A Relational God & His Relational Creation

We have spent a considerable amount of time in our first three weeks of Personal & Spiritual Development of the Minister completing a lot of tests and analysis tools, to look at who we are. Now that we are finishing up these tests I have been contemplating their value to us as people, and specifically to me in the context of ministry.

Being a relational people, everything we do is a reaction to the world around us. What we believe, think, say, and do all comes out of what we observe in our experiences, and how we choose to respond.

Many of our choices/reactions come out of our brokenness. I am not just talking about our disposition to self over God, but also those personality traits & qualities that are the result of our reactions to our negative experiences in life. Some results of negative experiences can be good, but many of them have become deficiencies & surpluses that are unhealthy.

In my own experiences with the MBTI, Enneagram, & StrengthsQuest tests I have found myself to be an ENFJ, enneagram 3/7, and strong in gathering info, strategizing, establishing & cultivating relationships, building & respecting connectedness, and seeing everything in context.

While I feel being an ENFJ is a great thing, I also understand that I need to know just as much about how other types act/react. This knowledge can both prevent troubles with people because of misunderstanding one's intent, and help me to be aware of the representation of types in my church's staff & leadership (or lack of).

The enneagram has shown me that I go the extra mile in an effort to earn the approval of people that I admire & want to work with. This can be a healthy motivator (especially for someone with ADHD like myself) to finish a task in a complete & timely manner; but it can also be unhealthy if it were to get out of control and lead me to deceive others, in an attempt to advance myself and/or hinder the advancement of anyone that I saw as a competitor.

The other side I have noticed through the enneagram book & conversations with my wife is that while I am a #3-Performer in the professional world, I revert back to a #7-Epicure around those who are close to me. After a long day/week of performing for those from whom I seek approval, I come home to people that I don't have to earn approval from. In this safe place I can recover from & offset my time as a #3 with time as a somewhat self-preferencing #7, by relaxing, and doing things that interest me -- sometimes at the expense of my wife's wants & needs, and those things that I need to get done on the home front.

I am too early in my study & contemplation of the StrengthsQuest to offer my thoughts, but I can already see how each one of these 'strengths' can become 'weaknesses' or 'hindrances' in excess.

As eikons of God we must find the cracks and voids before we can fix them, and that includes looking deeper at ourselves and how we interact with the world around us in everyday life.