Book Review: Albert L. Winseman, Donald, Clifton, and Curt Liesveld, "Living Your Strengths," Gallup Press, 2004.

Review:
Living Your Strengths focuses specifically on Christian church-goers’ natural talents and strengths.  The authors define strengths “as a powerful productive combination of talent, skill and knowledge.  Talents are naturally recurring patterns of thoughts, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied. They are inborn predispositions…Unlike skills and knowledge, they cannot be acquired” (p.7). The authors recognize that these “inborn dispositions” come from God: “you are uniquely created by God and endowed with talents and gifts that are yours and yours alone”(p. xi). They dovetail this emphasis with spiritual gifts by saying “spiritual gifts are areas of calling…to be used for the betterment and advancement of the church…Your spiritual gifts help you find what the ministry is that God wants to see you accomplish; your talents are God’s way of showing you how you will accomplish it…Identifying spiritual gifts defines the outcomes; discovering talents defines the steps” (p. 31).

The premise of the authors is that believers should work from their strengths, rather than focus primarily on trying to overcome their weaknesses.  When believers understand their strengths, then they can work more productively in whatever calling God has for them: “God places within you a calling – a calling to serve others and advance the cause of Christ and the church, a calling to ministry”(p. 2).  There is a section explaining each of the 34 significant talents the authors have identified, another section on how those talents can be applied in a church setting and various stories from individuals on how living their strengths has helped their ministry.

The book is part of an on-going Gallup research project. Each person who buys the book is given a unique tracking number that enables s/he to take the Clinton StrengthsFinder test. When one’s answers are processed, the taker is given a printout of his or her signature themes, one’s top five strengths that can then be honed and maximized as one uses these in conjunction with skills and knowledge and spiritual gifts.   It is interesting to be part of such a vast research project. (As of the 2008 printing “more than 3 million individuals have taken the Clifton StrengthsFinder assessment…More than 400 have gone through Gallup training and become Faith Strengths Performance Coaches”(pp. xi-xii)).

There are two downsides to the book’s approach, however:

1.      First, there is a surprising lack of emphasis on the Holy Spirit in the book.  There are, in fact, only two places where spiritual gifts are cited.  The emphasis instead is on the individual who needs to understand and utilize one’s strengths on one’s own.  There is not an emphasis on anointing and Spirit-direction that is a necessary understanding for the use of one’s talents and spiritual gifts and the resultant fruitfulness in one’s ministry under obedience to the Holy Spirit.

2.      Secondly, if one wants to apply the authors’ findings personally, one has to buy the book in order to have access to a personal number. That pin number becomes part of the Gallup research findings and is what you activate on line to complete a personal strengthsfinder questionnaire. But purchasing the book is a barrier for all those with limited resources. 

Still, the strengthsfinder questionnaire and the research is valuable.  The insights provided in the 34 strengths Clinton identified are very interesting and not often discussed, nor are they easily discernible if one looks at the list of 34 strengths and tries to identify one’s top five signature themes, without taking the questionnaire.  When the reviewer took the questionnaire, several of the signature themes were different than expected.  But they were on target and explained behavior and choices from the past.  Therefore, Living One’s Strengths can be an important tool for believers’ individual and corporate self-understanding.  In fact, some mission organizations do have each member take the questionnaire so the members can be best used within the organization.  

On balance, therefore, for those who can afford it, the book and the ability to complete the strengthsfinder questionnaire are worth the price.

                        - M. L. Codman-Wilson, Ph.D., 3/15/12