Whose Gifts Are We Learning to Recognize?

By Matthew J. Skolnik

Before you gather: Please read the article and Scripture ahead of your meeting. Bring one observation or question to share. Give the conversation the time it needs, and return to it at a later meeting when helpful.

The article that inspired this series: What Is This For?

Formation goal: Learn to recognize, invite, and support another person’s gifts without reducing that person to a vacancy or an unpaid task.

Scripture: 1 Peter 4:7–11. Additional reading: 1 Peter 2:4–10 and Ephesians 4:11–16.

Receive and remember

What did you learn from last month’s conversation with a ministry partner? Name one act that made the connection more dependable. Then remember a person who helped you recognize a gift or prepare for a responsibility. Allow people to recall the experience privately if they prefer.

Pray: Generous God, open our eyes to the gifts you have already given. Help us receive people with curiosity and make room for their faithful response. Amen.

Listen to Scripture

Read 1 Peter 4:7–11. Attend to the relationship between prayer, love, hospitality, gifts, and the strength God supplies. What do you notice about the source and purpose of service?

Read the full chapter: 1 Peter 4.

People before positions

A familiar list arrives at the meeting: positions that need to be filled, jobs that need to be done, and deadlines that are approaching. The list matters. Communities depend on people accepting real responsibilities. Yet a list can narrow our attention until we see other people primarily as possible answers to our problem. We begin with the vacancy and search for a person who will fit.

Every committee can fall into this pattern. A team needs someone to keep records, organize an event, handle communications, or speak on its behalf. Under pressure, members return to the names they already know. Reliable people become increasingly burdened. People outside the familiar circle remain largely unknown. The process may feel practical while quietly limiting the community’s capacity to recognize what God has given.

First Peter places gifts within a larger life of prayer, love, and hospitality. Its readers are urged to use what they have received in service to one another. Service draws on strength supplied by God and directs glory toward God through Jesus Christ. The gift is entrusted for another’s good. This is a different starting point from treating someone else’s availability as a resource we own.

The passage’s statement that love covers many sins needs careful hearing. Within the call to mutual love and hospitality, it should never become permission to conceal abuse, evade reporting responsibilities, or protect a powerful person from accountability. A community can bear ordinary irritations generously while taking harmful conduct seriously. Recognizing gifts does not remove the need for discernment, preparation, and appropriate safeguards.

Earlier in the letter, 1 Peter 2 describes a people called into a holy and royal priesthood. This language helps us understand ministry as a shared calling. It does not erase particular responsibilities or make training unnecessary. In Presbyterian language, G-2.0101 places ordered ministries within the ministry of the whole people of God. Professionals and volunteers serve within one calling while bringing different responsibilities and forms of preparation.

This challenges two habits at once. We can expect paid leaders to carry the regular ministry while others attend meetings and offer opinions. We can also invoke the priesthood of all believers to justify assigning people work without support. Shared ministry requires more than redistributing tasks. People need relationships in which gifts become known, preparation appropriate to the responsibility, and enough authority to exercise what has been entrusted to them.

Think again of the person who helped you recognize a gift. Perhaps they noticed the way you listened, explained something patiently, organized a difficult process, or made room for another person. They may have invited you to try something alongside them. Their recognition became useful because a relationship made it credible and support made the next step possible. The experience can teach your committee what others may need.

This is why listening should precede recruiting. Ask what someone cares about, what they are learning, where they already serve, and what gives them life. A person may offer a gift you had not imagined or describe a calling that belongs elsewhere. Listening has value even when it produces no candidate for your committee. People deserve to be known without every conversation becoming an approach for unpaid labor.

The nominating committee offers a clear example. Instead of beginning and ending with empty slots, it can ask how leaders become known across the presbytery, how new people encounter the work, and what preparation would help them discern a call. It may need partnerships with those responsible for training and representation. Other teams can ask the same questions about their own invitations. Each group can help create conditions in which gifts become visible without taking over another body’s responsibility.

Recognition is affected by power. We may mistake familiarity for readiness or confidence for competence. A person who speaks with an unfamiliar accent, needs an accessible meeting arrangement, or has less formal education may be overlooked. Racial assumptions can shape whose judgment is trusted. A younger person may be welcomed for a photograph while receiving little influence. The question is whether someone can participate in the substance of the work and affect what the group decides.

No person should be asked to represent an entire race, generation, congregation, or disability experience. Invite their particular wisdom and make the process accessible. Ask what support they want instead of deciding it for them. When expertise matters, provide access to learning, mentoring, or appropriate professional help. Shared ministry can include paying for work that deserves compensation; spiritual language should not conceal an unrealistic demand.

An honest invitation names the purpose, expected work, time commitment, available support, and freedom to decline. It also identifies who has authority to appoint or elect. An informal conversation is not an appointment, and enthusiasm is not a substitute for required preparation. A person who says no remains a valued member of the community. Their response may reveal a timing problem or an unreasonable role that the committee needs to examine.

This month, let recognition become a practice. Learn something about one person’s gifts without beginning with your vacancy. If a possibility emerges, explore it together with clarity and support. The fruit may be a new leader, a better understanding of a role, or a relationship in which someone feels seen without being used. All three can strengthen a community’s shared ministry.

Notice, examine, and discern

1. Notice: What does 1 Peter connect with the use of gifts? Remember when someone recognized or encouraged a gift in you. What did they do that helped?
2. Examine: Whose gifts do we know well, and whose do we rarely encounter? What assumptions about status, race, age, ability, or availability might shape our invitations? What do we routinely leave to professionals?
3. Discern: What would make participation in our work clearer, more supported, and more consequential for another person? Which part can we undertake, and where do we need a partner?

Let members name the questions their memories raise before offering solutions. Do not build a public list of people’s weaknesses or discuss a person’s suitability without appropriate confidentiality and process.

Practice during the month

Choose one willing member or pair to invite one person beyond your group’s usual circle into a brief conversation about their interests, gifts, and experience of the community. This is one shared practice for the committee. It may develop a relationship begun earlier in the series. Make clear that a recruitment decision is not expected. Ask what they enjoy contributing, what they hope to learn, and what conditions help them participate. Receive a declined invitation graciously.

With permission, bring back one observation that could improve how your team invites or equips people. If the person wants to explore a role, agree on a next step appropriate to the role: observing, learning alongside someone, receiving training, or speaking with the authorized appointing body. Do not promise a position your team cannot offer.

During the month, practice naming gifts specifically when you encounter them: the patient explanation, the thoughtful question, the reliable follow-through. Keep appreciation separate from a request. Continue to protect the capacity you named earlier in the series.

Return and celebrate

Next time ask: What did we learn about a person, and what does it teach us about our way of inviting participation? Share only what the person agreed could be shared. Celebrate an act of recognition or equipping without measuring success by whether someone accepted a job. Conversation 5 will examine what the meeting itself teaches and makes possible.

Closing prayer

Christ, you entrust gifts to your people. Give us eyes to recognize them, patience to nurture them, and humility to share responsibility. Let our invitations honor people’s freedom and our support help them serve with joy. Amen.

Sources and further reading

• 1 Peter 4:7–11; 2:4–10: prayer, hospitality, gifts, and the priestly calling of God’s people.
• Ephesians 4:11–16: equipping God’s people for ministry.
• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Book of Order 2025–2027, G-2.0101: ordered ministries within the ministry of the whole people.
• For further reflection: Heidelberg Catechism, Question 55, Book of Confessions; and the collection’s companion, Holding the Conversation and Sustaining the Practice.

Acknowledgment

This article and its conversation were influenced by the wisdom shared by the Presbytery of the Western Reserve (PWR) staff in September 2026: Judy Mitchell, Stated Clerk; Laura VanDale, Associate for Justice Ministries; and Josh Daum, Presbytery Operations Manager. With gratitude for their insight, questions, and ministry alongside Matthew J. Skolnik, the author of this collection.

© 2026 Matthew J. Skolnik. Scripture excerpts retain their separate attribution and license.

Scripture and Sources for the complete series