What’s the difference between “me” and “we”?

Much! North Americans live in a primarily “me” culture. Most everything we do and learn is filtered through “me”, “me first” and “me and only me” lenses. A “me” world can be a pretty small world.

Most other people around the world live in “we” cultures. Most everything they do and learn is filtered through a “we”, “we first” and “how does this affect us” perspective. It’s a whole different way to look at the world around us.

When it comes to understanding spiritual gifts, most of us have taken some kind of profile where we scored ourselves somewhere between “not at all/rare” to “nearly all the time” regarding our behaviors and experiences. At the end of the profile, we compared our scores in light of a list of spiritual gifts (as few as nine to as many as 27). Whatever the score says, that’s our gift(s). Often there are three to five gifts that have high scores. Score = gift. Gifts usually described as “my” gifts.

What if we could look at spiritual gifts from more than one perspective? What if we viewed our gifts through a Biblical, holistic and missional lens? That would help us understand both the “me”, “we” and “they” of God’s gifts and how they operate in and through our lives.

I’m happy to recommend two wonderful spiritual gifts profiles that will expand and enhance your spiritual gifts world. These profiles are also based on the same principles I wrote about in an earlier blog, which you can read here.

Both profiles were designed by Dr. Paul Ford. Paul has ministered in many cultural contexts around the world. We have been friends and ministry teammates for over 18 years.

The two profiles are: “Discover Your Ministry Identity” and “Your Leadership Grip”. Both are available on paper and “Your Leadership Grip” is available online. Here’s a picture of the heart of the process…