Hospitality

• Your intuitive sense of what people are feeling allows you to say the right things at the right time. This skill can be very helpful for people starting to explore faith and/or individuals you meet for the first time. Cultivate a new relationship through your ability to care.
• Your ability to provide comfort and stability can start new relationships with the right tone.

Offer Christ

• The decision to follow Jesus is a life-changing one. Your capacity to ask questions, name conflict, explore change, express love, name the power, a person feels can help them make sense of an experience that is new. Consider walking with people who are new believers.
• Help individuals articulate what is holding them back from making a “next step” faith commitment. Your intuitive sense of their hesitation can be helpful in expressing their feelings in words. Sometimes the ability to give voice to something can help move us to a new place.
• Before you make faith commitments, answer the question, “How do you feel about this?” Your emotions likely help you make decisions.

Practice

• Explore Biblical characters and their defining traits. Use what you learn to relate to Scripture and live your faith.
• Your ability to feel what others are feeling can be helpful in group Bible Studies, coaching sessions, and with people in a variety of changes in life-stage. Do any of these life-stages energize you: preschoolers, children, youth, recent graduates, college students, empty nester, new retirees, senior citizens, people at the end of life? These may be situations where you can be helpful in finding words others seem to lack to express their feelings.
• You may provide comfort and stability to people who have difficulty logically understanding Scripture. Your ability to pray the prayer that needs to be prayed is a gift.

Engage

• You have instinctive abilities to understand people. Consider serving with people where you have the opportunity to share this gift. Even though you may not agree with their life choices, your ability to articulate what needs to be said, with an appropriate tone, is powerful.
• When attempting to identify a place or way to serve in your community, return to the question, “How do I feel about _____?” It can help you make a decision about where you can best utilize your talents.
• Trust your instincts when you serve. Your gut likely knows what needs to happen.
• You have the capacity to act quickly and decisively when someone behaves in an unhealthy way. Be cautious. When empathy becomes sympathy others will see you as a bleeding heart.