A few years ago, I was invited to join a team of people staffing a discernment retreat for folks curious if they have the gifts to be the point person of a new Episcopal community. The people coming to the retreat were people considering starting a new worshipping community in their context, and our job was to assist them in knowing their gifts and talents and if those gifts and talents lent themselves to the work of starting a new church. As part of our own preparation for the retreat, we also needed to know our gifts and talents and how we can use our gifts and talents to journey with the retreat participants.

By now, most of us have encountered a spiritual gifts inventory that tell us the spiritual gifts we might have, but our spiritual gifts are not the same as our talents. Our spiritual gifts are help us to know what our calling in life and ministry are; our talents are how we go about living into that calling and how we will accomplish that calling. Thus, our interest for the retreat was to discover the hows for the individuals coming to the retreat - the staff team and the participants. To facilitate that work, our team used something called Clifton Strengths.

For over 30 years, the psychologist Don Clifton studied people’s talents and created an assessment to identify where people are uniquely talented. Clifton’s theory is that by knowing where we are naturally talented, we can invest in ourselves and convert those talents from gifts of possibility into strengths that produce outcomes. We can use this knowledge in our faith lives, in our work lives, in our academic lives, and in our times of leisure and play. It is one more way for us to know just how uniquely God creates each one of us. In fact, the chance of meeting someone with the exact same top five talents in the exact same order is about 1 in 33 million. In other words, each one of us is a unique expression of the image of God in which we are created.

For myself, I initially took the assessment to be part of the retreat team. I did not really understand the fullness of what was being offered to me through the assessment. I thought the information that I got from the assessment was interesting, but I was at a loss for how to apply the information in a productive way.

By now, you might be curious what my top five talents were according to the assessment. Well, they were the following with definitions of each theme of talents:

• Connectedness: People exceptionally talented in the Connectedness theme have faith in the links among all things. They believe there are few coincidences and that almost every event has meaning.

• Learner: People exceptionally talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

• Intellection: People exceptionally talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.

• Strategic: People exceptionally talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

• Achiever: People exceptionally talented in the Achiever theme work hard and possess a great deal of stamina. They take immense satisfaction in being busy and productive.

The initial results of the assessment were interesting, but I had to invest more time and energy to convert that information into useful knowledge and into ways that produced outcomes in my life. It took me reading my own report numerous times, highlighting my specific report to identify the parts of the report that resonated most deeply with me, and then reading more about how to invest in my talents so that they could become strengths that I could rely on. In other words, I have to practice using my talents for them to bear more fruit. (Here, we might think about the parable of the talents and what it means for us to take the talents that we have to produce fruit.)

The question for the Church is a development question and a question of formation. How might the Church realize its mission (To restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ) by helping the members of the church know their talents (their how) in order to achieve their why (their calling in life and in ministry).

This is a question that I have been wrestling with for the last six months after being trained as a Clifton Strengths Coach. And now, I am hopeful that we can begin to enter into this work together by creating a culture in our parish that is focused on where each of us is strong and able to work for the building up of God’s kingdom through our giftedness. On Saturday, November 5, I will be offering a workshop called Living Your Strengths. During this workshop, you will learn your top five talent themes, and we will explore together how to invest in our top five talent themes so they become strengths that produce outcomes. We will spend time learning how each one of us is uniquely gifted for the building up of God’s kingdom in every aspect of our lives - not just when we are at church or doing church related activities. I hope you will join me for the workshop, and if you need financial assistance to participate in the workshop, I hope you will contact me for a scholarship.

God has put us together in amazingly unique ways. We have talents to put to use in our lives and for the building up God’s kingdom. Each one of us has been given more than enough to celebrate the generosity of God. Let’s discover how we are created and how we can use those talents in productive ways for the good of the church, of our community, and of our world.

In Christ,

Hunter+