The best way to encourage church staff, volunteer and paid, to use their spiritual gifts is to build a culture in our staffing ministry where functioning according to gifting is the norm. That means people’s giftedness should factor in to the various staffing tasks.
The Importance of Making Spiritual Gifting an Integral Part of Staffing
Think about the desired outcome when people serve — changed lives, that the people being served grow closer to God becoming more and more fully devoted followers of the Lord. Those are supernatural results which takes supernatural power. One of the ways we can encourage people to serve pulling on God’s power, not merely their natural abilities, is for them to serve using their spiritual gifts.
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Pet. 4:10-11)
When we encourage people to serve based on their giftedness, we’re helping them to be good stewards. As a result, God will be glorified. The praise will go to Him, not us.
How to Encourage the Use of Spiritual Gifts in the Various Staffing Tasks
Consider how to incorporate the expectation that people will use their spiritual gifts into the way we accomplish the various staffing tasks.
Recruitment:
Rather than take an “anybody will do” approach because we need to fill the different ministry positions, look for people with gifting most suitable for that spot. Ideally a church will do a church-wide spiritual gifts survey to identify gifting of its members and keep a record of it. Then, when recruiting, it’s a matter of looking at those results for the right person to fit that need. If a church-wide assessment hasn’t been done, it will mean more work during the recruitment process but it will be time and effort well spent. If people don’t know their gifting, then a spiritual gifts test could be administered to help identify their gifts. Here’s some help:
- Online Spiritual Gifts Inventory
- Manually Scored Spiritual Gifts Test & Other Resources about Gifting
- Ministry Handbook: Spiritual Gifts in Use
When recruiting is seen as an opportunity to be a good steward of God’s grace and a way to bring glory to God (1 Pet. 4:10-11), it gives added motivation to get involved. It also can relieve some of the insecurities and fears as people realize we’re asking them to let God’s power flow through them and don’t expect them to perform according to their own abilities.
Placement:
Once we know people’s spiritual gifting, placement becomes obvious if we know which spiritual gifts best suit the various ministries. Consequently, we should make a list of the different ministries in our church and determine which gifts are needed to accomplish them. For help with that check out:
Training:
While serving in accordance with one’s spiritual gifting is about pulling on God’s power, there is a sense in which we should help people “fan into flame” the gift(s) God has given them (2 Tim. 1:6). That verse suggests we need to grow or develop in the use of our gifts. That’s where training comes in. You might find the following helpful for some of the training:
Staff Evaluations:
This sort of tool can be used foster a culture in which the use of spiritual gifts is expected. Consider placing new recruits into a given ministry on a trial basis after which their involvement will be assessed based on how good of a fit it appears to be for them. Results of spiritual gifts tests aren’t always accurate. Gifting can best be confirmed by getting involved in ministries using the gifts identified on the test. For more about this, read:
How are you doing at fostering a culture of serving based on spiritual gifting by the way you approach staffing?
All Posts about Staffing:
- Church Staff Expectations
- Communicating Expectations to Church Staff
- Church Staff: Expect Alignment with Church Purpose
- Church Staff: Expect Adherence to Body Life Principles
- Church Staff: Expect Pursuit of God’s Mission
- Church Staff: Expect Christ-like Character & Integrity
- Church Staff: Expect Reliance on God’s Power
- Church Staff: Expect a Partnership Mentality
- Encourage Church Staff to Grow in Grace
- Encourage Church Staff to Walk by the Spirit
- Encourage Church Staff to Use Their Spiritual Gifts
- Spiritual Gifts Best Suited for Staffing Ministry
- Encourage Church Staff to Pray Without Ceasing
- Encourage Church Staff to Regularly Feast on God’s Word