copyright Favoring Brave LLC 2023
Why we built a charism tool for prison ministry, and what it preserves under the surface.
Charisms are the practical gifts the Holy Spirit gives every baptized person to build up the Church and serve the world. The Catechism speaks of them as gifts given to individual believers "for the common good of the Body of Christ." We don't earn them. We don't choose them. We receive them.
Discerning your charisms is one of the most clarifying things a person can do — and that's true everywhere, not just on the outside. The person filling out this booklet inside a prison or jail has a real vocation. They have real gifts. The Spirit is at work in them now, in the room they're in, with the people around them. The job of this tool is to help them notice.
The conversation guide is grounded in the Catholic spiritual direction tradition — questions that listen, not questions that prescribe. The structure of the 24 charisms comes from The Essential Handbook on Living Your Charisms, our executive director's book on the topic. The whole instrument is built to surface joy, freedom, and calling — the three markers of a charism — rather than current lived state.
Many Parts Ministries equips the Body of Christ by helping people learn about and discern their charisms. Most of our work happens on the outside — parishes, schools, families, dioceses. But for years we've heard the same question from chaplains and prison ministry coordinators: Is there something we can use inside?
The Charism assessment we run for individuals and organizations is digital because that is what can provide the most high-quality individual user experience. That doesn't work in most facilities (no internet access, no devices for inmates). Due to the many complexities of segmentation and scoring in our digital assessment, it's not possible to simply print it out and provide it to inmates, so we needed to create a new solution. This is why we built a paper instrument tailor-made for the prison setting: 72 statements grounded inside the walls, a chaplain-only scoring overlay, and a conversation guide written for the realities of incarcerated ministry.
Help fund this work. Every $149 you donate covers one facility's scholarship.
Donate to ScholarshipsWhere the Spirit Is is a Many Parts Ministries product. PDFs delivered immediately upon purchase or scholarship approval. 7-day refund window. Facility license is non-transferable.