Take the first step toward discovering your gifts and the gifts of those around you to light the spark and fan into the flame the gifts of God in you and around with the PLACE Assessment.
Thoughts On...
Who's At Your Table?
By Mary McSwain
In this season of thanksgiving, we are reminded to be thankful for those God has brought around that table to serve alongside us in ministry. How do you show your gratitude to those you lead or serve alongside? How do you make them feel valued?
Your team is not made up of volunteers. It’s made up of people.
Around this time of year, when people debate whether or not Christmas decorations can go up before Thanksgiving, we gather around the people we know best.
Sitting around the table, surrounded by family and food, we are reminded to be thankful for those God has brought around our table.
If your family is anything like mine, there are a lot of different things each person brings to the table. Stories, laughters, toddlers, wedding plans, opinions, and personalities. What makes our family special is not who’s house we gather in or what food we have on the table. What makes it special are the people that gather around the table.
The people, each person, makes our family gatherings unique, lively, and special.
The same is true of your team or staff that you lead or are a part of. While you are called together for a specific purpose, what makes your team special, and what accomplishes your unique purposes, are the individual people that make it up. They each bring their own personalities, gifts, passions, and experiences to the table.
In this season of thanksgiving, we are reminded to be thankful for those God has brought around that table to serve alongside us in ministry. How do you show your gratitude to those you lead or serve alongside? How do you make them feel valued?
One way is to make them feel seen. How would we suggest going about this? A process like PLACE that uses an assessment to identify someone’s personality style, spiritual gifts, abilities, passions, and life experiences, can be that tool you use to build a bridge between knowing someone as a volunteer and knowing them as a person.
Each person on your team brings more than just another set of hands to the table. They bring stories, experiences, passions, and gifts that make your team unique, lively, and special.
Whether your “family” of volunteers is 5 or 50, handing them the PLACE Assessment tells them that you want to know them better. It tells them that you see them as a person, not just as a volunteer on a Sunday morning or Wednesday evening.
What will they discover about themselves when they take the assessment? They will discover the gifts God has entrusted them to steward here on earth. When someone identifies their gifts through assessment and reflection, one of two things can occur. They may be affirmed in how they have already been using their gifts, stirring them on in those existing endeavors. Or, they may discover a gift they have been given that has been sitting on a shelf, and this newfound discovery lights a spark inside of them that drives them to serve more effectively and passionately.
As a team member, you may discover why you feel like you have been floundering or frustrated where you serve. As a leader, you may wonder why very competent members of your team don’t seem to be fulfilled where they are serving. The Abilities Awareness portion of the PLACE Assessment can identify the why and the reason behind some of these feelings and frustrations.
The PLACE Assessment is more than just another inventory to onboard new volunteers, staff, or members. There’s more to knowing the availability of your volunteers. What if you knew their God given capabilities? What if you knew their abilities, gifts, passions, and experiences. The PLACE Assessment is a tool to build a bridge between simply seeing someone and really knowing someone.
Your team is not made up of volunteers. It’s made up of people.
Show them that you see them by getting to know them.
In this season of giving and gratitude, show someone in your life your gratitude for them by seeking to get to
know them better.
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