HOW BIG IS YOUR SPIRITUAL VITALITY PIE?
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I was recently working with a group of about seventeen people using The Disciple-Maker’s Toolkit when one person said, “My pie is too small. I want it to be bigger!”
We were on Week 4 of the Toolkit and each person had completed the Spiritual Vitality Assessment also known as the SD-360 Survey in the book Simple Discipleship. The assessment provides four scores, one for each discipleship domain—Worship: Know Christ, Word: Grow in Christ, Ministry: Serve Christ, and Missions: Share Christ. To obtain a divisor, the four numbers are added. The sum is used as a divisor of each of the four values to obtain the percentage of the whole each domain value represents. Sine each person’s scores may differ; each person obtains a different number to use as the divisor. This number again, represents a total of a possible score of 400. That was when one man observed, “My pie is too small.” He was commenting on the quality of his own discipleship score, as he expected it to be better than it was. His score indicated balance between the four discipleship domains of Worship, Word, Ministry, and Missions, but his “pie was too small.”
4 Ways to Motivate Spiritual Growth
The Spiritual Vitality Assessment generates spiritual growth in several ways:
- The whole process of Simple Discipleship is designed to generate chosen accountability by encouraging people to take the responsibility for their own spiritual growth.
- The assessment provides qualitative values so the disciple may see their high and low numbers. If they have a low Missions score, then they may be motivated to get involved in a mission trip offered by the church.
- The assessment provides people with needed spiritual life-balance. After completing the assessment a visual pie graph is generated so they may see the balance or imbalance of the four discipleship domain values. People tend to get comfortable in one area of life, in this case, Worship, Word, Ministry, or Missions. It is a complex mixture of personality (DISC) and spiritual giftedness. (Both of these assessments are also in the Toolkit). Spiritual Life-Balance is important to the development of a healthy disciple as it reflects life lived around the cross.
- The assessment motivates people to get moving spiritually. The assessment will indicate a different size pie graph based on the total of the four primary discipleship domain numbers. Perhaps it is something that must be mentally visualized. Two people in our group had scores that illustrated balance but one had a cumulative Spiritual Vitality Score of 201 while the other had a score of 355. Since the maximum possible total for this assessment is 400, the person with the 201 score is not satisfied and wants “a bigger pie.”
SD Blessings,
Dr. Tom Cocklereece, The Disciplist
QUESTIONS:
1. What is the importance of life-balance as related to finances, spiritual life, relationships, health, etc.?
2. If life-balance is important than is spiritual life balance important?
3. How do you currently measure spiritual life balance in your church?
4. How do you currently motivate spiritual life balance AND growth?
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Dr. Tom Cocklereece is CEO of RENOVA Coaching and Consulting, LLC
Author “Simple Discipleship,” contributing writer L2L Blogazine
He is a pastor, an author, professional coach, and leadership specialist
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