In the late 1990s, I had the great experience of working with Jay McSwain on his earliest versions of assessments for PLACE. I’d never heard of the concept of “Abilities” before then. But, I’ve come to consider its inclusion as a self-discovery tool as one of the significant contributions of PLACE.

The Abilities system was created by John L. Holland. He designed it to help people figure out their best niches in the world of work. The Holland Abilities approach deals not just with work activities we favor, but the kind of work environments in which we flourish: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, or Conventional. (For an overview, see The Holland Hexagon: Careers and Six Basic Types.)

A few weeks ago, I went to a workshop where I took an extensive Abilities work assessment and learned even more about this system. No, it wasn’t a PLACE workshop, though PLACE uses this assessment tool in their in-person and online workshops. It was the “Self-Assessment and Career Evaluation” job search seminar at my county’s employment services. Perhaps in a moment of mid-life sanity instead of mid-life crisis, I’ve discerned that this is my Halftime moment, which means time to refocus from personal success to leaving a legacy of significance. Time to shift careers …

Anyway, my Abilities results showed a strong double preference for Artistic and Investigative. That means I do my best work on problems that don’t have a defined set of rules for solving. That means I get to dig for details, think about ideas, and imagine creative solutions. It makes sense that my Abilities strengths and challenges would apply to ministry settings as well.

I was thinking just this morning about what my top Abilities mean for me as a disciple with a spiritual gift of teaching. If we look only at spiritual gifts, then the usual teaching situation would seem to be about my getting up in front of people to inform, lead, and persuade them. As an Artistic-Investigative teacher, informing is something I’m fine with. But teaching to lead and persuade is something else – yikes! Those make me queasy! No surprise that leading and persuading fit with Enterprising – which happens to be my weakest Ability.

So, put me in the usual teaching situation, and we should expect that I will mostly flop, not flourish. Sure, I can stretch myself to do lead-persuade kinds of teaching sometimes, but it’s just not the best of what God designed me for! I’m not just spiritually gifted as a teacher, I’m an Artistic-Investigative teacher.

Here’s the take-away:

It’s easy to limit ourselves and others to ministries that generally fit them, based on definitions of spiritual gifts. But that approach doesn’t consider the optimal place for each unique person, based on their combination of spiritual gifts and Abilities. Abilities help us move from good-fit ministry to finding a better- or best-fit place of service.

Last month my wife, my three sons and I joined a church in our community. I am so excited because I happen to know the new pastor and he is a PLACE fan. I have the opportunity to start the PLACE process from scratch! WOW, no prior history with an intentional process to recruit and maintain volunteers, a blank slate.

Where do I begin?

After meeting with the pastor and getting his vision and desire to connect members into meaningful ministry, my first goal was accomplish, that was, get senior pastor SUPPORT!

Mission accomplished with the big dog,, now for the other staff. I am on track to train and educate the other staff in the process. I must ensure they have a good understanding of ministry placement and understand how an intentional process like PLACE will help build their ministry volunteers and keep them there for the long haul.

Next…

My plan is to conduct a self-discovery workshop with the next tier of leadership, which is the deacon body. I will facilitate this workshop using the PLACE Participant Guide teaching principles around each assessment. Many of these men hold leadership positions in the church and will come to understand the process and how they can become influencers with the people they serve. They will become my promoters and ambassadors.

Next Step Planned…

The next step I am planning is to take all existing leadership thru the self -discovery workshop. Taking all the leaders thru first will allow me to build a mobilization team to help me implement the process church wide. I will find facilitators, to teach future workshops, administrative people, to help me with details and other tasks, plus connection coaches to help people find their PLACE of ministry. I want this ministry to be more than self-discovery. My desire is to actually place people in a ministry that they are not just competent but FULFILLED!

This is where I am starting…I will keep you posted!

P.S. In my spare time as a church volunteer I am working on identifying all the ministry positions available to our church members to serve. I then will break those down into tasks, ultimately involving more people. I will most likely accomplish this through PLACE’s mobilyzr.com surveys, since I anticipate there being so many.