Designed for a Purpose
God has designed each of us for a special, unique purpose. Discover how your unique D-E-S-I-G-N is perfect for God’s intended purpose for your life. Discovering what God wants to do with our talents and abilities should not be challenging. God wants us to live a life that fulfills His intended purpose for us. So, this exercise may be helpful in identifying the features and characteristics which reveal how you can best be utilized for the Lord personally and professionally.

Online at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1a8mJw6sxbgXN2HhQQOdS3Pb_XHXfctpa

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CliftonStrengths StrengthsFinder 2.0
CliftonStrengths StrengthsFinder is the most universally recognized and accepted talent / strength assessment in the global marketplace. I recently completed it for a professional assessment. It is not free but extremely insightful. I have used the results to shape my decisions over the last 30 years.

The formula Talent x Investment = Strength captures a profound concept in a simple fashion.
Talents, founder Don Clifton wrote, are your “naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling or behavior.” They’re the innate, natural abilities you can productively apply.

When Clifton studied human behavior, he noted hundreds of positive characteristics and saw that many of those characteristics had commonalities. Based on those common traits, he distilled them down into the 34 talent themes we know today. To identify the rank order of those 34 themes for yourself, take the CliftonStrengths assessment, which measures the presence of talents.
https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/strengthsfinder.aspx

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Here are some additional assessment resources, most of which are free. But you always get what you pay for. I do like the idea of taking multiple assessments in order to gain insight from various perspectives and look for patterns. Typically, something would pop out and resonate with you or inspire you. Here are several additional resources.

The Big Five Personality Test: Accurately Measure Your Key Personality Traits
This free personality test gives you accurate scores for the Big Five personality traits. See exactly how you score for Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism with this scientific personality assessment.
https://www.truity.com/test/big-five-personality-test-motive

The MAPP Career Assessment
The MAPP (Motivational Appraisal Personal Potential) career assessment is perfect for students, graduates and working adults. You’ll get a wealth of information to help find the right career that matches your unique assessment profile.
https://www.assessment.com/

CareerExplorer
Using advanced machine learning, psychometrics, and career satisfaction data, we’ve reimagined what a career test can be.
https://www.careerexplorer.com/career-test/

The Career Fit Test
This assessment then helps you to reality test career options; make great career decisions; and conduct a successful job search. This proven assessment and career planning process has helped thousands of people to find work that they were designed to do.
https://www.christiancareercenter.com/career-test/

The S-T-A-R Personality System
This basic information is also included in the document, Designed for a Purpose. In what order would you put the following S-T-A-R personality attributes to describe yourself – from most dominant to least dominant?

(S) – Structured Orderly, punctual, rule-following, ethical.
(T) – Technical Thinking, data-driven, unemotional, analytical.
(A) – Action-oriented Risk-taking, competitive, results-oriented, fast-paced.
(R) – Relationship-oriented Trusting, patient, good communicator, people-person.

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Ministry-related career resources…

11 Types of Careers in Ministry (With Salaries and Duties)
This summary of high-level general ministry opportunities with salary expectations demonstrates that most full-time ministry positions have insufficient income levels to support financial independence. Typically, only managers, leaders, directors, etcetera have a high enough salary to be financially independent. This supports the idea that a ministry career path should be a complement to a professional career path until sufficient knowledge, skills, experience, education, and certifications are in place to command a higher salary.
https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/finding-a-job/types-of-careers-in-ministry

Your Spiritual Gifts
Discover Your Spiritual Gifts with Lifeway Christian Resources’ Spiritual Gifts Survey
If you have not already seen this Spiritual Gift Survey tool from Lifeway, you can use one of the links below to complete the survey to gain insights into your potential spiritual gift(s). There are two ways to take the survey:

The PDF Way…
Download the PDF using the link below and edit the PDF or print it and write on the piece of paper.
Link:
https://s7d9.scene7.com/is/content/LifeWayChristianResources/Spiritual_Gifts_Assessmentpdf.pdf

The MS Excel Way…
Use the link immediately below to open a Google Sheet and then DOWNLOAD an Excel version of the survey and type in your answers. It will automatically calculate everything (making it about three times easier than the PDF way).
Link:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_mRumAodNygEvdm7LNM4rIyjiEO1NA_dBgWw2Lk_8U0/

The APEST Test
Every one of us has been called to build up the Body of Christ. Take the Five Fold Ministry Test now to discover your Kingdom Strengths. The Fivefold Ministry is a term referring to the five ministry roles of Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher found in the book of Ephesians. It’s the Biblical blueprint we are given to equip people and grow the Kingdom. The basic version of this assessment is another good input to your decision making.
https://fivefoldministry.com/

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Recommended Action Steps

1. Pray to seek insight
2. Continue to seek counsel from others who love you and have wisdom…and then listen to it
3. Get input from staff at church as another data point
4. Read Designed for a Purpose
5. Explore the links above and complete some of the assessments to gain additional insight
6. Seriously consider paying for and completing the CliftonStrengths StrengthsFinder… it’s worth it
7. Take the APEST Test
8. Take the LifeWay Spiritual Gifts Survey

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Final Thoughts
These are some of the best and most outstanding resources available to address job transition and career direction. It will definitely take you some time to work through everything in this email but each item will be interesting all on its own. Just get started. The exercise of going through these resources should give you much more significant insight into God’s intended purpose for your life and career.