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Discovery through Experimenting

April 30th, 2010 by Janette

In the middle of March we hosted what I thought was a really great workshop on discovering your spiritual gifts and finding ways to serve that fit your gifts but also your passions and personality. Moses Lee taught us how to identify who we were created to be and find the best way to serve the church and the city. This kind of service brings great joy and fulfillment, not the drudgery and guilt we may have traditionally been exposed to when we heard the word “service” in the church.

I’ve been thinking more about this over the last month and have paired it with some advice I received a long time ago from a career counsellor. He said that in your 20s you should just try lots of different things, in your 30s you begin to figure out what you are good at (and enjoy) and what you are not so good at (and do not enjoy), and in your 40s, you finally find a great fit and are learning how to be most effective in that chosen career path. He told me to stop trying to find the perfect fit when I was so young and to simply be okay with this period of “trial and error” in my life. To embrace this period of figuring out who I was and to enthusiastically jump into a variety of opportunities, valuing the opportunity itself but also the things that the experience would inevitably teach me about who I am. I really appreciated that perspective at that time in my life and again now.

Many of us are trying to figure out where to serve in the church and how best to invest. But though I obviously very highly value the workshop we had here last month, I think at the same time, we can’t expect that now we will know exactly where to plug in. Even when we know our gifts and our passions, we have to simply dive in and try different areas of ministry. It’s only by trying something and finding out, “Yes! This is so ‘me’!” or “well, maybe this isn’t the best fit but I did learn this about myself and these things about ministry in general” will we ever find our best fit. We can’t sit at our desks, analyzing a spiritual gifts test and waiting for a revelation as to where we should serve, but we have to simply get out there and start serving! I believe Moses emphasized this in his workshop as well for which I’m thankful.

All over the place we see needs (certainly they exist within the Grace community and around our city) and though we can’t respond to every need that comes our way, we can jump in and serve even when we don’t know if this will be our long term fit. We’ll only ever know by trying!