The Gifted Pastor
Published August 2001
All Christians are graced with specific and distinctive spiritual gifts. Too often pastors forget that God has given them particular gifts for ministry. While all pastors must attend to the different tasks of congregational ministry, they need to discover those functions for which they have been particularly gifted. When they begin to make these gifts the focus of their ministry, then deep personal satisfaction and connection with others results.
This book is written to help pastors overcome the false belief that if their ministry is to succeed, it must emulate that of a high-profile orator. Carter explains that when we make our distinctive gifts the center of our ministry, we lose the illusion that we are in control, and instead trust that God will complement us with others' gifts to meet the needs of God's people.
Key Features: includes a "consumer guide" to spiritual gift inventories; resource lists including retreat centers, congregations, and publications. Key Benefits: Provides pastors a biblical/theological framework for understanding ministerial gifts.
About the Author
Rev. Kenneth H. Carter JR.
Kenneth H. Carter, Jr. is resident bishop of the Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church. Along with the Cabinet, he gives pastoral and administrative leadership to almost 800 congregations, fresh expressions of church, campus ministries and outreach initiatives in an episcopal area that stretches from Tallahassee and Jacksonville to Miami and the Keys. He came to the Florida Conference in 2012, following a ministry of almost thirty years in Western North Carolina, twenty-nine as a local church pastor.
Bishop Carter is the immediate past-president of the Council of Bishops of The United Methodist Church, and he was one of three moderators of the Commission on A Way Forward, the commission authorized by the General Conference in matters of unity and human sexuality.
He is author of a number of books, most recently Fresh Expressions of People Over Property and Fresh Expressions: A New Kind of Methodist Church (both with Audrey Warren) and Embracing The Wideness: The Shared Convictions of United Methodists.
He travels extensively across the state, preaching in local churches and encouraging lay and clergy leaders.
Bishop Carter and his wife, Pam have been married for thirty-seven years. Pam is also an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church, and was previously a regional team leader in disaster recovery for the Florida Conference. They are blessed with two adult daughters: Liz lives in Los Angeles, where she is a PhD. student at U.C.L.A., and Abby is on the staff of Martin Methodist College in Pulaski, Tennessee. Abby and her husband Allen are parents of Paige, the bishop’s granddaughter.
The Carters consider it a great blessing to live and serve in Florida.