Week One Notes from Paula

Hello Facilitators,

I met with my study group today and it was a great experience. Everyone was very receptive to all that we talked about. There was much excitement about Andrew Harvey's talk. People seemed to feel that they were up to the challenge to do more outreach.

There is a lot to cover in this first week. We did not get through all of the agenda for week one. Highlights were the actual assessment, the Nat King Cole story, and the Andrew Harvey discussion. I did not use the facilitator's manual much at all except to read through it before our meeting and highlight some of the talking points during the meeting.

It took about half an hour for folks to fill out the assessment and accompanying worksheet. There was some confusion about the worksheet - like what numbers to use 1-5 or their totals. (I think it says the totals.); what to do if there is a tie for some of the gifts (we put them both down since there were two lines for each
of 1-5; the back of the worksheet had two columns and people were not sure what to put in the columns (we picked a column and added checkmarks); and we are not sure what s-gifts and s-service near the bottom of that page meant.

Some folks thought they would rather be asked at the end of the study whether they wanted to volunteer, it seemed a valid point. Also, one suggestion was to take a look at the data, once it is entered, to see as a congregation what our top five gifts were. I thought that sounded interesting.

I also heard a comment that the assessment still sounded too religious. They had trouble answering some of the God/Spirit questions. Another couple of people thought that the statements that corresponded to creative abilities were too focused on handicraft and needed to include other forms of creativity like computer software designers, creative problem solvers, dancers, writers, poets, etc.

Finally, we agreed that the answer sheet should definately be on a separate page so there is less flipping back and forth to write out the answers.

I hope you will respond to this and share what you've learned so far.

Thank you, Mamie, for organizing this blog.

Enjoy the journey.
Blessings,
Paula