Learning your strengths and living out your strengths is both fulfilling and empowering. It is empowering because you are doing what you like doing most, what makes you the most confident, and what brings you the most success and the most meaning and fulfillment. The positivity associated with working within our strengths releases endorphins, which improve our mood and decrease stress hormones. This is why operating within our strengths truly is an important key to flourishing in ministry over the long haul and remaining resilient through the challenges of ministry. When we operate outside our strengths, we miss out on these benefits, and we get diminishing returns on our efforts. One day, we wake up in frustration and wonder, “Is this really what I was called to do?”
Jay Harris has received training and certification through Passion in Partnership and desires to provide free coaching to help clergy and laity discover their strengths and work within their strengths. Jay has found in his own experience, on the receiving end, how valuable this experience is as clergy and laity contemplate the next chapter in their lives and ministries.
The experience begins with taking a Clifton Strengths Assessment by Gallup. This tool assesses people according to 34 different strengths, often helping people discover strengths they had not even considered before to be strengths.
The coaching that follows uses the insights of this assessment and the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative inquiry uses questions that prompt the ones being coached to tap into the positive resources they have, including their strengths, values, experiences, dreams, skills, opportunities, inner resolve, positions within their organization, access to collaborators, and relationships with stakeholders.
The only cost associated with this coaching is the purchase of the 34 Clifton Strengths Assessment and Report at $49.99. https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/252137/home.aspx
To watch the recording of the Conversations at the Table with Jay Harris sharing a deep dive into the Clifton Strengths Assessment and Coaching opportunities for pastors, laity and ministry teams, click here.
If you have questions or want more information, contact Jay Harris (jharris@sgaumc.com).