determining a person’s gifts has been a matter of guesswork, or other people’s good intentions.

We at Barnabas Missions have seen many spiritual gifts assessments before. Some are scientific; some are not. We feel that the assessment provided through Natural Church Development (NCD) is one of the best and most thorough we’ve seen, and we’d like to share it with you.

From The 3 Colors of Ministry.

Our assessment comes from the Gifts Test found in NCD’s book The 3 Colors of Ministry: A Trinitarian Approach to Identifying and Developing Your Spiritual Gifts. It works in conjunction with the book.

Most gift lists are based on lists found in Scripture; 1 Corinthians 12 in particular. But this list is’t meant to be definitive. Scripture recognizes many gifts outside of 1 Corinthians 12, and this assessment includes these gifts. Many are gifts from 1 Corinthians 12, such as teaching and wisdom; some are not, such as craftsmanship and mercy.

The book identifies your manifest gifts, gifts that have already developed to a level where you can already use them. It also identifies latent gifts, gifts that might further develop in the future. The survey also requires input from two individuals who know you and can recognize certain abilities in you, and includes their responses in your gift assessment. (Sometimes we may be unaware of how people perceive us, and that must also be calculated into the total.)

The 3 Colors of Ministry discusses what each of these gifts mean within the context of the Gifts Test; where the dangers lie in improperly developing this gift; what options exist to develop this gift; and training tips. That’s why we offer the assessment in conjunction with the book. The book is a necessary component.

First things first.

In our first Spiritual Gifts Seminars, we discovered that taking the Gifts Test ground our seminars to a halt. People needed ten to fifteen minutes to complete the test — and then there was the time necessary to have friends fill in their portion (if those friends were available at the time) — and then there was the time needed to calculate results.

We figured this would be much faster if it could be done by computer; and even better if it could be done in advance of the seminar.

So we created the Spiritual Gifts Questionnaire. This survey, hosted at Zoomerang, will ask you to gauge your responses to the statements from the Gifts Test.

Once you’ve completed the Questionnaire, ask two friends to take the Others’ Spiritual Gifts Questionnaire on your behalf. We can then add these results to your assessment, and gauge your spiritual gifts accurately.

All of this can be done well in advance of your own Spiritual Gifts Seminar. We provide you and your church with the results. You discuss what those results mean, with the aid of The 3 Colors of Ministry.

Getting on board.

The Questionnaire and its results are provided free of charge to churches. We cannot currently process results for individuals. Large requests, of more than 35 members, will incur a nominal processing fee.

Let us know when you will hold your seminar so that we can provide links to the Questionnaire, set a deadline for filling it out, and send the results to you by that date.