Session 8 · Guide and forms

Homework: Naming the Gift

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Naming the Gift
WhyzMen · Rewire Retirement · Session 8 Homework, due Session 9

“Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”
1 Corinthians 12:7

Gifts are not issued to a man for his own use. They are issued to him for other people — which is why
the last word on your gifts does not belong to you, and does not belong to a website either. It belongs to
the men who have watched you for eight weeks. Your job this week is not to score yourself. It is to
gather evidence for that conversation.

IF ANYONE SPEAKS — 1 Peter 4:11

Teaching Making a complicated thing clear to someone who needs it

Encouragement Coming alongside a man who is about to quit
paraklesis

Truth-telling Saying the true thing when it costs you something
propheteia

Leadership Seeing where a group needs to go, and taking them there

IF ANYONE SERVES — 1 Peter 4:11

Administration Turning a good intention into a plan that actually runs
kybernesis

Serving diakonia Seeing what needs doing and doing it without being asked

Mercy Sitting with suffering without needing to fix it

Giving Releasing resources freely, usually without telling anyone

Hospitality Making a stranger feel expected rather than tolerated

Shepherding Staying with people over years, not projects

Faithfulness Being the one who is still there in year eleven

Scripture names gifts in several places, and the lists differ. This card draws its language mainly from Romans
12:4–8 and 1 Peter 4:9–11, with administration from 1 Corinthians 12:28 and shepherding from 1 Peter 5:2. It is
a vocabulary for naming what we have seen in each other — not a complete catalogue.
Four Passes
Fifteen to twenty minutes. Bring this page to Session 9.

1 Cross out the six that clearly are not you.
Start by subtracting. Men are far more accurate about what they are not than about what they
are — and crossing out carries none of the false modesty that circling does.

2 For each one left standing, name an instance.
No instance, no claim. A gift you admire is not a gift you have. If the line stays blank, that is
information — keep it blank.

GIFT NOT ME WHEN DID I LAST DO THIS WITHOUT BEING ASKED? Name the person, and
roughly when.

Teaching

Encouragement

Truth-telling

Leadership

Administration

Serving

Mercy

Giving

Hospitality

Shepherding

Faithfulness

3 What has someone else named in you that you waved off?
Almost every man has been told something — you are good with the young guys, you should
be teaching this — and deflected it. Go get it. It was someone else’s observation in the first
place, which makes it better evidence than anything you can generate about yourself tonight.
4 Circle two or three with the strongest evidence. Then finish the
sentence.
Write it in pencil. “Suspect” stays in — next week the room gets a vote, and it may name
something you did not.

I suspect I have been given _________________________________
because _______________________________________________
______________________________________________________
___________

If three men name something next week that you did not nominate, the homework did not fail.
That is the exercise working.

Romans 12:4–8
New International Version
4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have

the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to
all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is
prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your[a] faith; 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is
teaching, then teach; 8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give
generously; if it is to lead,[b] do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

1 Peter 4:9–11
New International Version
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift

you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 11 If
anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves,
they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be
praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.

1 Corinthians 12:7
New International Version
7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.