Thinking about what our spiritual gifts are tonight, but we’re going to start by thinking about our personality type…
Using the Myers Briggs personality types, which one are you? Do you know, have you looked into it before?
Different categories below, are you:
- Extraverted > Introverted
- Intuitive > Sensing
- Thinking > Feeling
- Judging > Perceiving
Interesting to consider, for some of the aspects of our personality type on a test like this may change a bit! For me it can be a bit dependant on things like what my role is in a space, who else is there, environmental factors as to what attributes come out, I wonder if that’s the case for you too?
Maybe you’ve done a test like this before and the answers were exactly what you expected, or maybe they were exactly what you didn’t expect! Very interesting what can come out of having a go at this stuff.
Now let’s see – juts for a bit of fun – if we can apply this to different types of Christians… Maybe a fraught exercise trying to (generally and loosely) categorise Christian denominations by personality type, but there is something in the key differences in approach that we might generally or stereotypically see between denominations and traditions of faith…
Going by the stats, the personality type that is said to be the ‘MOST RELIGIOUS’ are the ‘Sentinels’ > logisticians, defenders, executives and consuls.
They have firm beliefs, they’re protective, they’re good administrators, and they’re also caring and helpful types. How does that line up with your experience of faith communities?
For more conservative or traditional expressions of faith we might assume there are more introverted, thinking and judging traits coming through, and for more liberal or progressive expressions of faith we might associate more extraverted, feeling and perceiving types there. Definitely not hard and fast rules here of course, more generalisations and tendencies that can lead us in to a deeper conversation – what have you noticed in this space?
This can also help explain why we have so many different denominational expressions and interpretations of the bible. We have different personality types and we have different interpretations of the bible – there’s something in that!
A few questions to think and chat about that come out of this:
- What’s your personality type, what’s our collective personality type as church?
- What are our strengths and weaknesses in our church?
- Where are we spiritually gifted, where do we need help?
We know we can all receive and join in SPIRITUAL FRUITS >
Galatians 5:22-23 – ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.’
But we DON’T all have the same SPIRITUAL GIFTS > God gifts different people for different things.
We can go to a few different bible passages to find these > Romans, 1 Corinthians and Ephesians, and the gifts there are:
- Teaching
- Exhorting
- Service
- Leading
- Giving
- Mercy
- Prophecy
- Miracles & healing
- Tongues
- Faith
- Administration
And some of the different roles are:
- Apostles
- Prophets
- Evangelists
- Pastors
- Teachers
And beyond that there are spiritual gifts tests that can help each of us know ourselves better in terms of our faith and how we relate to it…
One test out there lists 22 (that’s a lot!) different gifts, all with biblical evidence behind them, that help us see how each of us has a role to play > it might be different to someone else’s role, but that’s a good thing! Also interesting to test out what exactly a spiritual gift is and involves, there can also be different interpretations there!
I always think of the simple image of the body of Christ in terms of spiritual gifts >these gifts that are worked in us by the Holy Spirit as we know, that’s why they’re called ‘spiritual gifts’
A body needs multiple different parts, the body of Christ has multiple different parts > all the different parts working together is God’s design, that’s where the fruit grows easy!
1 Corinthians 12:12, 13a talks about this:
‘There is one body, but it has many parts. But all its many parts make up one body. It is the same with Christ. We were all baptized by one Holy Spirit. And so we are formed into one body.’
If you’re not sure about your personality type of your spiritual gifts, take some time to check them out! God has given you unique gifts, abilities & perspective, and learning more about ourselves can be a very helpful way in to learning more about how Jesus is at work in our lives //
Tom Kitson 