Spiritual Gifts - Administration

This is a series put together to examine the spiritual gifts discussed in Romans 12:3-8. The focus passage is as follows:

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

Definition: Leadership is a vitally important role in the body of Christ and one that many people want to take on whether or not it is their primary gift. Of course, it works best when those in leadership are those set apart by God to be. These people can encourage and manage others with a great deal of organization to accomplish a task as God would will it to be done.

Jesus Models This Gift: Jesus ran quite a tight ship if you think about it: He had three close disciples that accompanied Him practically everywhere (Mark 9:2); He then had an expanded group of 12 followers among His disciples (Mark 3:13-14). He even used larger groups to precede Him into towns and prime the pump, so to speak (Luke 10:1).

Other Biblical examples of this Gift: Joseph was chosen to run Egypt (Genesis 41:41-57; 47:13-26), which must have been quite a task. Titus was told to manage things by Paul (Titus 1:5)

Strengths: Saves time and money as one who completes tasks efficiently and in an organized manner. It helps if they are charismatic so that others easily follow, but this is not always the case. They have an eye for detail and problem solving and reasoning skills that surpass others.

Pitfalls: It can be easy to get wrapped up into the project itself so that the people-aspect of the project falls (mentally) by the wayside. It can be hard to understand why others are not as organized and deal with this accordingly. It can be easy to fall into the “easy to do it myself than tell someone else how” mindset, but with a room full of servants, everyone’s spirits will be killed if this occurs.

Ideas of How to Work for God using this Gift: Organizing activities, groups, or even getting people checked into the nursery. Any type of teamwork or planning committee needs to have someone on it with this gift to head up projects once they are ready to come to fruition.

Do You Have This Gift? (ref The Resurgence - Spiritual Gifts)

• When things are poorly organized do you get frustrated and want to help fix things?
• Can you bring order out of chaos?
• Do you naturally organize your life, schedule, finances, priorities, etc.?
• Do you become energized working on tasks and projects?
• Do things like efficiency and promptness matter more to you than most people?
• Do things like spreadsheets, budgets, organizational charts and software, files, highlighters, and label makers make you happy?

Summary: These task and people managers offer a key piece of the puzzle to effectively working for God. These people are the go-getters, the organizers, the planners, the team-leaders. It takes these people to get the rest of us to work together sometimes!