I recently read an article by the management guru Peter Drucker titled, Managing Oneself. Drucker contends what many others argue and that is that we work best if we focus on working in our areas of gifting and strength rather than expending our energies in trying to prop up our weaknesses. The question thus becomes, do you know your strengths? Drucker argues that while many of us think we do, often we are wrong. Often it takes some outside verification to help us discover what we think should be obvious.
To this end we at Ohio Ministries are putting our greatest efforts in leadership development. We believe that John Maxwell got it right when he said that the church rises and falls on leadership. To this end we have several "tools" we utilize in our efforts to help pastors grow as leaders such as Coaching Clusters, a new round of which will begin in the Fall of 2011. We do so as well through Pastoral Leadership Skills Coaching, an intense year-long process of coaching pastors through an on-line curriculum designed to help them learn to lead with greater effectiveness and efficiency. Currently we have 15 pastors being coached.
An important place to begin is in the discovery of how God wired you. In other words, what are your strengths? To this end we have placed on our website (www.ohchog.org) two tools that can help you in your efforts at discovery. The first is a free Spiritual Gifts Assessment. You can take it on-line and get an immediate scoring. I suggest you ask a few trusted friends to speak into your life regarding the accuracy of the results. Do others who know you well verify what the assessment says about you?
The second tool is a personality assessment called Leading From Your Strengths. This is an assessment designed in part by Christian psychologist John Trent that helps you discover your natural strengths. Again you can access this tool from the Ohio Ministries site, and if you write us and ask, we can give you a coupon code that will save you $4.00 off the usual price of $26.95. With the code the final cost is $22.91 and for that you will instantly receive the results in a 26 page document that you can print and save to your computer. It is a great tool and I heartily recommend it.
To take this whole matter of leading from your strengths to an even higher level, Associate Director Esther Cottrell and I are certified as Level II trainers in the Leading From Your Strengths assessment and are available to work with leadership groups. In the past we have done day long sessions with leadership boards in churches where they didn't want to just insert people into slots but in places where they can serve with effectiveness and passion. If interested in scheduling a workshop, please write us or give us a call.
In summary, remember that we have two tools on the Ohio Ministries website that can help in your quest of discovering your strengths. While all jobs have tasks we must perform that we are not good at or passionate about, the hoped for end is that we can find ourselves where we are in a "sweet spot" where our gifting, strengths and passions converge and we know we are where God wants us to be.
Carpe diem!
Randy Spence, Director of Ministries
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