A correlational study of the ministry skills and aptitudes of church lay persons as perceived by themselves and as perceived by ministry supervisors

This study purposed to evaluate the effectiveness of a spiritual gifts inventory, the Ministry Skills and Aptitudes Ranking Inventory (MSARI), as an accurate identifier of the spiritual gifts of church lay persons. This correlational study examined the relationships between the ministry skills and aptitude rankings that resulted from the responses of three different, but related, groups of persons as gathered by the MSARI. All three types of persons, lay ministry workers, the spouses of these workers, and the ministry supervisors of these lay workers, responded to the descriptors on the MSARI according to how these descriptors matched the perceived ministry skills and aptitudes of the lay ministry workers. While the primary focus of the study was upon the degree of correlation between the rankings which resulted from the lay workers' own self-reported responses and the rankings which resulted from the responses of the ministry supervisors, other related variables and issues were also studied.

The ministry supervisors were Master of Religious Education graduates of Temple Baptist Seminary of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Fifty-nine sets of ministry supervisors and lay ministry workers participated in the study. Data was collected during the fall of 1996

The median Spearman rank order rho correlation for the lay ministry workers' rankings and the ministry supervisors' rankings in the study (639), fell just short of the critical value for statistical significance (648). Worker-spouse correlations (644) were slightly higher than worker-supervisor correlations. Several ministry tenure and diversity variables were studied to determine if correlations increased with increases of lay ministry experience and diversity, as well as increases of ministry supervisor tenure and experience. In every case, higher correlations were observed with tenure and experience increases. However, statistical analysis indicated that these increases were not statistically significant. The gifts of giving, teaching, hospitality, administration, and pastor-teacher were the ministry skills and aptitudes that the MSARI perceived most accurately. Exhortation, mercy, faith, helps, and evangelism were less accurately perceived by the MSARI. Self-rater leniency was not found to be a problem in the study. There was very little difference between the strictness/leniency of the ratings of the workers, spouses, and supervisors.