Most-Read Posts in 2025

1. Be Barnabas – What is a NAV?
   • See other posts from the Be Barnabas series
2. What is the “Apostolic” and Why is it Important?
   • See other posts from the Apostolic series
3. Spiritual Warfare
4. Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness
5. Team Conflict

Being Barnabas – the role of an outsider in partnering with cultural insiders towards movement continues to be a key missions principle that we believe can unlock many missionaries’ most effective role in the Great Commission. In particular, finding a National Apostolic Visionary (NAV) to partner with can result in exponential multiplication among the unreached.

In order to find these NAVs, we focused on better understanding around the Apostolic gift, the Five-Fold gifts from Ephesians 4:11, and how to practically discern, partner with, and equip these apostolic leaders.

Understanding the Two Types of Kingdom Fruitfulness – the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of multiplication can help us pursue the good works God has prepared for us with healthy balance. Of course, we want to see multitudes of people worship Jesus among the unreached. And, we want to see their lives and our own lives changed to look more like Jesus every day. Both are necessary!

Team Conflict and Spiritual Warfare remain as two critical topics that most missionaries face on the field and need equipping around. Without healthy conflict resolution and team interaction, it can be really difficult to concentrate on the ministry God has called you to do. Similarly, when we’re feeling discouraged and overwhelmed by spiritual attack, that can take over from everything else. Coincidentally, spiritual warfare can many times take the form of team conflict. Clearing both of these issues through community and reliance on Jesus can help you and your team focus on what you and your team are there to do!

Our Favorite 2025 Posts

1. Listening Prayer Part 1 and Part 2
2. Men and Women Leading Together
3. The Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader
4. Bonus: The Dare to Multiply Podcast
   • See all the Dare to Multiply Podcast episodes

Listening Prayer is an aspect of interacting with God that permeates our everyday lives. It is a critical component of not only effective ministry, but daily obedience. Our movement coaches helped start the Listening Prayer Movement, where their primary tool when faced with any obstacle or opportunity is to ask God what He wants for them. It has grown into one of the biggest movements in the world off of that one question.

Men and Women Leading Together is something near and dear to our hearts as it’s how we operate in ministry and life. We think that learning how men and women work and lead together can lead to healthier and more impactful leaders, units, and teams. We’re excited to have some future posts around this topic in 2026!

Obviously in finding a NAV, it’s important to understand what the Apostolic gift is first. But the Five Essential Elements of an Apostolic Leader isn’t just another ministry tool or framework to find leaders. These elements are actually a result of a life surrendered to God, set apart for great works that will impact the unreached for eternity! Perhaps other than the Be Barnabas approach itself, these essential elements might be the ‘secret sauce’ in actually seeing movements catalyzed.

Lastly, the Dare to Multiply Podcast has been an exciting and stretching endeavor for Jenn as she both shares and learns from other missions leaders and movement practitioners. We hope this resource will be a blessing to many multipliers!

On to 2026!

In early 2026, we’ll publicly launch the coaching ministry that we’ve been working on for the past couple of years. We’re excited to provide opportunities for missions leaders to not only learn from our blog but to get hands on coaching and cohort-based training on topics around partnering with national believers, forming and developing teams, deepening your abiding, and other topics essential for leaders.

Our prayer for ourselves and for all of you is that 2026 would be marked by a deeper abiding and a richer fruitfulness than we’ve ever experienced before, resulting in worshippers from every tribe, tongue, and nations to the glory of God.

Happy New Year! Lastly, a poem that encouraged us this year that we hope will bless you.

Furnace by Gerard Kelly

May God in whose furnace faith is forged
In whose being beauty breathes
From whose dawning darkness flees
Shine on you

May the Father whose love for you
Beats with a rhythm time itself can’t stop
Whose presence in your exile
Is the promise of home
Whose certainties are deeper
Than the cellars of your city
Whose breath is life
Breathe on you

May the son whose story
Is a mirror of your own
Who has journeyed into darkness
To find a key to your prison
Who has dived the deepest oceans
To find pearls for your wisdom
Who has looked into your heart
And found a beauty worth the battle
Who has written your name
On a white stone carved in secret
Hold you

May the Spirit
Who has waited millennia to fill you
Who shaped the word that moved the wind
Of the morning that conceived you
Who holds the earth on which you stand
As a midwife holds a newborn
Who fully knows you
Wholly own you

So may God
The faithful Father
God the scarred Son
God the sculpting Spirit
Journey with you

This is one of the lessons that God has impressed on our hearts over the last decade of ministry on the field. Scripture tells us that apart from abiding in Christ we can do nothing, but our pride, our selves still default to being self-dependent in trying to achieve success in ministry. For some reason, we think that our intelligence, hard work, strategies, and skills can make a dent in winning entire people groups that have been resistant to the gospel for 2000 years. It’s ludicrous!

The nature of the work of disciple-making and church planting among the unreached is spiritual! Meaning, it is not a physical or mental problem – for people to turn from darkness into light, for the Enemy to be pushed back, for believers to obey the Great Commission – it requires the Holy Spirit to move! We cannot do a supernatural, spiritual work without supernatural, spiritual power. The good news is that we have been promised and given this power!

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

Acts 1:8

How much clearer can it be? Now the question is – will we by faith receive this power? Do we know how to receive this power?

In this series of posts, we’re going to address what we’ve learned about spiritual gifts and missions – on missions teams, in missions work, and an overview of the term ‘apostolic.’ It’s a critical topic that we feel many cross-cultural workers are under-experienced in, especially when  they come from theologically conservative backgrounds. But it’s one of the questions that comes up the most when cross-cultural workers come to the field because of the prevalence of the spiritual world in different cultures and the necessity for guidance and empowerment from the Holy Spirit in an impossibly difficult work.

Our posts on spiritual warfare address why cross-cultural workers can be generally unaware of spiritual realities. Spiritual realities for goers can cover a wide range of topics, including but not limited to spiritual gifts, spiritual warfare, and listening prayer.

What Are Spiritual Gifts?

Type in ‘spiritual gifts’ in google and you’ll be inundated with spiritual gifts inventories and articles breaking down each gift. It’s almost too much information! The blog posts we’re writing aren’t trying to be an exhaustive study around spiritual gifts but more so how spiritual gifts are applied in the missions field and on missions teams. However, we’ll give a quick definition and some key points so that we can be clear about what we mean for the sake of application.

“A spiritual gift is any ability that is empowered by the Holy Spirit and used in any ministry of the church.” – Wayne Grudem

Our best suggestion in understanding spiritual gifts is to study what the Word says about gifts as there are several key passages about them! I think we can get overly fixated on ‘what is my gift,’ which is important, but miss the general purpose and essence of why gifts are given. Here are some of the key passages concerning gifts, and at the bottom of the post we’ll give a few resources that have been helpful to us in understanding gifts.

• 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14.
• Romans 12:3-8
• 1 Peter 4:7-11
• Ephesians 4:11-16
• 1 Timothy 4:14-16
• 2 Timothy 1:6-7
• Exodus 31:1-11
• Acts 2:1-21
• Acts 6:1-7
• Hebrews 2:4
• Matthew 25:14-30

From our study of these passages and in practical usage, here’s what we would conclude about spiritual gifts:

1. Every believer is given at least one gift from the Holy Spirit, but you can have more than one.

Paul says explicitly in 1 Corinthians 12:7 that each person is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. This means that our question is not, “do we have a gift?” But, “what gift have I been given and how should I use it?”

A gift has been given explicitly by the Holy Spirit to you! We can and should desire other gifts (1 Cor. 13:31) but it’s also critical for us to be content with the gift we’ve been given because it means the Spirit has good works prepared for us to do with that gift! It means that He has a vital role for you in the body of Christ to play. Don’t ignore the gifts you have been given!

In terms of having more than one, even in Paul’s breakdown of tongues and prophesying in 1 Corinthians 14, he basically admits to having at least both of those gifts. Robert Clinton concludes that leaders in particular are given a cluster of giftings, where a core leadership gift is supported by other supplementary gifts (e.g. a faith gifting to accompany a missionary gifting, or an exhortation gifting to support a prophetic gift). One of our mentors, Char, also notes that gifts can potentially change according to the season of life or ministry assignment that you are in, and the Holy Spirit equips you for those new works appropriately.

2. We know we are operating in our giftings when we sense supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness.

We learned this key point from Matt Carter’s sermon on 1 Corinthians 12. He shares his own story about how he identified that his spiritual gift was prophecy exercised through preaching. For him, most ministry activities were draining, but his first time preaching he felt empowered and energized. Not only that, people were impacted by his preaching and there were supernatural results.

We’ve seen these two aspects of supernatural empowerment and supernatural fruitfulness affirmed over and over again in our own discovery of our gifts and helping others to find their gifts. Some people describe the empowerment aspect almost like an ‘out-of-body’ experience, where the Spirit is the one speaking, moving, acting through them and they are simply being used by him.

For me, I started to discover that I had a teaching / training gift in college. Soon after I started following Jesus, I began to volunteer at our old church’s youth group. I had just learned about Inductive Bible Study and how the Word had so much to offer when we are willing to dig deep and learn. I would facilitate a Saturday night IBS with a bunch of high schoolers that would go for 2+ hours. If you’ve ever been in youth ministry, you’ll know that getting the attention of high schoolers is like herding cats. Their attention span, even before iPhones, usually lasted about 20 seconds.

But the Spirit impacted our time in such a way that we had all these easily distracted teenagers deeply studying the Word, with earnestness, curiosity, and passion. It would get to the point where their parents would be there to pick them up and they would shoo them away or ask for more time so they could get to the end of the Bible study for that day. For me, I would receive so much energy and excitement, and as a person who normally wasn’t great at public speaking, I would feel the Spirit give me not only the words but the passion and wisdom to say the right things in the right moment.

I started to say yes to more opportunities to teach and train, and ended up leading our campus ministry’s weekly large group gathering of 300 students during my senior year, which required giving some kind of teaching at least 2 out of every 4 weeks. I repeatedly saw a pattern of the Holy Spirit empowering me with the right words, energy, and authority during opportunities to speak, and by God’s grace, saw the supernatural fruit of people being impacted by the things the Spirit was speaking through me. That has continued even to our time on the field, even being empowered to teach and train in another language! My Thai language ability is 10 times worse when I’m in normal conversation compared to when I train, which is normally the opposite for most people. That is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit!

3. Spiritual gifts are not to be used for personal pride, but to serve others in a spirit of unity.

Repeatedly throughout these passages about gifts, there is an emphasis on humility, serving, and unity in one body. It’s like the writers know there is a potential for the Enemy and our pride to twist this wonderful gift from the Holy Spirit into opportunities for comparison and dissension. Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

Any usage of a spiritual gift that results in pride, comparison, and dissension is a misuse of that gift, and achieves the very opposite of what the Spirit intended in giving it to you.

The point of this post is that the gifts given by the Spirit are wonderful and should be used with joy. But there’s a dangerous line when we start to be identified by our gifts instead of identifying with Christ. On his teaching about gifts, Paul emphasizes unity in the body of Christ and then inserts a teaching on love right in the middle with 1 Corinthians 13. We often use this at weddings because it sounds good, but it’s a teaching given in the context of unity in the body among diversity in the gifts. In some ways, it’s the litmus test of if we are using the gift correctly: patiently, kindly, not envying or boasting, not arrogant or rude, not insisting on its own way, not irritable or resentful.

When we say, I have a certain gift and therefore shouldn’t waste my time on menial serving tasks, we’ve missed the point.

When we say, our doctrine and beliefs about how we should use the gifts is different from that group so we can no longer fellowship or work together, we’ve missed the point.

Whenever we are elevating our gifts and our preference over the oneness we have in Jesus, over unity in the body, over love that serves others – we’ve missed the point.

If we are approaching the gifts appropriately, it should create immense humility in us. Firstly, because the gift is not your own – it’s literally given by the Holy Spirit! When you’re using your gifts, God is the one to be glorified, not us! And secondly, knowing that we have a gift but not all the gifts means that we need other members in the body. If the church is working correctly, all the different members of the body should be operating in their gifts together to make the body grow!

…from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:16

4. The purpose of the gifts is for the edification of the church and expansion of the Kingdom.

Lastly, the second litmus test of our usage of the gifts is whether or not it’s being used for others. The gifts were not given to edify ourselves, but to “strive to excel in building up the church” (1 Cor. 14:12), for “the common good” (1 Cor. 12:7), for “building up the body of Christ” (Eph. 4:12), and “to be witnesses… to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

We are given so much by Jesus for our own growth and edification. We are given the free gift of salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross, we are given the Spirit to be comforter and helper, we are given the Word to guide our steps into daily obedience, we are given the community of believers to receive encouragement and love. But the gifts are not given for our own growth or desires. The gifts are given to be others-focused.

It can be exciting and make us feel special that we’ve been chosen specially to be given a gift! And we should joyfully receive it and be thankful to use it! But Paul gives a warning in 1 Corinthians 14 against using the gift to “build up” ourselves. He specifically calls out tongues, that it needs to be paired with interpretation so that it is beneficial for others around them. Not coincidentally, tongues remains one of the more controversial gifts in the current day.

Use your gift to serve others in the church or to bring others into the Kingdom!

Application

Now we have some clarity around spiritual gifts – you have at least one, it is accompanied with supernatural empowerment and fruitfulness, it is not for pride but for serving in unity, and gifts are meant to edify the church or expand the Kingdom. What next?

Gifts need to be identified, practiced, and developed.

Identify your Gifting

The first step in identifying is knowing what the gifts are. Study the passages in the list above! Certain resources can give you an idea of what a certain gift looks like – we recommend Robert Clinton’s resource “Understanding our Giftedness Set.” Inventories and surveys like this can help but only as a way to understand what you’ve experienced in ministry that you’ve already done.

Secondly, serve in a lot of different types of ministries! Whether at your local church, on a disciple-making team, or on a field missions team, volunteer and initiate to serve in multiple ways. As you try different things, be on the lookout for where you feel supernatural empowerment and see supernatural fruitfulness. Do ministry in team and community so that others can give you feedback about where they see your gift!

Lastly, identify by praying, asking, and listening to the Holy Spirit! If the Spirit is the one who has given you the gift, he can most surely tell you what gift you have and how to use it. Ask others to pray for you to receive gifts and help you discern! We see in the New Testament that the laying on of hands leads to imparting the Spirit and gifts (2 Tim. 1:6), and we’ve also had people pray over us to awaken certain gifts!

Practice your Gifting

Now that you know what your gift is – practice by using it! Paul encourages Timothy repeatedly to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Tim. 1:6), and to “not neglect the gift that you have” but to practice, immerse himself in it, and see progress in it (1 Tim. 4:14-15).

One disclaimer is that receiving a gift is not an excuse to disobey other parts of the Bible. Too often we hear “I don’t have an evangelism gifting’ as a reason to not share the gospel. This should go without saying but practicing your gifting can never supersede obedience to the Word and to the Spirit. That’s just our pride making an excuse.

Develop your Gifting

Develop your gifts through practice, but also by learning more specifically about them. Study the Word concerning specific gifts, and look for examples of people in Scripture with those giftings. Find and read books about these giftings. Find mentors that have those giftings and ask about their story and experience.

Often we see people begin with somewhat of an immature usage of their gifting, and over time as they gain experience and knowledge, they’re able to use their gifts more proficiently. For example a young prophet could see someone living in unbelief and desire to call them back towards the Lord but may be overly blunt and lack the wisdom for how to do it tactfully and graciously. A young apostolic might be sensing God call them towards a big vision and starting something new, but trample over everyone else on the way towards that new thing in a posture of judgment and criticism. More than developing the practical skill of your gift, the focus should be on the development of our Christ-like character and humility in using our gifts.

As a general guideline, we’ve heard that developing your gift can be a lifelong endeavor. In your 20s and 30s as you try lots of different ministries, you begin to identify your gifting. In your 30s and 40s you’ve learned what your gift is and begin to practice and use it more. And in your later life you become more proficient with your gift, and ideally, can align your ministry and leadership role primarily with your gifting and experience.

Conclusion

Now that we have a better idea of what spiritual gifts are, and how to identify, practice, and develop them, our next posts will address how these play out on the mission field and on missions teams. Below are some questions for personal reflection and some resources we’ve found to be helpful on the topic of spiritual gifts.

There’s plenty of reasons to learn and use your gifts. Beyond the fact that the Holy Spirit has specially given you one, and that Scripture repeatedly tells us not to be ignorant about our gifts or to neglect them, we’ve found that using our gifts results in our joy! There’s something amazing about being used uniquely by the Spirit, to experience that supernatural empowerment and to see supernatural fruitfulness. It is God being pleased to use us! It’s like trying out a bunch of different sports or extracurriculars as a kid and struggling and failing in them over and over again. And then, all of a sudden, you pick up the violin or dive into the pool or throw a football for the first time and it feels natural. Like you were born to do that thing. Don’t miss out on what He has uniquely created and designed you to do!

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Ephesians 2:10

Questions For Reflection

1. Do you have personal or theological barriers that keep you from studying or embracing spiritual gifts? 
2. Have you identified your gifting? If not yet, what steps can you take towards identifying your gift?
3. If you have identified your gifting, how can you grow and develop in the usage of your gifting? How can you create more opportunities to practice and work out of your gifting in your ministry? 
4. Have you observed any aspects of pride, comparison, or dissension emerge in the usage of your gifting? Why do you think that is? Are there certain situations, people, or contexts that trigger and bring out pride? If yes, then repent and surrender these things to God.  
5. How can you create a culture and space for your teammates to grow and develop in their giftings?

Additional Resources

• Unlocking Our Giftedness is Robert Clinton’s booklet on spiritual gifts detailing how leaders can develop in their giftedness and help develop others. Understanding Your Giftedness Set is a spiritual gifts assessment that goes with the booklet.

• Systematic Theology (chapter 52-53) by Wayne Grudem – an overview of spiritual gifts and addresses continuationism v. cessationism
• Get in the Fight! – Sermon on 1 Corinthians 12 by Matt Carter

Part 1 – Leadership Foundations Overview

Part 2 – Why are leaders needed?

Part 3 – How do I discern if I’m a leader?

Part 4 – How do I develop as a leader?

In Part 4, we talked about different ways that you can develop on your pathway towards becoming a team leader. One of the most important aspects of that is forming a personal development plan, or PDP. It’s critical for your own development as a leader, and it’s also important that leaders know how to develop other people.

Develop Towards Maturity

We’ve come back to Ephesians 4:11 a few times in this blog, and we think it also speaks to personal development.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ… we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Ephesians 4:11-16

One of the main goals that Christ has in giving leadership giftings to the church in verse 11 is to equip the saints for the work of ministry, which will lead to the building up of the body of Christ. But in addition to that, there’s a goal for each of us to grow towards maturity and fullness and to grow up in every way into Christ. Leaders equip, not just for the sake of the ministry, but to develop those they lead into being more like Jesus.

One quick note on the difference between learning and developing. Leaders should be constantly learning and gathering knowledge and wisdom that will help them to lead well. But development happens when you actually have progression in who you are as a person and as a leader – whether in character, giftings, or competencies. I might learn a fact or an idea from a book I read, but until I can apply it, until I can internalize it, use it, and it actually affects how I live and lead in Christ-like maturity, it’s a fact that I learn and not something that I’ve developed in.

How to Form a PDP

In this post, we’ll walk through how to form a personal development plan, either for yourself or with someone you lead. In order to form a development plan that’s effective, we do a personal evaluation on different areas of our lives, ministry, and leadership. This is the personal evaluation form that we use on our team annually, and from this evaluation we can form a PDP.

As we’ve noted in other posts, we believe the inner spiritual life and character components hold more importance than skills or even giftings. When forming a personal development plan, we try to focus on one character / abiding aspect and one competency / skill / gifting. Any more than 1-2 things and you end up not really progressing in anything – it’s a principle of focus, in development and pretty much everything else.

Many people tend to think you need to develop primarily in weaknesses, and it’s true that sometimes addressing a weakness is important because it’s a core character issue or competency that you need to have. But development plans can be really great to help you grow in your strengths and giftings as well.

Personal Evaluation

We made this personal evaluation form during our first term in Thailand and have tweaked it over time. It’s split into 4 sections:

1) Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude
2) Cross-Cultural Adaptation
3) Personal Time and Work Management
4) Ministry Skills

There’s an additional leadership evaluation for those in leadership positions on our team. To create this evaluation, we looked at various biblical frameworks like 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, as well as personal review and evaluation processes from churches, ministries, and professional development sources. Lastly, the ministry skills section would depend on your team’s ministry approach, so ours reflects a ‘Be Barnabas’ CPM focus.

In each section, you’ll evaluate yourself in the various aspects. Then, at the end of each section, you’ll give open-ended responses to what in the section was a primary area(s) of strength, primary area(s) of weakness, primary area of growth + development, and other comments. This allows the person doing the self-evaluation to draw out the important points in each section. At the end, you’ll take all the information together and form a PDP.

Below, we’ll have screenshots of the evaluative categories for each section and I’ll provide a few comments about it. The entire PDF form of the self-evaluation is attached at the end.

Abiding, Spiritual Walk, Character, and Attitude

In our experience, pretty much all of these things are critically important to either an individual goer’s health on the field or how they affect the team. If we were to highlight perhaps the top risk 5 areas that, if unresolved, could send your people home from the field, we would emphasize: abiding, humility, freedom from bondages, health in singleness / marriage, and living out of identity. Each of these is a huge topic, and there are a variety of resources that exist to help a goer develop in health and freedom before and during their time on the field. If there’s any of these areas (or any of the following sections) that you have specific questions about how to address, please let us know at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d be happy to help consult!

Cross-Cultural Adaptation

These are aspects of cross cultural adaptation that are particularly important in the first 1-2 terms. For your first term of 2-3 years, the first two sections – abiding and health, language and culture – are the main goal. We had a very experienced missions leader give us great expectations and advice before launching that has remained true and that we’ve also set as an expectation for teammates that we transition onto the field. He told us, it can take up to 7 years on the field on average for goers to even begin doing the right things to pursue CPMs. If at the end of your first term of 2-3 years, you are loving Jesus, healthy in your marriage or singleness, have learned some language, and have even a few local relationships – that is great success.

It reframed success in the first few years for us, because with all of our passion and urgency and emphasis on seeing multiplying movements among the unreached, we can sometimes be a little over-enthusiastic in starting the ministry and not setting good foundations of health, language, and cultural adaptation.

After the early season of focusing on language and culture, when you start getting more into the ministry, the ministry skills and spiritual gifts will probably begin to take precedence over the cross cultural parts.

Personal Time + Work Management

For us, this section tends to be the least prioritized compared to the other sections, unless there’s a glaring weakness in a person’s reliability as a teammate and co-worker. Many of these are what would be called ‘permission to play’ type of requirements – good teammates need to embody these basic aspects in order to be effective contributors to the team and the ministry, and healthy in their own rhythms. Sometimes, missions teams can recruit people right out of college who haven’t been in a working environment before. This can lead to some misunderstanding or entitlement to think that support raising or being in ministry means you don’t have to come to meetings prepared and on time, communicate in a timely manner, or report to your supervisor. So this section helps us as leaders and them as teammates know that these things are expected.

Ministry Skills

As explained in the screenshot, this section is a bit different from the previous 3. Because we believe that there are a variety of giftings and skills within each teammate, we aren’t necessarily claiming that every teammate needs to be excellent at every ministry skill. Instead, we have a scale from basic awareness to expert, defined above in the screenshot.

There should be basic competency in some of the areas that every teammate needs to engage in ministry. For example, since our team focuses on training local partners to make disciples, every teammate is expected to be able to give the basic training, as it is the bread and butter of what we do. But some teammates are more proficient or gifted at training and they might get more opportunities to exercise those giftings, whereas some other teammates may be less proficient, and get to specialize in some other areas. How much you specialize depends on how your team is built and what stage of ministry you’re in, among other things. Generally, in the first 2 years of ministry, everyone on the team tries their hand at doing everything so that they can all obtain some basic competency in each area and explore where God has gifted them. Every year, we’ll continue to do personal evaluations and PDPs, and ask the question – where do you feel the Holy Spirit is asking you to focus your giftings and contribution? We’ll also do this in conjunction with a ‘SHAPE’ retreat (Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Aptitudes, Personality, Experience) where we look at the different giftings and skills on a team to allow people to specialize and synergize as a team.

We’ll have a future post on how to do a SHAPE retreat and one on spiritual gifts. But as it pertains to personal development, spiritual gifts are a critical aspect! They are gifts that Jesus himself gave to you through the Holy Spirit to edify the body and expand the Kingdom. As leaders, identifying, developing, and using those gifts personally and on our team results in Spirit empowered ministry!

Leadership Evaluation

The last section would be only for those in a leadership position on our team – team leaders or sub-team leaders. Our definition of a leader is a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God, and we tried to help our leaders evaluate those aspects in this self-evaluation.

_______

When filling out a personal evaluation, people tend to fall into one of two pitfalls – either greatly overestimate themselves and pretend that they’re good to perfect in every area, or to underestimate themselves with either a low view of themselves or fake humility. Although it’s important for leaders to be able to give feedback into a teammate’s development, personal development has to be personal. Our belief is that a PDP formed through honest self evaluation and personal buy-in will be much more effective than leader directive PDPs. So this evaluation allows each teammate to be honest with themselves about where they are strong and weak, where they can grow, and how they can develop. And, it allows leaders an opportunity to give feedback and come alongside those they’re trying to help to develop.

Here is the link to the full evaluation:

Creating a PDP

Now that we’ve done the hard work of personal evaluation and trying to draw some highlights out of each section, we can go ahead and form the personal development plan from what we’ve learned in the evaluation. Forming a PDP is much more of an art than a skill, so below we’ve provided a basic guideline for how to form one. But again, there has to be personal buy-in for your PDP. If the topic you choose or the plan you create isn’t something that you’re personally invested in and driven to pursue, it’s an unhelpful PDP. Create a plan that you want to jump into!

1. Analyze your results. Take a step back and analyze the results of the personal evaluation as a whole. Overall, where are you strong and weak? What surprised you about your answers? Did anything upset you or make you anxious? Your emotions, positive or negative, or feelings of anxiety could be revealing that there’s a deeper heart issue surrounding that topic and that you might need to give it some attention.

2. Self-examine to try and get to the heart of the issue. This applies mainly for character and heart issues. For a development plan to really work, you need to target the aspect you want to work on as directly as you can. That means not just fixing an external behavior that is weak, but also understanding the root of our issues. Otherwise, all we are doing is behavior modification. For skills and competency issues, there may be an underlying insecurity that is at the heart of it (e.g. I’m poor at training because I’m insecure about what people think about me), but for the most part, skills just need to be developed through learning and practice. But for many character / heart issues, we want to ask some questions. What is at the root? Why is this a recurring issue? What keeps me from growing in this? 
   
   For example, if I marked myself as weak in “submissive to leadership”, I could just make a development plan that says “do what my leader tells me to do.” But that’s behavior management and my heart isn’t really impacted. I have to look at the root. Why is submission difficult for me? Maybe I don’t really respect my leader and think I know better than them. Maybe I think I’m a better leader than they are and the actual issue I need to work on is pride. Whatever the root reason is, that’s what you want to create a plan around.

3. Pray and ask God what He wants you to work on and how. Even with our PDP results, we still are going to have a biased view of ourselves. The only one who truly knows where we need to grow is Jesus, so ask Him to search your heart and reveal areas that need to be developed. Pray and ask God, where do you want me to focus on? How do you want me to grow? Who or what have you put into my life to help me develop? 

4. Form the development plan. 
   
   Again, pick no more than 1 character / heart issue and 1 skill / gifting / competency for your PDP. Any more and we tend to lose focus. Just picking 1, preferably the character / heart issue, is totally fine!
   
   Once you know what area to focus on, think of some resources, mentors / coaches, or opportunities that you could use that would help you grow. It could be a book, article, podcast, class, or person who is strong in this area that you would spend time and learn from – whatever way helps you to learn best. One of the most effective development plans is simply to do a word or topical study over the area that you’re wanting to grow in – Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts, humility, etc.
   
   Consider a head / heart / hands grid: head knowledge helps you understand what you’re trying to develop in. But head knowledge alone isn’t enough to help a person change and develop. Heart development gives you the why and an emotional connection. Hands helps you to apply the things you’ve learned.
   
   Continuing with the submission to leadership example, I might do a Bible study on Biblical submission and how Jesus exhibits this. For heart, I might set aside some time to consistently pray for greater humility – and to repent of my pride. For hands, I might consistently pray for my leader, or in my one-on-one meetings with them, ask them how I’ve been doing in the area of submission and if there’s anything I can do to improve.
   
5. Set a consistent and achievable rhythm for which you can be kept accountable over a 6-12 month time period. Try to think of an end point that answers – how will you know you’ve achieved your goals? What do you want to see happen? How can you break down your plan in month-long objectives or pieces?
   
   The above PDP put into consistent rhythms might look like:
   
   – First 3 months: topical Bible study on Biblical submission
   – Monthly: during Day of Prayer, set aside time to self-evaluate my heart and pray for humility; set aside time to pray for my leader.
   – Monthly: check in with my leader and ask them how I’m doing in this area and how to improve
   
6. Get feedback on your PDP from your leader. In our team process, our teammates will be notified at the end of the year that it’s time for the annual personal evaluation, PDP formation, and review with their leader. They’ll be given 2 weeks to fill out the personal evaluation and send it to their leader, and then take a first stab at forming their PDP, knowing that their review meeting with their leader might change that PDP.
   
   Be humble to receive feedback from your leader and be willing to tweak it. Many times, our leaders might have insight into blind spots that we have, things that we aren’t aware of that are negatively affecting the ministry, our team, or even ourselves. In our experience of leading people through PDP formation, either we agree pretty heavily on the topic and might just give some feedback on the elements of the PDP, or if there’s an area that we bring up that our teammate hasn’t considered, we’ll find a middle ground and make both those topics (ours and theirs) the 2 aspects of their PDP.
   
   Since we’ve done this process for several years with 12+ teammates and coached our leaders in how to lead their people through this process, we’ve been able to walk through a multitude of topics for personal development, including humility, perfectionism, anger and unforgiveness, executive presence, training and coaching, communication, self-awareness, leadership, among other things. We’re working on gathering all those development plans that can be used as example PDPs, and when we’re done we’ll post it here!
   
7. Work your plan and have accountability towards working on your plan. If you have a regular one-on-one with a leader or mentor (preferably on a monthly rhythm), that’s a great time for them to check in and make sure you’re accountable to your development plan and give you feedback in that area. It can be as simple as them asking, ‘how did you do with your PDP goals last month, and what are your PDP goals for this upcoming month?’

Walking Others through Forming a PDP

Lastly, we’ll just provide a few tips for current TLs who might be walking their teammates through this process and how to give constructive feedback well. Sometimes, this personal evaluation and review process can be a good opportunity to give feedback into a topic that can be challenging to talk about.

Pray and prepare beforehand. As much as we might want to control people’s development, only God can grow his sheep. Ask God how he wants to develop this person and for him to give you encouraging and truthful words that can spur them on. Make sure you’re surrendering any of your own bias or selfish motivations that you might have for bringing an issue up – is it truly what the Lord wants for their good and their development or just so that I can have an easier time leading? Think through and have concrete examples of areas you have seen this person in their strengths and in their weaknesses. Have bible verses that speak to the standards that you want to exhort your teammate towards.

Start by asking questions. It’s best if they’re able to self-evaluate these issues as opposed to hearing critical feedback right out the gate. What did you think about your self-assessment? Did you see any trends? Did anything surprise / encourage / discourage you? Ideally, they will self-identify. If they don’t bring up the topic that you are wanting to discuss, ask some more probing questions around the topic. Did you have any thoughts specifically about this topic? How would you rate yourself on this?

Seek to encourage as much as possible, but also don’t hesitate to speak truthfully. A basic tenet for difficult feedback is an ‘encouragement sandwich’ – encourage, give feedback, and end by encouraging again. Remind them that you are truly for their good and desire to see them grow and enjoy more of Jesus. We may want to spare someone’s feelings by avoiding hard topics, but your goal is to help them identify blind spots in areas they may need to grow in. If they’re not able to self-identify what the issue is, then give feedback as kindly but as clearly as possible, with clear examples of what is expected (even biblically), what has happened (with concrete examples), and where you’d like them to grow and develop. As leaders, we want to spur our people on and encourage them to mature into becoming more like Jesus and to operate in the ways God has created them.

A PDP can be one of the most effective tools that leaders can have for their own development and to help others grow as well. Many times, with the huge backlog of responsibilities and spinning plates that a leader has, personal development can be left to the side. But without proactive development, we’ll find ourselves perpetually at a deficit of having the knowledge or skills for how to lead, or worse and more likely, not dealing with the heart issues and obstacles that keep us from living out the fullness of who Jesus has created us to be. It takes time investment, hard conversations, and hard work, but seeing yourself and your teammates grow into maturity and fullness of Christ will be one of the most rewarding and impactful things that you will do as a leader!

If there’s any specific questions or need for consultation on how to form a PDP for yourself or a teammate, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at contact@missionsleaders.com. We’d love to help you!