spiritual gifts – Christopher L. Scott

When talking with people about what is “church” I often hear someone say, “But hey, the Bible says ‘where two are gathered in Jesus’ name, I am with you.’ People will often use this phrase to describe how a small group is a church. Yet, the context of that passage has nothing to do with what a church is or what a church does. In Matt 18:19-20 the context is correcting another believer and prayer, not what is or is not a church.

What is the Church

Photo Credit: Peter’s First Preaching (The Bible and Its Story, vol 10)

With that said, let’s look at what the church actually is. From my understanding of the Bible there are seven key elements of a church.

I. MAKE DISCIPLES

First, the church is commanded to go into all nations and make disciples.

There's been a lot of talk over the past decade about strengths, talents and gifts.

In Christian and faith based circles this is probably even more common. A search on Amazon for "spiritual gifts" yielded 2,195 results!

There's tons of different strengths assessments and different tools to help you discover your strengths. Many of them are very good and can help you discover and become more clear on your strengths and what God's placed you here to do.

However, even after doing all the strengths assessments. I've found the single best assessment of my strengths has been to discover them for myself.

As I prayed about my strengths, it was very difficult to find what my strengths were. It's easy to take a test and have someone else tell you what your strengths are, but it's much more difficult to have to discover it on your own.

After much prayer, thought, effort, and dialogue with others, I've established that I have four strengths:

Visioning – Seeing the future of what God wants me to create and do to further his Kingdom
Thinking – Generating ideas and concepts that will help that vision to become real
Communicating – Communicating that vision and ideas to a group of people either in writing or speaking
Creating – Make daily progress on that vision to create new things and new services to help people

Discovering your strengths, talents and gifts as a leader can work wonders on your leadership. Especially if you're able to develop and deploy your gifts, then teach others in your organization to do the same.

What are your strengths?