018: Personality Inventories & Spiritual Gifts Assessments (& Where We Get It Wrong)

Episode  018: Personality Inventories & Spiritual Gifts Assessments (& Where We Get It Wrong)

Intro 0:01  
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to The Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey, welcome from wherever you’re tuning in, I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re going to talk about personality assessments, spiritual gift inventories and passion quizzes, like what are you passionate about in ministry? I’m not going to tell you which tool to use, because honestly, there’s more options than ever. Instead of talking about the pros and cons of specific quizzes or inventories, we’re just going to take a step back and really look at if we should even consider using them with teams or volunteers or even just for ourselves, because well, lots of churches, I’ll just tell you right now, they use them wrong. 

I want to start this episode with a big disclaimer, this podcast is my opinion, based on personal experience in ministry, from big churches, to small churches, and your experience might be different. I have many friends and mentors, who I dearly love and respect, who have a totally different take on this topic. If you’re one of them, I love you tons and I’m totally great if we have different views, or if you even completely disagree with me. I firmly believe that when we all get to heaven, we’re going to be on the same page about everything. Until then we’re probably not. When we get to heaven, we’re going to be living in perfect truth because God is truth and that’s a great thing to look forward to. 

I tend to avoid controversial issues that aren’t foundational to loving Jesus and loving people, which this clearly is not foundational to loving Jesus and loving people. Avoiding controversies is actually one of my what we believe statements is printed on each of my websites, because I run an interdenominational ministry. There’s tons of things that we don’t agree on. However, many people have asked me to cover this topic so I’m going bold here. It’s pretty vital to team building, which is one of those things I love the most about ministry. Here we go. 

Laurie Graham 2:16
Churches use an endless number of assessments today. Have you ever taken a questionnaire to help discover your spiritual gifts? Maybe, have you done inventories that tell you where your strengths lie, or tests that reveal your personality type, or quizzes guiding us to find our passions. When you think about all the quizzes you’ve taken, have they ever left you feeling bad or not so happy with yourself or maybe a little left out, because for a lot of people, that’s what happens. From online assessments that will just take a couple minutes to 12 week entire studies, we are not at a loss for cool tools. Often when churches use these quizzes, questionnaires, or even the full on studies, they really do lead people to help discover their places of service within the church. 

Where I have a problem is when there’s a hidden equation that’s implied, and that equation looks something like this: Your personality assessment plus your spiritual gifts inventory plus your passion quiz equals your ministry position. This is where the hair on my neck starts to stand up a little, because that equation is false. It’s totally not true. I don’t think we should be using these assessments as a means to put people into ministry positions, or even to imply where they should serve. Not only are these assessments sometimes not accurate, but they also weren’t designed for this reason. 

I don’t think that inventories and assessments should ever be used in a prescriptive way. You know, those words: descriptive and prescriptive, right? Descriptive is what is prescriptive is what it should be. If you use something in a prescriptive way, you’re saying, “Hey, if you score this, then it means this.” We take prescriptions right to feel better, so I don’t think that should be the purpose of assessments. Honestly, I don’t even think assessments should really be wholly used in a descriptive way either, because they’re not always true, but we’ll get to that later. 

Laurie Graham 3:59
Here’s my first possibly controversial statement. Maybe I actually already made one, but this is the first one that I noted in my notes. In my humble opinion, too many people use inventories and assessments in ways that actually limit growth, limit exploration and also limit God’s grace. You see, God is way too big to put in a box and honestly, so are we. Before you break out in hives, because you love inventories and assessments, I want to tell you, I do too. I just think we usually use them wrong. 

I love them so much that I’ve taken lots of them, probably almost all of them. I can confidently tell you how I rate so here’s me. I am an ENTJ, I’m a 3 wing 2. I’m a lion. I’m a high D with results oriented pattern. I’m an enterprising crocodile. I’m also gifted in shepherding, serving, exhortation, and administration. I’m also an activator and achiever and a relator. There’s lots of color tests that I’ve taken, but the one I remember most is the one that I rated orange. If you know some of those assessments that are out there, you probably know exactly which ones all those labels were linked to. All that tells you honestly, is how I rated on an inventory. 

It doesn’t define me at all. It doesn’t define what I can do. It doesn’t tell you where I came from, how much I’ve grown, or what I can handle. It doesn’t give you any inkling of my availability, my emotional capacity, my mood, or even my potential for growth. You see, I’m a disciple of Jesus, and I totally believe in miracles, I believe in transformation by the Holy Spirit, I believe God can and does equip me for whatever He sees fit at whatever time He sees fit. If it’s true that He made me a little lower than the angels, which is true for all of us, it’s in the Bible, then I am a whole lot more than any inventory could ever measure. So are you. So are your friends, and so are your volunteers, your leaders and your pastors. We are more than we could ever measure. And inventories and assessments, they put limits on us. They give us words to define us. Those words might be a start, but they’re not enough. 

Laurie Graham 6:15
Again, if that leads you to believe that I’m not a fan of inventories or assessments, hang on, because I love them. I think they are fun. I am a curious person. I love human psychology and discovering more about the amazing way that God created us to function to relate to learn and to grow. Do I love inventories unreservedly? No, absolutely not. In fact, I have a little bit of a love hate relationship with them. I love learning from them, but I really, really hate how most people use them. Much of the time, in my opinion, inventories and assessments are used very poorly, especially in the church. It’s not only that they’re not used effectively but sometimes they’re actually damaging. Yep, I said it. 

That leads me to my second possibly controversial statement. Many people have been damaged by inventories and assessments used in church settings. You see, inventories and assessments, the very good ones, the expensive ones, the more accurate ones, they were never meant to fill them out and read your results, and then act on those results. It’s not a solution to a problem or a five steps to finding your fit. It’s literally just one little piece of a puzzle. It’s information to add to your knowledge base, to grow some curiosity and to explore. That’s it. 

You can have someone who scores amazing on a leadership skill in an inventory who should never ever ever be given keys to the building. You also could have someone score high and spiritual gifts of teaching, who should never ever be put in a position of teaching. You also could have someone score as an introvert with gifts of service, who actually will be the most amazing teacher you have ever seen. You see, inventories aren’t good for that. They are not prescriptive. They aren’t part of an equation to get to a goal. They’re just a piece of the puzzle. Sometimes, honestly, they’re wrong. 

One of the biggest limitations of inventories and assessments is the person answering the question is biased, because we’re biased we just are it’s about us. We’re biased by our experiences, by our beliefs in ourselves, by what we’ve been told, by what we’ve tried. In fact, we often believe lies about ourselves. Only the most expensive assessments and I’m saying like $800 a person or more, the ones that are actually used for hires in major corporations with security codes. Only those kinds of assessments are actually built to weed out the way we lie to ourselves, the truths that we believe that aren’t true. We all have some of those. 

Laurie Graham 9:03
In addition, on most inventories and assessments, we’re only rating what we’ve actually experienced. You can’t rate if you’re a good teacher, if you’ve never done it, if you’ve never tried it. If you’ve never been put in a leadership position, how can you answer those questions with insight? You see what we’re good at isn’t necessarily who God created us to be or all that God created us to be. We practice things and we get better, even if they’re not our strengths. If we don’t practice our natural gifts, we won’t recognize them as gifts either. 

Some inventories are better than others. I totally know that, but what I’m talking about here, when I’m saying most inventories, I’m throwing in the colors and the animals and the enneagram and Myers Briggs and all that in the same pot. Even with the best inventories, there’s still an element of caution, because we’re still answering from what we know and what we’ve experienced and also what we’ve been told, and God, well, He is bigger than any of that. 

All that to say, be careful to put too much stock in inventories and assessments. I also made a statement that people get damaged by these inventories and assessments. I want to talk about what that looks like, and how they would be hurt by these assessments. One of the reasons is, people often, myself included, don’t like the box they got put in by that inventory. They don’t value it. Maybe others don’t value it, and they feel worse about themselves sometimes then when before they took it. 

Another thing that happens with inventories is we limit ourselves to the words that pop up on the assessment. We could see that as a cap to my gifts. Well, that’s all I am, like what I have to offer or my potential and that is wrong. Also, people judge other people, I’m assuming you are aware of that. I’m also assuming you’re aware that honestly, we can’t help it. Leadership is seen usually as a better gift than service. Think about it, please and don’t say oh, no, no, I think service is great. We all think service is great, but think about who gets paid more in the church building? The leaders? Absolutely. Who gets more applause? The leaders Absolutely. 

Laurie Graham 11:23
Also, sometimes we limit God, like limiting God is limiting to us, and God is bigger than any of it. Sometimes, too, we excuse ourselves from or justify areas where we could grow. Instead, we say, “Oh, it’s just not one of my gifts, or that’s the job for an Enneagram eight.” I’m not saying these inventories were set up this way to lead us down negative paths. I’m just suggesting, sometimes this is how they’re experienced by people. 

How can we use inventories and assessments the right way, at least in my opinion, how do we limit these negative experiences from happening as much? Here’s a couple tips. If you’re going to use inventories and assessments, use them for self knowledge, not to judge other people, not to fit people into spots, but just for self knowledge, like teach that this is a piece of the puzzle, it’s for you but it’s not the whole puzzle. It’s explorative. It might or might not be accurate. Again, it’s not prescriptive. 

Second up if you choose to use inventories or assessments with teams or volunteers, be intentional about the process, not just the quiz. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken quizzes, just taking the quizzes, and there’s never any debriefing. That is the majority of the time. If you can have conversations and ask questions and be curious. Process what it means and what it doesn’t, what feels right, and what doesn’t. If you’re going to delve into the high powered ones, please hire one of their experts to help you process them, or don’t even do them. There’s often people certified in those high powered tests. I don’t mean the $800 ones, I just mean the $100 ones like StrengthsFinder, or disc, or Myers Briggs. They have certified people for a reason. There’s a lot to know and there’s a lot to do it right. There’s also a lot of ways to do it wrong. 

My third tip for using it right is: quit calling it results and quit asking people how did you score? The word score alone implies good or bad. The same with the word results, good or bad? Instead of asking, What are the results of your inventory, or how did you score? How about asking this instead? What did you learn? What seems right? What brought up some questions for you. 

Laurie Graham 13:42
Number four, please, please quit asking people what are you? If one more person asked me what Enneagram number I am, I might actually throw up. Can I just say I am not a number and I’m certainly not an Enneagram number. It doesn’t define who I am. 

The fifth tip I have for you is acknowledge the limitations of inventories and assessments. If you’re going to use them be upfront, say all this upfront, pray through it, acknowledge a big huge God who made us just a little bit lower than the angels. There’s no way any assessment can measure that. Usually, when I’m making decisions about tools and strategies, whether it’s in ministry or in my personal life, I like to ask, what do I think Jesus would do? In this case, just for fun, do you think Jesus would have used these tools? When I look at the life of Jesus, well, Jesus called His disciples to follow Him, to meet needs around them, to step up and help the helpless, serve the needy and make disciples. He said, jump in. 

Clearly, we are uniquely created from each other with varying gifts and styles. However, even with that, throughout history, God frequently called His people to places unwanted To missions way beyond their gift mix and to tasks that did not match their personality. How do you think Moses would have scored on a personality inventory on a spiritual gifts inventory, or in a passion quiz? Kind of interesting. Even David when he was young. While it’s true that Jesus didn’t have access to these cool tools that we have today, spiritual gift inventories, personality tests, passion assessments, I really do wonder would He have used them? He might have, I don’t know the right answer. I think they’re fun. I think they’re great for self knowledge. 

I’m pretty sure he would not have used them to assign ministry positions. To quote Uncle Ben from Spider Man, “With great power comes great responsibility.” There is great power in these assessments, good and bad. If you’re gonna go there with a group of people, assessing people’s gifts and strengths, please keep in mind, there is no way to do that, without also digging up their insecurities and their weaknesses. Please, if you’re gonna do it, do it responsibly, with love and gentleness and wisdom and grace. With a bigger picture of care than just do this form and we’ll figure out where you fit. There’s lots of reasons to love these cool tools but there’s limitations too. 

Laurie Graham 16:17
If you’re looking for which tools to use, like, you know, you want to use this because you love inventories like I do, and you’re gonna figure out how to do it right. Which ones are best to use in a small church setting. I’m just going to share a few thoughts on this. I personally love StrengthsFinder, which is now Clifton Strengths. This is like one of my favorites. If you use this one, go with the book and study it with the book, with a group of people. Don’t just have people fill out an assessment. The deeper you go, the more you’ll learn, the more people will understand themselves, more they’ll understand others. The full 34 themes with the Clifton Strengths is really the most helpful and insightful. Again, they have certified coaches that are actually certified with Clifton Strengths, and they would help you. That would be the best thing, if you can afford it. If you can’t afford their professional coaching, then definitely use the book. 

The second tool that I’ve kind of liked over the past couple years is the Disk inventory. I like this one, it’s a little more heady or clinical than StrengthsFinder, but there’s a spiritual fun spiritual component to Disk, which can be really fun to see, like which Bible characters were a high D or high I. It kind of makes you relate to somebody who’s like you, that you’ve read about in the Bible. It’s kind of fun and again, Disk also has certified coaches if you choose to go that route. 

Next up, we’ve got to talk about Myers Briggs, because this is a classic. A lot of people already know their letters, it’s very familiar. It could be good for your church. It’s kind of old school. Again, I’m an ENTJ, some of you right now you just totally know what I meant. It’s a little more complicated and clinical. It’s not as easy and fun and relatable though for team building. Not saying it’s a bad choice, but it’s not the friendliest one, or the easiest one. Again, to use it the right way, it’s going to be more money. 

Let’s talk about the Enneagram. I know lots and lots of people who love the Enneagram. Honestly, don’t be angry with me. I do not love the Enneagram. It’s not because it possibly has a controversial origin. The reason I don’t like the Enneagram for myself is I just find it really confusing. Is it confusing to you? It’s just too much for my brain, the wings and the patterns and the criss crossing and when I’m stressed and when I’m tired, and all these different things. I find a lot more confusion in that but it might just be me. I also have to be honest, I feel more judged when I do the Enneagram. I walk away feeling less of myself, maybe it’s good for you, but it’s not so good for me. I’ve also scored really differently on this one, I’ve come up with a couple different numbers a few different times. Like I said, I’m kind of an assessment junkie, and I have a lot of fun with them so most of these I’ve honestly taken several times. 

Laurie Graham 19:04
Let’s talk about the personality quizzes that have colors and animals. These are the light ones and the fun ones. Honestly, I love these. I think they are great for team building. No, they are not scientific. The main point is just recognizing that people are different, that we need each other, that we have different bends. The animal ones and the color ones, they keep it light and fun. Again, you can Google these and find a lot of options on these. I still have cautions with them. Again, it’s just a piece of the puzzle. It doesn’t define me or you, it’s not prescriptive, but it can be insightful for self knowledge and to do some team building. Those are the only personality ones I’m going to cover. As I said, there’s so many out there these days. It would be a whole like I don’t know, a series of podcasts if we wanted to explore them all. 

Let’s move into spiritual gifts. Spiritual gift inventories. I have to be honest, I have not met a single one of these that I like, because there’s not really a scientific or psychological base. Most of these inventories were just created by someone. Someone smart, someone who loves Jesus, but just someone like you and me. They’re more of a “What have you experienced kind of a quiz?” How would you actually uncover supernatural spiritual gifts that God gives us with a survey? I think it’s really presumptuous to try to take an inventory to discover our spiritual gifts. 

Again, I have friends who love, love, love spiritual gifts inventories, they use them a lot in ministry so I go back to my disclaimer, please let’s just still stay friends. It’s okay that we differ on this. I just believe there’s a lot more spiritual gifts, number one, than are listed in the Bible. I don’t think that listings of spiritual gifts in scripture were meant to be exclusive or even complete. God has gifted people in supernatural ways at different times. He can gift you for a specific time in a situation in the future that’s never even happened before and you would not write well on an inventory with that, because He hasn’t given it to you yet. 

Laurie Graham 20:59
If you don’t think you have a spiritual gift, it can really be limiting to your heart. There’s a lot of people who take spiritual gifts inventories who come up kind of on the bum side of it thinking “I don’t have any.” I hope I didn’t lose you on that one. As I said, I have friends who love and teach spiritual gifts inventories. Again, this is just my experience and my opinion, I could be totally wrong. However, I have to say that I think studying spiritual gifts is amazing. Raising awareness that God gifts us differently, raising awareness of spiritual gifts in general. I do believe it’s really cool to look at how God equips His people with talents and gifts that they never had before. Only God can get the glory with those. 

Last up, I just want to mention passion assessments. Passion assessments, like the spiritual gifts, one, they’re not generally based in science or study. It’s just usually a list of what do you like? What do you have fun with? What have you had fun with in the past, what have people told you you’re good at? If you’ve ever walked through this, when there’s a quick inventory to help you determine your passion area, which usually happens to lead straight to a ministry area where you can volunteer, like children, or widows or administration, or music or finance. 

Although these passion assessments are super well intended. I’ve seen more of these go wrong too, like when a church has a campaign to help people find their spots and ministry, come take the assessment, we can totally figure out where you fit in our church. If you’ve ever done this, maybe this has been your experience, too. I’ve seen more people get stuck here and stop moving and almost get paralyzed when they discover they don’t have a passion. Maybe they think God forgot to give them a passion. People around the room are all declaring their passion. I’m passionate about this. I’m passionate about this. Then we get to Joe who says “I don’t have one.” Then what usually happens is people try to help Joe discover his passion. 

Again, not so healthy. There’s nothing wrong with Joe. There’s nothing wrong with you if you don’t have a specific area of passion so I also don’t think this one is necessarily too biblical. I don’t think you need to have a passion for kids or a passion for missions or a passion for evangelism. You might, I’m not saying it’s wrong but in my experience, a lot of people don’t have one clearly defined passion or even a few. Even then the passion sometimes changes with different seasons. Let’s not look at passion like God gives everyone a certain area of passion. What’s yours? No, don’t do that. It’s not in the Bible, at least not as far as I know. 

Laurie Graham 23:32
Let’s just wrap up here with a few points. I think inventories and assessments are stinking fun, I love them. I think they can sometimes provide a piece of the puzzle and a better understanding of myself and others too. I also think if you’re going to bring inventories and assessments into your ministry team or to possible volunteers, you should focus more on the processing of it and the conversation than the results of the inventory. They should never ever be used prescriptively. I also believe that using inventories and assessments for exploration and understanding is great. Using them for better relationships is great. Using them to find the right ministry positions. No, that’s where I don’t like it. 

If I just trashed your favorite method of helping people find their fit in ministry, I’m so sorry. What am I possibly suggesting here? If personality assessment plus spiritual gifts inventory plus passion quiz does not equal ministry position? What does? If these things don’t help me get people into the volunteer positions they should be in? What do I do? Here’s my take on that. I am a big fan of “get off the couch and start moving.” You don’t have to know your passion, your gifts, your personality strengths at all to start serving, and see where that takes you. If you develop a culture in your church of taking risks and trying new things, it’s awesome. 

Too often our churches are more like that old life cereal commercial. Do you remember Mikey? The commercial goes something like this. “I’m not going to try it. You try it.” “Let’s get Mikey. He hates everything.” Then Mikey tastes the cereal and he likes it. Hey Mikey. Wouldn’t it be more fun to give people a taste of things to see if they like it? Let’s not close ourselves off to options and new things, develop a little culture of taking little risks and trying new things, and not being stuck in a position. 

Let’s also do this while we’re at it, let’s develop a safe place where people can try things way before they commit, where they can explore new things where they can be curious about things maybe they’ve been scared about before. Most of the people in the Bible remember, were not excited to do what God was calling them to do. Honestly, most of them also did not feel equipped to do almost anything God called them to do. Can you imagine if Esther had taken a gifts assessment? If one of the fishermen that Jesus called to follow Him? What if they had taken a personality assessment? 

Laurie Graham 26:06
The other thing I’m going to mention is: have more ministry fairs, share more stories, invite people to explore new things. These are all ways to get people to try different ministry areas. Take groups to a homeless shelter for a day, or to a neighborhood Bible study. Invite people to trainings even if they’re not part of that ministry area. “Hey, come check this out. There’s a training on kids ministry. I know you’re not in kids ministry, but come check it out.” Or, “there’s training for the soundboard. I know you don’t think you’d ever like to do the sound, but why not just come? Maybe you will like it.” 

The last and final thing, which of course is the most important of all, is just pray and ask God to be with you as you pivot as you explore and as other people do the same thing. Again, I’m not against assessments and inventories if they’re for learning sake, and exploration and understanding. Even for understanding how wide and deep and creative our God is, and how He’s made us so different from each other. Yes, by all means, study these things. Have fun learning about personality and gifts and growth and passion. Do small groups on them. Include elements in your ministry training, but get ready to watch God grow you and everyone around you if you do, beyond the assessments. Watch for new things, new passions, new excitements that would not have rated because He’s not done with any of us. I promise there’s more to each and every one of us than quiz results. 

Since I mentioned a few ways to help volunteers find a place to serve, and that whole exploring new ministry areas thing, and that that should be a piece of the puzzle, too. Next week, we’re going to be talking about why you should consider having a ministry fair at your church. I’m not saying outside ministries, I mean ministries inside your church. We’re going to take a look at having a ministry fair at your church and what it might look like. I’ll walk you through some practical steps of making this one day event fun and successful and how it might even draw some unexpected people to step up and try something new. 

So please take a minute to leave a review of this podcast. Your ratings and reviews help more people in small churches realize that they are not alone. It helps spread the hope that God is alive and well right where you plan it. Until next week, go be a light.