S.H.A.P.E. Assessment Results

Thank you David “Cameron” Bratton for taking the SHAPE Assessment. We encourage you to meet with a Church Leader that you respect, to go over your results, so that they can help you discover a place to serve in the church and/or community, and also to help you fine-tune your 5 Main Focuses/Priorities listed at the bottom of this email under the ‘Wrapping it up’ section. May God Bless You!

[S]piritual Gifts

Here is how your spiritual gifts scored:

71%

100%

100%

93%

90%

93%

96%

84%

93%

To see descriptions on the Spiritual Gifts and how you can use them to further Christ’s Kingdom on earth, visit this link.

This gift’s evident in my life in the following ways:
Because I love the Lord our God. If I can share His gospel and my personal testimony to simply introduce a new relationship with Jesus to even just one person it would be worth my whole life, for He has saved my whole life and I want to give Him all of mine to share His amazing message. To change lives for eternity. I want to tell as many people as possible, there are so many things it can help, even if they have heard of Jesus before. Whether it is planting a seed for the first time, watering the seed, helping weed their spiritual garden away from the enemies lies, or helping them come to accept Christ as their savior and redeemer.

This gift’s evident in my life in the following ways:
I know what it feels like to be down and in despair. Words of life, of Jesus and of our amazing God, brings encouragement that can change everything. No matter if they know Jesus already or not. This world has too many words of death, and Jesus taught me to speak words of life, love, and truth.

This gift’s evident in my life in the following ways:
Being a prodigal son whom ran from a heavy call on my life for Christ in my teens, I know how this world and Satan can lie to you no matter your upbringing and lead you astray. No matter where you come from you can be lost, and I want to be a tool for God to help shepherd them into His kingdom.

[H]eart

1. It brings such joy to talk about Jesus to everyone I can no matter where I am. He gave it all for me and I want to do nothing less than offer my whole life to the unfinished business of telling the world of what Jesus has finished with his victory over death. If my speaking, actions or life can help a person feel the peace, joy, and love I have, and how sin and death no longer have it holds over us if we accept by faith alone what our amazing Father did for us by sending His son to die for the sake of our eternities. The world desperately needs to know how amazingly joyful life is when we accept Jesus and allow Him to live through us.

2. I love music, especially worship. Worshiping can be so many things, but to get to lead others with an instrument and vocals I feel is a very important call in my life. Our God deserves so much glory and not a show but an outpouring of our love for Him. True worship is from the heart, not simply the mouth by expressing love, appreciation, fascination, wonder, and celebration to our Father.
I also believe that music can be used to teach the gospel in a monumental way. Music has a way of breaking down walls that sometimes our words simply struggle to bust through. Today’s world is hard trusting and hard-hearted sometimes to spoken word, but when a song strikes a chord in them there is no hiding from the truth, the truth, conviction, we as humans sometimes try so desperately to suppress.

3. Helping those grow spiritually who have questions about what having a relationship with Christ is like. I consider it a great privilege to be forwarded the opportunity, when asked, to let God use me to help lead them closer to Christ.

All people truly. I do love teen ministry because they are the future of our church and the ones who will bring new life to ministry. Also when I was a teen I fell away and feel a pull to the youth.

Church issues/concerns: concerns from past experience in other churches: When worldly things take place over faith, usually in the terms of money. and a hope That they do not expand too fast and neglect their original congregation
Ministries that excite: worship, teaching, and fellowship
Needs: A celebrate recovery from all addiction group(doesn’t matter if its drugs, sex, gambling, etc just a victory over addiction group to help create accountability), friend making nights at the church for new followers who have old friends that are not the best counsel and they seek new wise God-loving friends to help them grow in their faith.

Drug abuse/recovery
Spiritual laziness
Other – The hurting no matter the situation

[A]bilities

Manager of Quick Lane Tire and Auto Center

Serving jobs in the food industry
A property manager for Leland Boren’s many companies and farms
Car sales and building relationships

Speaking well with others, Music, Song-writing, problem-solving skills

Younger years for many years lead worship and teaching in k-6 grade children’s church
Technologies in cars

A willingness to use whatever time I have to serve our God whenever asked or called

[P]ersonality

Extrovert

50-50 High/Low Risk

50-50 Peace Maker/Challenger

People Driven

50-50 Follower/Leader

Team

50-50 Routine/Variety

Your Primary was ‘The Otter’, with your Secondary coming in as ‘The Lion’, and here are the descriptions of your Personalities, and how they can be used for God

Otter- Otters are very social creature. Otter personalities love people. They enjoys being popular and influencing and motivating others. Otter can sometimes be hurt when people do not like them. Otter personalities usually have lots of friends, but not deep relationships. They love to goof-off. (They are notorious for messy rooms.) Otters like to hurry and finish jobs. (Jobs are not often done well.) The otter personality is like Tigger in Winnie The Pooh.

Strength: People person, open, positive
Weakness: Talks too much, too permissive
Limitation: Remembering past commitments, follow through with discipline

Lion- This personality likes to lead. The lion is good at making decisions and is very goal-oriented. They enjoy challenges, difficult assignments, and opportunity for advancement. Because lions are thinking of the goal, they can step on people to reach it. Lions can be very aggressive and competitive. Lions must learn not to be too bossy or to take charge in other’s affairs.

Strength: Goal-oriented, strong, direct
Weakness: Argumentative, too dictatorial
Limitation: Doesn’t understand that directness can hurt others, hard time expressing grace

[E]xperience

I became a Christian at a very young age and was very much involved in church. In my teenage years, I had a calling on my life to be a pastor to those in the dark with a strong musical aspect. Shortly after that, I was baptized and then it all shifted. I had many sad things happen at a rapid rate in my life, causing me to fall into depression and to push others away, and not seek wise counsel. To be honest looking back I was mad at God and simply didn’t understand at that age. Depression lead to self-hate(thoughts and struggles with suicide) at 15 which lead to self-harm and ended up in a serve drug addiction. Though I never denied my belief in Christ I truly did not lead a life He asked of me. Now i know that deep down I knew this but try to hide from it using drugs. At the age of 20 things began to turn back to God. My old pastor daughter who was a dear friend called me and felt a need to let me borrow her bass. I was sober for close to five years following and closer to God but still living a life of sin. At 24 I was engaged, but there was no peace. Fears and doubts and suspicions lead me to believe I was being cheated on and in denial I began using drugs again instead of facing the reality that she wasn’t the one. After a few months of using again, I came home to have my worse fear, it all was true about my suspicions. It threw me hard. I came back saying we could work it all out and I cleaned up. We had an amazing month, she came to church with me some. But then again I came home to another man with her.
This was the point my life changed forever. I was so hurt, so sad and wanted to just forget it all but God stopped me cold, literally, and conviction consumed me. I pulled to the side of the road and broke down. Fell to my knees with tears crying out to God. I needed Him and I knew it. If i had gone down my same old path of hiding it with drugs it would surely lead to my death and not allow me to serve Him as I had been called. I realize that I had been loving her and worldly pleasures like I should have been loving God along. I realized I was trying to fill what only His spirit can with worldly things. That night I recommitted to Jesus but I wasn’t out yet, satan was not happy. The enemies lies came in and I slipped tried drugs again twice but hated them so much. On my last use, I remember how upset I was with myself, and that I needed to find new friends because those around were not wanting to seek God. Dec 31, 2016, was the last time I ever used a drug, and the year to following God started to renew me. My life turned into a life of repentance, a change in thinking and action in hard times like never before. But I knew there were still lies that I was believing and needed to keep seeking truth to expose. The more I spent time with Him the more He showed me that my depression stemmed from me trying to separate myself from Him, the depression was quickly leaving filled with a peace and joy I so desired. In March at a Big daddy weave, We are messengers and Zach Williams show God spoke so loudly to me. I was actually on a first date but none of that matter who was around because I fell to my knees and wept like I had never before from His overwhelming love and forgiveness He still had for me no matter how long I lived in sin. Overwhelmed that He still wanted me to do His ministry. How can this be, I had run from Him? But it didn’t matter to Him! When I came home His arms were so much bigger than I had ever known. Why was I so ashamed to come back if this is the Father we serve? He wanted me no matter the past because He had larger plans for them to help minister to those in despair. March 8, 2017, I recommitted to a life of ministry for Him. This is when I truly feel like I was a follower of Christ, my desires begin to change. Now I want to bring others to this, not just simply say they are Christians but to truly follow Christ, be follower of Christ and let Him live through them.

**As brief as I could keep it, much more but praise God He can use my past for His will

Center Chapel Marion, Ind Helped with youth ministries 2 yrs

Handfield Marion, IND Helped with youth ministries 2 yrs

Upland United Methodist Helped with youth ministries 6yrs

Growing up in the church

Eagle wings bus ministry

ichthus music festival

Death that lead to depression and suicidal thoughts at a very young age

Drug addiction

Cheated on by the woman I truly thought would be my life

Wrapping It Up

The Challenge: Based upon your S.H.A.P.E. Assessment above (the way God wired you), If you knew you couldn’t fail … and ‘lack of money, or time’ was not an obstacle… list your Top 3 Things you would ‘Focus’ your Life on, next to #1 Loving God & #2 Loving Your Neighbor (these would be your ‘3 God-Sized Dreams’ for your life)?

1. My Relationship with GOD

2. My Relationship with Others

• Putting Your Spouse First
• Your Kids Second
• Everyone Else After those

3. Going out into the world and showing them Christ. No matter what job i have or where i am

4. Working towards being a worship leader and pastor

5. Future dreams of a organization that works with churches to share Jesus, feed and help the poor of the world, and to develop leaders,worship leaders, pastors and servants for churches all over the world to use if they are in need of servants. It would have training in the fields to those who have a call even if they don’t have a degree. I dream of it to have seminary lesson for free a few times a week outside of Sunday church. As well as music/leadership nights to train for free to grow those who have a heart of worship.