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

Thank you Daniel Foster 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 (in alphabetical order):

68%

84%

84%

40%

56%

43%

65%

62%

90%

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:
I was blessed by a good education that was well rounded in subjects like literature, history, philosophy, education theory, and social science. While in college, I envisioned becoming an English Language Arts & Literature teacher at the secondary school level, but I chose to pursue jobs in sales that led to my current career in corporate technology consulting sales. I use my communication gifts every day in that context to help listen, teach, and motivate my colleagues and customers toward a purpose. In terms of my faith in Christ, I have a passion for sharing how I understand what Jesus’s saving work on the cross means to my life and our lives in community. I love working through the Bible to find how the scriptures resonate in today’s culture and in our very lives even now, and I enjoy investigating theological truths about God’s story and defining and understanding what the Bible means and is saying to us. I am open to how my understanding is limited and incomplete and how through faith the Holy Spirit changes hearts and minds when the scriptures are opened and taught. I don’t see myself as pastorally gifted or trained; I see myself as like a peer-to-peer helper or teacher when I am faithfully at my best.

This gift’s evident in my life in the following ways:
God is growing me in this area and I am feeling more of a call to share my faith and bring new people into the family of God and into relationship with Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior. I have by no means been an evangelist historically, and I have not brought many numbers of people to Jesus much less invited many unbelievers to church or to small groups. However, I think God is planning to grow me in this way. I have tremendous compassion for “doubters” and people who are moral and ethical or spiritual but don’t confess that Jesus was the begotten Son of God. I was like them and I remember being in their position, and I find great joy and am moved to tears witnessing the testimonies of people’s movement from unbelief and brokenness to faith and living hope in Jesus and lives transformed.

This gift’s evident in my life in the following ways:
The most precious need in human life is to feel belonging, kinship, acceptance, and love. We all feel this need most when life is difficult or we face suffering of any kind. We are stronger together than we are alone. People cannot follow Jesus alone. My closest experiences of Jesus have happened when someone loved me, talked to me like a friend, listened to my problems, and prayed with me. In times of despair, Jesus showed up form me in the kindness and friendship of a brother or sister in the church, no matter what the problem was. I have always and will always pay that forward. My first purpose in my life is to love my neighbor like a true friend, and it is the Lord’s “second commandment which is like the first.” I feel this is my primary spiritual gift – to counsel, listen, encourage and walk with people individually.

[H]eart

1. I like to play. Play is a way to be in a joyful relationship with other people. My family and my friends gather to play, regardless of what we play. I love to laugh and enjoy the humor in life. I believe God gave us the gift of humor to help us connect with one another’s experience of the world and to help us persevere through suffering and trials. “Humor is the best medicine” is something that seems to be true. When I think back on the relationships of those who have discipled me well, we have all laughed together as often as we have cried together and prayed together. I have a passion for connecting with people in ways that make us feel comfortable. So my answer is that play, humor, and fun are something that God created for us to reach and enjoy one another and glimpse His divine nature.

2. Justice through Mercy to the “least of these.” When I think about our world, I grieve deeply over the divisions between rich and poor, sickness, and harsh divisions in our politics and social discourse that I feel distract us from our mission of reaching the lost. I think wherever the body of Christ is spreading mercy and ministering to the needs of people who are cut off from the riches of our society, there is Jesus. My heart beats for a Christian life and a church that is not like the Pharisees or the Older Son/Brother but for a church that is made to serve the lost, the Prodigal Sons and daughters in our culture, those who not righteous but who are poor in spirit.

3.

I enjoy working with other young men, young adults, or adolescents. I also need and feel comfortable learning from and sharing fellowship with elder, mature people. As a parent, I often think about how to connect the wisdom of the previous generations to my own and future generations.

Small groups and discipling. My wife, Samantha, and I are feeling called and have stepped into being trained to help with leadership the high school and young adult ministries.

Marriage/family issues
Educational
At-risk children

[A]bilities

I am a sales professional in corporate IT and software consulting services with Capgemini in the retail and consumer products industries.

I have worked in small businesses and in various retail and hospitality jobs when I was young.

Communication. Writing. Presenting. Speaking.

I have not taught formal classes or seminars. I organize corporate/sales and project meetings routinely. I am very comfortable leading a small/medium size audience in a class/workshop setting.

Ability to get along with and communicate with almost anybody. Compassion?

[P]ersonality

Extrovert

High Risk

Peace Maker

People Driven

Leader

Team

Variety

Your Primary was ‘The Otter’, with your Secondary coming in as ‘The Retriever’, 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

Golden Retriever- Good at making friends. Very loyal. Retriever personalities do not like big changes. They look for security. Can be very sensitive. Very caring. Has deep relationships, but usually only a couple of close friends. Wants to be loved by everyone. Looks for appreciation. Works best in a limited situation with a steady work pattern.

Strength: Accommodating, calm, affirming
Weakness: Indecisive, indifferent, unable to express emotional, too soft on other people
Limitation: Seeing the need to be more assertive, holding others accountable

[E]xperience

Although I was introduced to Christianity around age eleven and I participated in a youth program in my community church and Young Life, and I generally believed the teachings, I strayed from my faith in young adulthood. I lived according to my desires and my own understanding of the world. I was a questioner and I was not convinced God was real or the Jesus was really God incarnate or if the Bible was truth. Between ages 23-27 I was living in Chicago and spent my free time going out to bars with friends and serially dating women. Eventually in 2007 I met the woman who is the mother of my three children. We dated and quickly became infatuated and we were sexually intimate and within a few months of dating, she was pregnant with my oldest son. The pregnancy led to a fast marriage. We experienced difficult and confusing conflict during the pregnancy and during the first year of the marriage from the beginning. In 2009, although we were enjoying our young son together and getting along better, a sudden fight escalated to a crisis and we had to consider if we would stay married and how. This broken and unhealthy relationship led us to attend Park Community Church as one way to try and grow in our marriage and with God. Earlier that year, as a new father, I became more interested in the question of Jesus as God, and I read books like Timothy Keller’s “The Reason for God” and Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz.” These opened my mind greatly to Jesus personally as the ultimate truth about the world. By my heart was still not changed. One day during church at Park, the first Sunday of Advent, I had an overwhelming emotional reaction to the sermon and worship music. Tears streamed down my face and I had a feeling of safety and certainty that I believed, that Jesus really was born of God and took on flesh, died for me, and was raised in power for all eternity. I felt peace. I recognized how deep my sin was and how helpless and hopeless I was to save my own life and to be a good man or a good father and husband on my own. I needed and wanted His help and his promises. I felt His love. I was changed that day and I have not looked back since.

I have gone through deep pain and trials since that day, but I have not lost my hope in Jesus. The broken marriage was temporarily but not completely healed. We had another son and daughter, so I am father of three children. The marriage was problematic throughout, and I was confused about who my wife was and what she expected from me. I never felt good enough and she never felt sure that she wanted to stay married to me. By 2016, she asked me to leave the home and to separate. I disagreed and attempted to get into Christian marriage counseling and she refused. I learned that she had begun an affair. We separated that summer and moved out of Chicago into separate homes and were legally divorced in early 2019 after a difficult attempt to resolve custody and parenting issues. Those issues continue to this day, with intervention from the family court. Although it was never diagnosed, I know my ex-wife suffers from a mental illness and a high-conflict personality disorder like narcissism or borderline personality.

During this trial, I met Samantha, my wife. We have a deep and authentic relationship build on shared faith in Christ and unconditional love for one another. We both endured a divorce and found in each other a hope for the future and a second chance. We both learned more about the meaning of marriage and how to be better parents through our trials. We were humbled and are grateful for God’s grace with us. We love each other without end.

It is together that Samantha and I are committing our lives to the church of Jesus.

Park Community Church in Chicago was planting in the South Loop and Bridgeport neighborhoods when I joined. I was a Men’s small group co-leader for a couple of years. I volunteered for church Sunday school, setup and tear down.

References from Park should there be any need: Kensen Lam, Pastor. Raef Chenery, Pastor. Mark Hamstra, small group leader.

I was a high school athlete in baseball and football. My love of sports and being a teammate are a big part of my personality and how I enjoy life with my children and other people.

When my grandfather died in 2010 after a fall and a head injury at age 75, I witnessed the faith and prayers of the body of Christ and how my family was comforted and this experience forever changed my faith and knowledge of God’s promises. My own father is my hero, and going through the loss of his father together with him impressed on my how deep and real my father’s faith in Jesus goes. These role models are just a couple of many who have shaped who I am and who I want to be like.

The men’s small groups that I was part of at Park church in Chicago taught me what it is like to be a Christian in an authentic way, living out our beliefs together. We were a diverse group of men from different backgrounds. We inspired each other do to some uncomfortable things in the name of Jesus. One thing we did that ‘snowballed’ was to start bringing material help and aide to homeless men during the winter in the city of Chicago out on the streets where they were sheltering or begging for spare change. We brought food, supplies, and clothing. We tried to help them find shelter if they would let us. We invited them to church and a couple of them came. We learned how homelessness has more to do with mental illness and/or addictions and how hard it is to solve. We accepted that our purpose was not to “save” these men and women, but to share Jesus’s love with them and accept them as they were. This changed my mindset about what spreading the Gospel is designed for.

Aforementioned high-conflict divorce; complicated relationships with my children. There are many times when I have believed that this is/was a spiritual war driven by unseen forces. I still struggle to completely grieve for what has been happening to my family and my children, because we are still living it.

when I was in my pre-teen and teen years, I experienced some bullying and I felt ashamed about it and I think it changed me and made me more superficial and caused me to idolize being liked and being popular more than living for a purpose and doing my best at school.

I recognize the consequences of my sin. The sin that I have in the past sometimes still allow to rule me not only hurt me but hurt others. Some have short term consequences and some have long term consequences.

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. Being part of winning hearts to Jesus in my local neighborhood and community by being active in the church while also in a secular capacity. (Coaching a baseball team or working with the local business community.)

4. Live in a foreign country for an extended period of time to learn how the Gospel transcends cultural differences

5. Leaving a fruitful, legacy of faith in my five children: Jack, Max, Sophia, Emma, and Isaac.