Discover An Ancient Pathway for Congregational Renewal in the 21st Century
While there are many personality assessments, like Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, the Enneagram, APEST and the Big Five, there has yet to be a personality typing method for churches.
Over the past sixteen years, I have served multiple revitalization congregations. These were churches that were in a long season of decline and in conversation about closure.
Every new pastoral appointment is like an arranged marriage. On our first Sunday, we are down at the altar together, total strangers, getting ready to enter a significant covenantal relationship. The congregation doesn’t know me, I don’t know them, and yet we are about to say “I do” to begin a long-haul relational journey.
While having self-knowledge about my own personality, passions, gifts, and weaknesses has been helpful, this has sometimes blinded me in the way I’ve gone about leadership. Most of us are trained to lead from our strengths, to empower teams, and cast a compelling vision. While these can be fruitful endeavors, I’ve discovered through failure that the most important thing to do is what a mentor once described as the “three L’s” to Listen, Learn, and Love.
When we listen to the congregation and the wider community, learn “who are these people and how I can I be with them,” and commit to love even in the face of difference, what we are actually doing is leading.
One aspect of my doctoral research was around “positive deviants.” Positive Deviance refers to an approach to social change based on “deviants” whose uncommon but successful strategies enable them to find better solutions to a problem, despite facing similar challenges and having no extra resources or knowledge than their peers.
How are some congregations, with similar challenges and resources, able to experience renewal, while others close their doors?
What I stumbled upon in my research, coupled with my own ongoing journey as a practitioner, has been a gamechanger for congregations across the U.S.A.
The dominant approach to understanding human personality today is known as the Five Factor Model (FFM). Hundreds of distinct traits have been summarized within five dominant personality dimensions universal to all human beings, (extroversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism). Psychologists measure these traits through the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) more commonly called the “Big Five Assessment,” a 240-item instrument, scientifically validated through hundreds of studies across many different cultures.
What can psychologists and researchers of human personality teach us about congregational renewal?
Biblically, these five personality dimensions corelate with the fivefold gifting Jesus bestows upon the church for her upbuilding, called the APEST typology—Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher (Eph 4:7–13).
Every congregation has a unique personality in the same way a human does. Just like no person is exactly the same, so neither are any two congregations. Yet, just as psychologists can condense hundreds of unique personality traits into the big five categories, so too can congregations be understood through five congregational personality types. While there are a multitude of unique variations, the types give us a framework through which every congregation can grow in maturity. The congregational types are the communal embodiment of the five basic personality dimensions (FFM).
What if our “arranged marriage” could be less like a “blind date,” and more like a transparent, strategic, life-giving partnership that leads to new dimensions of kingdom flourishing?
This blog post is the introduction to a new series going deeper with each of the Five Types. The series will build up to a free webinar on how to utilize the Five Congregational Personality Types in your setting on Thursday May 2nd, 12pm EST.
Learn your congregation’s unique culture and how to nurture your church’s strengths. Discover The “shadow side,” or weak point, of your congregation’s personality type – and how you can transform this into a strength. Develop your #1 strategy for vitality and clear next steps.
The tool has been found helpful to:
- Cabinets in the appointment making process.
- Clergy starting in a new appointment.
- Congregations receiving a new pastor.
- Clergy and congregations starting anew after a period of plateau or decline.
- Growing churches that want to explore new levels of health.
- Congregations that want to start Fresh Expressions of Church.
- Strategic pathways for cooperative parishes.
Learn more about the book here: https://www.inviteresources.com/lp/5-types-bundle-landing
Register for the free webinar here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0rdO2orzsrE9x9by_R1w1cSRquVatJkTYh#/registration