Strong to Serve

“Wow. I didn’t even know I had those gifts.”

It’s a common response by MLC seniors while they’re poring over their Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment with President Rich Gurgel. In the hour that the president and student spend together, the students come to a better understanding of how God has uniquely gifted them and how they can harness those gifts for ministry. It’s often an eye-opener and a confidence-builder as they edge closer and closer to their first call into the ministry.

A Tool to Assess Strengths: Clifton StrengthsFinder is an inventory that’s been used by 30 million people worldwide to help them understand their unique set of gifts. President Gurgel spent 10 years at Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary using the tool with seminary seniors as well as some faculty and staff. It was found to be so valuable to the senior men—just on the cusp of their ministries—that the seminary invested in the training needed for then-Professor Rich Gurgel to become a Gallup Certified Strengths Coach.

President Gurgel brought his training and his passion for this kind of consulting to MLC. He worked with 65 seniors majoring in education and staff ministry this year, as well as 100+ MLC faculty and staff over the last two years. (Preseminary seniors at MLC will go through their strengths assessment four years from now, at the seminary.)

Enhancing the Tool with the Gospel: During the hour-long discussion with the seniors, President Gurgel uses a scaffolding constructed by Clifton Strengths—they call it “name, claim, and aim”—but he builds a gospel foundation beneath it all, keeping the focus on the grace of God.

As the assessment helps students “name” and “claim” their gifts—recognizing their own strengths and where they may have seen those strengths at work in their lives—the president reminds them that these gifts come from God. As the apostle Paul says, “To each of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it” (Ephesians 4:7).

As they discuss how they can “aim” those strengths—put them to work thoughtfully and effectively in their ministries—the president reminds them that we use our gifts to serve the one who gave them to us. “He who saw all our callings in life before we ever had those callings,” the president says, “equipped us in advance to bring glory to his name and service to our neighbor with that set of gifts he gave us.”

And the strengths we lack teach an important lesson too, he says. “We say with the apostle Paul that ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Corinthians 12:10). Gallup has never been very fond of talking about weaknesses, but anything that teaches us to rely on the grace of God in Jesus (just as Paul’s thorn in the flesh did for him) suddenly turns from a weakness into a great blessing. God’s grace is made perfect—or better, God’s grace reaches its goal—in our weakness.”

Those weaknesses also teach us to depend on others. “We are interdependent on those God places around us in all our callings in life,” President Gurgel says. “It’s good to know that where we may not have a particular strength, God may have put someone else with those strengths nearby. That helps us remember not to be irritated that everyone is not like us. Those we might be tempted to look down on, because they do things differently than we do, are actually some of God’s greatest gifts to us.”

And finally, there’s one gift that Clifton StrengthsFinder never even mentions, but the president reminds the students that it should be at the very top of the list: God’s grace to us in Jesus.

The Right Tool at the Right Time: The seniors initially received their StrengthsFinder reports at the

“Preserving the Trust” workshop at the beginning of the school year, a weekend dedicated to developing physical, emotional, and spiritual resilience. As the president told them that weekend, “We’ve trained you for ministry. Now we want you to hold onto everything God has invested in you. With these tools and with Jesus’ grace, we want you to preserve the trust.”

Then they met with the president sometime during the school year—often before they left for their student teaching or staff ministry internship. “The purpose of the meetings,” the president said, “is to help the seniors get a little better grasp on the uniqueness of their gifts and talents and to be thankful for how God uniquely wired each of them.

“They’ll have much to learn from their supervising pastor or cooperating teacher, but at times they may be tempted to go too far and try to do everything exactly like their mentor. Then they’re like David trying on Saul’s armor to fight Goliath. That won’t work. They need to make their ministry their own by using their own strengths—the strengths God gave them.”

Strengths in Service to the Gospel: Finally, the president puts this powerful tool into proper perspective. “Can any human inventory—such as CliftonStrengths—perfectly measure how God has gifted us? Certainly not. We’re far too ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14) by God for any human inventory to capture.

“But such an inventory can serve as a catalyst to spark a grace-filled discussion. It can provide some insight into the kindness of God to us in Jesus, who pours out into our lives a unique set of gifts. He intends these gifts to be used for callings and works of love he has had in mind for us from before we were even born. ‘For we are God’s handiwork,’ the apostle Paul tells us, ‘created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do’ (Ephesians 2:10).

“In the end,” President Gurgel says, “it is all grace upon grace.”