So you want to discover more about your Spiritual gifts? Below are ideas, exercises and resources to help you discern your gifts and think about how they may relate to a call to ordination.

Exploring Spiritual gifts

• Click here to download an exercise which will help you take time to explore your Spiritual gifts. Print out the document and work through it carefully and prayerfully.

• Use one of the following online tools to help you explore your Spiritual Gifts:
  • gifted2serve: finding your place in ministry: a spiritual gifts inventory by buildingchurch.net
  • free spiritual gifts analysis by churchgrowth.org
  Bear in mind that all such tools and 'lists' of spiritual gifts, although of value, are limited in that they define each gift in their own way according to the theological understanding of the authors on a number of related issues.

• Use the following books to help you:
  • Peter Wagner, Discover your Spiritual Gifts, (Gospel Light, updated edition 2009), ISBN 0830736786
  • Francis Dewar, Live for a Change: Discovering and Using Your Gifts, (Sarum College Press, 2nd Edition 2006), ISBN 0955066018. [Currently out of print, but available from Amazon, etc.]

What about ordination?

What clues do your spiritual gifts give you as to whether or not a call to ordained ministry is realistic? Consider the following questions:

1. How could the main spiritual gift(s) you have identified be used in ordained ministry to help you listen to God, share his vision, plan and lead strategically, share the good news of Jesus Christ, preach, teach, genuinely care for others, or demonstrate reliance on God?
   
2. What do your gifts suggest might be the main focus of your ministry?
   
3. Spiritual gifts need exercising! What opportunities can you find, where you are now, to test, grow and develop the gifts you have identified?