The Enneagram for Pastors

Interesting article from Christianity Today.  I have yet to take this test but a gal in our church is an Enneagram fan.  I recently bought a book on it and this article has motivated me to take the test!

My husband, Joe, is a pastor. In other words, he is teacher, public speaker, counselor, children’s story teller, youth leader, HR director, master of ceremonies, facilities coordinator, volunteer coordinator, mission trip coordinator, hospital chaplain, creative designer, office equipment technician, mediator, fundraiser, finance officer, funeral director, father, and grandfather.

Does he excel at every one of those tasks? How could anyone? He thrives in some parts of the ministry, and in other areas he merely gets by. For 2,000 years, men and women have tried to discern a call and find their way in the ministry, only to find a world of expectations that cannot be met.

Not familiar with the Enneagram?
Read CT’s “The Evangelical’s Guide to the Enneagram.”

Through his 40-plus years of pastoral ministry, Joe has found a number of tools to manage the range of expectations that come with ministry. None have been as helpful to him as the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a tool that helps us identify ourselves as belonging to one of nine personality types. Those types aren’t so much about what we do, as they are about our motivationfor doing the things we do.

The Enneagram explains the differences in those who have filled the pews in the churches we were appointed to serve. It has helped us become aware of how we all see the world differently, how we respond differently to what we see, and the specific steps we can take to become more like Christ.

Of course, like any self-assessment tool or personality test, there is a danger in making the Enneagram more than it is. It is simply one helpful tool as we journey toward understanding who we are, who God is, and who we are in relation to God. By itself, the Enneagram doesn’t have much to offer, but when combined with prayer, Bible study, and other spiritual practices, it can be extremely helpful.

Below are descriptions of the nine Enneagram types, as well as some advice for those who find themselves in those descriptions, applied to the pastoral role. You might be tempted to think of others who fit each description. That’s an understandable impulse, but the healthiest way to use the Enneagram is by focusing on self-awareness, not diagnosing others. Try to discern where you land and consider how growing in this kind of self-awareness might help you in your life and ministry.

If you have no idea which number you are, take this quick assessment.

One – The “Perfect” Pastor

You do your work with a commitment to giving the best you have to offer. You take your role as pastor seriously and have a perpetual to-do list. You probably notice error—in thought, word, and deed—that others don’t see, and you may feel a personal responsibility to correct it. You assume the first thing people see as they walk into your sanctuary are the burned-out light bulbs or the crooked table cloth.

You are personable, but your constant inner critic finds fault with everything you do. As a result, you may struggle to believe that you are good or worthy enough to lead your church or ministry. Your judging and comparing mind can make you feel like you fall short of what is required. As a result, others may seem better suited for ministry than you.

The path forward: Instead of seeking perfection in every area of ministry, work to allow a few things to be “good enough.” Perhaps your benediction doesn’t need a four-point alliteration, or perhaps your board would be fine with unstapled agendas at a meeting.

Two – The Generous Pastor

You know what your parishioners feel and need, and you’re anxious to be helpful. People in your church feel loved, accepted, and wanted by you; that’s probably because they are.

Being a pastor seems right—you want to be needed. You give and give, building relationships with almost everyone you encounter. That impulse can also be exhausting. Sometimes you return home feeling taken for granted or even feeling annoyed. There are times when you struggle with the business of ministry. Hospital visitation may feel more important than clarifying the interest rate of the endowment, but both are important for the church.

The path forward: It is a gift when pastors find some balance between thinking, feeling, and doing. Since you easily pick up the feelings of your parishioners and you know almost immediately how to best respond to those feelings, it would serve you well to ask some hard questions about your impulses: Why do I feel like I need to move toward this person and see what they might need from me? If I do offer my help, do I expect to get anything like appreciation, affection, or loyalty in return? Does this person really want or need my help? It might be good to think before feeling and doing.

Three – The High Performance Pastor

You are known for being enterprising, motivating your parishioners to help execute whatever plan you may have for your church. You are good at setting and achieving short and long-term goals and helping your congregation move forward. You focus on ministry metrics, quickly identifying inefficient or ineffective people and processes, sometimes to a fault. At times you focus too much on the goal and not enough on the spiritual and emotional health of your parishioners. Your determination to put a good face on things makes you a master at hiding anger, fear, sadness, disappointment, and embarrassment.

The path forward: Eugene Peterson calls the Christian life a long obedience in the same direction. Keep in mind that the quickest, more efficient route isn’t necessarily the best for the spiritual development of your congregation or yourself.

Four – The Empathetic Pastor

You have some gifts for ministry that are unparalleled. You can bear witness to pain without having to fix it, and your ideas are best expressed though stories and symbols and liturgy. You have a need to be authentic and unique, and you live with the idea that something is missing in your life—that you won’t be complete until you find it. You are comfortable with a melancholy mood that others often misidentify as depression.

The path forward: There are times in ministry when people in your parish need to experience you as light-hearted and fun loving. It may seem shallow, but make yourself available for “small talk” about football, fishing, or music. Your comfort with pain has the potential to limit your relationships. Most people benefit from times with their minister when conversations aren’t so weighty and they can forget that he or she is a pastor.

Five – The Well-Studied Pastor

You are well read and well informed—a wonderful source of knowledge for your parishioners. If you don’t know the answers to their questions, you’ll find the answers. You have a limited amount of energy for personal encounters, so you spend most of your day in your study and schedule your days to allow for study and sermon preparation.

You don’t love committees and probably think of them as the unwilling asked by the unable to do the unnecessary. Your tendency is likely to observe, but it is a great gift to the congregation when you really engage. Many people, if not most, thrive on participation. At times when you can walk beside them in the ordinary business of making decisions for the church, it’s good for everyone.

You can emotionally detach, which means you can have feelings and let them go. This can be both a strength and a weakness in ministry. Detaching from your own emotions can leave you with a clear enough head to lead a beautiful funeral service for a longtime member, but prolonged emotional detachment can lessen your empathy.

The path forward: Thomas Merton’s writing is published in every known language on the globe. That’s probably because he was able to combine head and heart in his work. If you rely heavily on mental acuity, it would be good to add some expression of feelings to that.

Six – The Reliable Pastor

You are loyal, steadfast, and concerned about the common good. You are aware that we live in a world full of threat, and you have a lot of anxiety about possible future events. As a result, you appreciate structure and rules. Be mindful that too much structure can prevent creativity, and many “church rules” have not been reconsidered for years. You are respectful of the fear and anxiety we often find in churches, so you would be good at leading parishioners through an examination of how things have always been done and how that might need to change. You appreciate the need for group projects and committees. You like always to have a plan, and you try to use your gifts to provide safety for your parishioners.

The path forward: There is a time and place for concern about possible future events. When people are in that mindset, it’s good to be both present and patient with their concerns. At the same time, as the leader of the congregation it’s good when you can model the peace you have in believing that God is always faithful.

Seven – The Popular Pastor

You like the variety and spontaneity of ministry. You relate well to all ages, and you’re probably popular with most of the parishioners. If it doesn’t require too much preparation time, you really enjoy preaching and leading worship. You prefer to dwell in the happy half of life, so the emotional demands for dealing with tragedy, sadness, illness, and death requires extra effort. You can be creative and capable in dealing with conflict, yet struggle with problems that can’t be solved in a “reasonable” amount of time.

The path forward: Tender, holy moments are often found on the margins of life—both in great joy and in deep pain. Instead of immediately dismissing or reframing the painful parts of life, work to stay in those holy moments if even just for a minute or two longer.

Eight – The Visionary Pastor

You are a strong leader and an independent thinker. You are good at mobilizing your people to actively participate in protests, or evangelistic missions as the case may require. Your passion tends to be contagious, no matter the topic. Anger is your emotion of choice but it is almost always directed at injustice, and it never lasts long. It’s important for you to pay attention to the effect you have on other people.

The path forward: If you slow down enough to deal with your parishioner’s feelings, questions, and concerns, and make the effort to relate to them on an emotional level, your people will be as excited about your vision as you are.

Nine – The Peace-loving Pastor

You are a peacemaker. You always see at least two sides to everything, and you don’t take a strong stand unless it’s about something that involves integrity or morality. You sometimes set aside your own thoughts or desires while merging with other people’s plans or ideas.

You lead by consensus—something that is both a gift and a problem in church leadership. It is a gift when everyone in a congregation believes they have a voice. However, it is difficult to make time and provide room for people who spend a fraction of their week at the church to have a say in most of what occurs in the life of the church. You sometimes take too long to assert yourself as pastor and leader of the congregation.

The path forward: It is a gift that you are able to take in and often merge with the ideas of other people, but you are the leader, and your parishioners often need you to take a stand. So, when it’s time, make a decision. You can always change your mind later.

My hope is that we can use this knowledge and wisdom from the Enneagram to love one another better, understand one another better, and bridge the differences that separate us. For this is our desire: to grow more like the One we follow, Jesus the Christ.

Suzanne Stabile is the cofounder and co-director of Life in the Trinity Ministries at the Micah Center in Dallas, Texas. Her first book, The Road Back to You (coathored with Ian Morgan Cron), is an Enneagram primer while her second, The Path Between Us (out April 2018), uses Enneagram wisdom to build healthier relationships. Her weekly podcast, “The Enneagram Journey,” seeks to help listeners fully understand themselves and those they share life with.

An insiders view of the prosperity gospel . . .

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/october/benny-hinn-costi-uncle-prosperity-preaching-testimony.html

You Are the Manure of the Earth

A different take on being the salt of the earth than I have understood in the past, from Christianity Today.

My first job after graduating from Clemson University was as a quality control chemist at a small pharmaceutical company in Atlanta. It was a great job, but I was far too extroverted to enjoy a career in a lab. Initially, I had enrolled in college with the intention of becoming a physician, but after a spiritual awakening during my senior year, I made a decision to attend seminary instead of medical school. As a consequence, I learned the Bible with the sciences in mind—which has been a continual source of insight into my reading of Scripture.

For example, I was recently doing some research for a lecture on Luke 14:34–35. When I read Jesus’ words—“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”— I decided to look into what Jesus’ original audience might have understood about salt when Jesus taught them to be “the salt of the earth.” When I discovered that salt was used as a fertilizer in Palestine, it permanently changed how I viewed the command to love my neighbor. What previously had been a somewhat strange charge by Jesus to be “salty” became a source of inspiration for Christian life and mission.

You are ‘salt for the soil.’

According to specialists in environmental science and soil chemistry, salt has been a major method of fertilizing soil for centuries.

An old article in the journal Biblical Archaeology, “Salt, Soil, Savior,” stands the test of time. Eugene P. Deatrick, former head of the soils department at West Virginia University, argued that in Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:50, and Luke 14:34–35, Jesus was speaking not primarily of salt’s household use but of its agricultural use. According to Deatrick, several kinds of salt are found in Palestine that are different from the kind we’re familiar with. There is rock salt, salt evaporated from Dead Sea water, salt pits (Zeph. 2:9), and more. Additionally, Deatrick writes that “agricultural literature abounds in references to the use of salt as a fertilizer.” In quoting another source, he noted that “the value of salt in small quantities appears to have been known in ancient times—Cato, Virgil (and others) record its power of improving herbage of pastures.”

As Deatrick mentioned, agriculturalists have long recognized the value of salt as a fertilizer. A prize-winning essay on the valuable properties of salt for agriculture written by Robert Faulk, a contemporary of Deatrick’s, recognizes the long lineage of the agricultural use of salt. He states that the “ancient Hebrews already applied it 2,000 years ago in Palestine,” citing 2 Kings 2:21 and Luke 14:34. It’s fascinating that this essay on the agricultural use of salt specifically refers to Luke 14:34 to make its case, indicating that Jesus is talking about an agricultural rather than a culinary phenomenon.

When Jesus spoke about salt in Matthew 5:13, Mark 9:50, and Luke 14:34–35, he was referring to several varieties of salts used in the first century. These salts were unlike the modern table salt (sodium chloride) in our kitchens. The salts in Jesus’ day were mixtures of chlorides of sodium, magnesium, and potassium, with very small amounts of calcium sulfate (gypsum). Some of these would dissolve more quickly than others, while some were better able to withstand the elements. These hardier, “saltier” salts were generally more valuable in an agricultural context because that meant their benefits would last longer.

When Jesus talked about salt losing its “saltiness” or “savor,” it refers to a process in which the compounds of salts naturally disintegrate over time. Disintegrated salt loses a small amount of gypsum, which changes its “saltiness.” This change in saltiness makes it a less effective fertilizing agent. So when Jesus talked to his followers about losing their saltiness, he was talking about losing their fertilizing properties, their ability to bring about life and growth.

The reference to the manure pile has long been a source of confusion when viewing salt as seasoning in these passages. Jesus’ saying makes more sense when we realize that salt maintains the fertilizing properties of dung. It is common knowledge today that salt can be used to preserve food, but it’s been used as an agricultural preservative for fertilizer for centuries as well. A 19th- century agricultural reference volume notes that “Salt is applicable in all cases in which . . . fermented dung cannot be carted at once to land. Covering the heap with salt will be found a cheap and effective means of checking fermentation.” Salt keeps dunghills from rotting and becoming useless as fertilizer while enhancing the fertilizing properties of dung. This centuries-tested agricultural understanding of salt fits these passages and the ancient world much better than interpreting the salt as table salt—even if all this talk of fertilizer and manure makes us a bit squeamish.If Jesus wasn’t talking about table salt but fertilizing salt, that means that his reference to “the salt of the earth” in Matthew 5:13 can just as easily be translated as “salt for the soil.” This makes better sense of Jesus’ words in Luke 14:34–35: “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.”

In further research, I discovered that not only did the ancient Hebrews use salt in this way, but so did the Chinese and early Romans. Salt was used in arid places to help soil retain moisture, destroy weeds, make stubborn soils easier to till, and make sour grass sweeter and more appealing to cattle. In some soils, salt keeps rust from wheat, and blight from potatoes. When applied properly, salt will kill surface weeds while allowing more deeply rooted plants and grass to thrive. And when rain or irrigation allows salt to permeate soil, the salt chemically frees vital minerals and nutrients in the soil, allowing them to nourish plants.

While this may be a foreign concept to us in the West, it is still well-known in other parts of the world. For example, the Philippine Coconut Authority recently released a technology guide sheet for farmers titled, “SALT (Sodium Chloride): An Effective and Cheap Fertilizer for High Coconut Productivity.” The guide notes that salt accelerates crop growth and development, increases crop yield, minimizes damage to plants, and promotes environmental sustainability. According to the guide, between 1991 and 1997, farmers who fertilized with salt had a yield increase of 125 percent over unfertilized coconuts.

The Power of Salt

What if we were to listen to the teaching of Christ like the coconut farmers in the Philippines—or the ancient people of Palestine—rather than as modern Westerners who only use salt to spice up their food? How might a distinctly agricultural viewpoint open up new vistas in Jesus’ teaching here?

Deatrick’s paraphrase of Jesus’ teaching demonstrates how this understanding makes the message much more powerful: “You are (like) the salt for the soil, a stimulant for growth. If you become like the savorless salt, no longer good for anything, how will the gospel of the kingdom be preached throughout the whole world?”

Christians are not here to merely season or preserve the world from decay. The followers of Jesus Christ are sent on a mission to stimulate growth in the parts of the world that are barren, and to be mixed into the manure piles of the world so that God can use that fertilizer to bring new, virtuous life. But if those same followers are not committed to the radically countercultural message of Jesus Christ, they lose their “saltiness,” which is the unique witness to the power of the gospel that brings the kingdom of God to the messes of the world, stimulating life and growth. If we lose our “saltiness,” we are “no longer good for anything” and cannot be the agents of change that Jesus intended for his followers to be (Matt. 5:13).

People may say things like, “She graduated from Harvard with a degree in history—why is she teaching seventh grade in rural West Virginia?” Or, “He was a varsity athlete with the talent to go pro; why did he choose to stay home and support his divorced mother and three siblings instead?” Or, “They both have promising careers; why do they spend so much time working with special needs adults in their community when they could be making a difference in the corporate world?”If the agricultural use of salt makes barren soil easier to till, facilitates the absorption of other vital nutrients by plants, and maintains and enhances the fertilizing capacity of manure, then Jesus is calling us to something extraordinary and countercultural. If we are truly supposed to be salt in the agricultural sense, that means we are supposed to get messy and go where nothing is growing right now. Instead of going where things are bright, new, and exciting, we have a call to explore opportunities that will probably not make sense in the eyes of “normal” people.

In the face of these questions and criticisms, being salt and light for the good of the world sets us free to love our neighbors and not feel like we’re missing out or “not living up to our potential.” When we realize we are fertilizer, we measure our value by the growth of others, not by our comfort or vocational success. Moreover, we also recognize that we need to be scattered where the soil most needs fertilizing. We need to be in close relationships with people who do not know or believe the gospel so that new life in Christ might grow where there is now only barren soil.

An agricultural understanding of Jesus’ call for us to be the “salt of the earth” sheds light on some of the most important issues facing Christians today. Questions about evangelism, justice, cultural engagement, and social responsibility gain a surprising clarity when considered in terms of promoting the life and flourishing of others. This view of the “salt of the earth” encourages us to discern where God is leading us by considering how our gifts and interests intersect with the barren places and the manure piles of the world.

Manure piles are all around us—they come to us in the form of devastated lives. There are lifeless sections of soil in every small town, big city, and suburb in America. There are friends and family members whose lives are in a state of disaster. Financial problems, addictions, oppression, injustice, poor decision making, ignorance, or outright rejection of the gospel are all too common. A whole host of messy problems plague the lives of those we care about.

The call of the salty is the call to move toward the broken so that they may meet God and be set free to become who God wants them to be. As salt, we are intended to bring life and flourishing out of decaying manure piles and arid soil where nothing grows—spheres of society that are dead, barren, or rotting because Christians are not there. Wherever the world is not the way God in his goodness intended it to be, that is where Christians should be encouraging and training one another to go. The good news is that we don’t have to go that far to find opportunities to be salt.

No matter where God sprinkles us, grace gives us the means and love gives us the motive to live salty lives consistent with Jesus’ teaching for the benefit of others and the glory of God.

ANTHONY B. BRADLEY is associate professor of religious studies at The King’s College in New York City. His most recent book is Something Seems Strange: Critical Essays on Christianity, Public Policy, and Contemporary Culture (Wipf and Stock).

The Importance of Teaching the Big Story, Not Just Morals

Sometimes someone will say to me that they want more practical teaching. What they usually mean is that they want me to tell them specific actions to take or do. That is an easy thing to do but usually leads to moralism. My goal as a preacher is not to tell people what to do but to paint a picture of the grandeur and glory of God and what he has done for us in Christ. It is my conviction that as one sits under this latter kind of teaching, the mind and the heart are shaped and transformed which frees up the will to obey God as a response to the beauty and joy one finds in Christ (Rom 12:2). This is particularly important for us in regards to teaching our children. If we take the moralistic route of teaching children rules we can end up raising up good little moralistic church kids that have no interest in Christ! Here is a good article from Christianity Today on the importance of how to teach children.

A few weeks ago, I was on a conference call with six church leaders from around the country to talk about their ministry efforts. They all use The Gospel Project to teach their children about the Scriptures, so they come at it from a similar perspective, though they come from Redeemer Presbyterian, Valley Baptist, 12Stone (Wesleyan), and more.

Here are the six ministry leaders who joined me on the phone:

Karen Dolan—Redeemer Presbyterian Church's Downtown New York City Congregation

Ned Gable—12Stone Church (Wesleyan) in Lawrenceville, Georgia

Kate Neighbors—Valley Baptist Church (SBC) in Bakersfield, California

Sam Luce—Redeemer Church (Non-denominational) in Utica, New York

Lou Cha—Kenwood Baptist Church (ABC) in Cincinnati, Ohio

Kathie Phillips—Central Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Baltimore, Maryland

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be posting parts of our phone call during which we addressed all sorts of issues including the importance of teaching children more than moralism, why it's crucial that we teach children the big story of Scripture, and more.

Today, in our first peek into the phone call, we we look at why it is important for kids to know the storyline of the Bible and why it is important to teach more than moralism.

Ed: Why do you think the storyline of the Bible itself is important for kids to know? Why do they need to know the big story?

Lou Cha (Kenwood Baptist Church, Cincinnati, OH): As a congregation, we value the whole counsel of Scripture...

It’s like a puzzle and the kids do not see the whole picture. It’s important for kids as they are growing and learning God’s Word to be able to put the puzzle pieces together to see how they connect and that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. And that since the creation of the world and the fall of humanity, He’s been redeeming people to Himself. This is what God has been doing all along.

It provides a more consistent picture and image of who God is. It also demonstrates to the children the character, the faithfulness, the compassion, and also the righteousness of God throughout the different historical periods of the Bible and the different people in the Bible.

I think it really helps children to be able to piece the Bible together to see the whole picture, and not just have missing pieces and missing parts of their Bible knowledge and understanding.

Kate Neighbors (Valley Baptist Church, Bakersfield, CA): One thing that I love about the idea of the story is that children are learning at younger and younger ages a worldview that is contradictory to the Bible. I think by telling them the story, even though it’s taking us three years, we’re showing and teaching them truth, absolute truth about the Bible. And we’re equipping them to understand what the Bible says versus what the world is telling them.

I love the idea that The Gospel Project takes it a step further and says here’s Christ in creation, here’s Christ in the Judges, here’s Christ in the Prophets, and here’s Christ’s actual life. And then they see how once Christ died, His followers didn’t stop. So I just love that from the beginning in Genesis 1:1 to Revelation, we’re seeing what Christ has to do with everything.

Ned Gable (12Stone Church, Lawrenceville, GA): I had the benefit of growing up with my dad teaching me at children’s church, and he taught us through the Bible. He taught chronologically and how everything built upon the next and would literally repeat a year of Old Testament, a year of New Testament, and then cycle back through. So we got that over and over and over and over. I grew up with a framework of the Bible. And when I would step into a sermon, or when I was older and hear a sermon taught from Scripture, I knew where it fit. I knew how it plugged in and I was able to take that and learn from it.

My first year in Bible college was a review of what I had learned up til sixth grade because I literally had a big picture framework that I could hang it on. It wasn’t just random ideas and random stories at all. It played into a bigger idea and a bigger picture and a bigger plan of what God was doing.

So I was so excited when this came out that we had the opportunity now to take that same type of thing that I had the benefit of growing up with, and give that to kids as well so that they can have that framework that puts it all together. The Bible is not just a collection of random things, but is one big story and one message and one plan.

Sam Luce (Redeemer Church, Utica, NY): I would say that I think one reason it’s so important to teach [the whole story], is that oftentimes we tend to teach kids disconnected facts about the Bible that can be—on their own—refuted. And when kids get older and go to college those disconnected points of information can be brought into question. But when they see them tied into the larger story of what God is doing, and the larger story of who He is and what He’s done in the earth and what He’s done in their life, it ties all those points together for them and creates a much tighter web—net—of truth that is much harder to be refuted by others.

Kathie Phillips (Central Presbyterian Church, Baltimore, MD): One of the things that drew me to The Gospel Project was that the whole scope of the Bible being presented—[it] offered a different perspective then I think a lot of our kids had gotten who had really grown up in church. I think digging into the Old Testament, which is where we fell when we started to subscribe to it, was a section of the Bible that not many of our kids were familiar with. And I think it gave a different picture of the cutesy kind of God who made the world and Noah and those kind of things and then just skipping over to the New Testament. I think that they were able to see a different side of God through the hard things that happened in some of those Old Testament passages.

Karen Dolan (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, New York): I would say obviously that’s something that I don’t have all figured out or have all the answers to, but something that I think we do at Redeemer from our congregation to our children’s ministries, is that what we’ve focused on is making all of the curriculum and all the stories point back to Christ, our need for Him, and why we’re talking about this. Why are we learning these Bible stories? Why do we study the Bible?

And even if you are learning a story in the Old Testament or something that doesn’t seem like it directly has a tie-in to Christ and our need for salvation, we always try to make it point back to that. Because I think from a young age kids are getting that life is more about just being good. We’re trying to tell them and instill in them that we are sinners in need of a Savior and there’s nothing we can do on our own apart from Christ to learn that. So that’s something that we try and really put into all of our curriculum.

On Thursday, we'll continue this discussion and I'll post the next part of our conversation, in which we talk about why it's important we teach children to have their own faith and love Jesus for themselves—not just because their parents told them to do it.