Todd A. Wilson - The Enneagram Goes to Church: Wisdom for Leadership, Worship, and Congregational Life

R ecently, my wife, Katie, and I were on a walk and enjoying one of our usual chats about how we were doing. How is our marriage? How are the kids? How is our home life? What goals do we have for the next six months? What have we been learning lately about God, the Bible, the world, or ourselves?

Somewhere along the wayI cant remember what we were discussinga thought darted into my mind. Where it came from, I didnt know. What I did know was that it was important. Which is why, instead of letting it slip by, I decided to verbalize it.

Katie, I said, somewhat hesitantly. You know what?

What, babe?

If I would have known the Enneagram, I would have been a much better pastor.

Just like that, out it came, like a confession long overdue. I was relieved as soon as the words departed my mouth. Clearly, it emerged from somewhere out of the depths.

That makes a ton of sense, Katie responded gently, aware she was handling something delicate, like a child with a chrysalis in her open palms. She, too, recognized that what I had just uttered was less of a declaration and more of a confession.

Right there, on the walk from Humphrey Avenue to Ridgeland Boulevard, on Pleasant Street in Oak Park, Illinois, I was owning a humbling truth about myself and my ministry.

By then I had been a pastor for fifteen years, the last ten as the senior pastor of Calvary Memorial Church, a large, diverse congregation in the near western suburbs of Chicago. During my decade-long tenure, the church had experienced its ups and downs, both exhilarating and painful. But at that time, things were going well. I was content, and the congregation was flourishing.

Which is why when I said to Katie what I said about the Enneagram, it wasnt flowing from a sense of failure or regret but a place of longing and missed opportunity. I said it not as a person guilty of pastoral malpractice but as someone who had grown more mature over the yearsthanks, in large part, to the wisdom of the Enneagram.

I well remember when I was first introduced to the Enneagram. Several years ago, we were vacationing with my extended family on Lake Wawasee in northern Indiana. That summer Katie and I spent countless hours teaching the kids to ski, catch frogs in a net, and fish with a cane pole and bobber.

My sister-in-law, Beth, was also there. But she spent her afternoons reclined in a comfy lounge chair, devouring her already well-worn copy of Don Riso and Russ Hudsons classic Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery.

It must have been her third or fourth reading. The book was in tatters.

Now, whenever I see someone enthusiastically poring over a book like its a newborn baby, it piques my interest. I cant help it. Im an inveterate booklover myself, and when I see someone greatly enjoying a book, I have to inquire.

Hey Beth, whats that? I askedsomewhat nervously, I must confess, because I had noticed a creepy, pentagram-like figure on the books cover, which made me wonder, Surely my sister-in-law isnt into Satanism!

Oh, its a book about the Enneagram, came her reply.

Ennea-what? I was slightly incredulous.

Enneagram, she said, this time with confident emphasis. She continued, Its a personality typing system. It teaches that there are nine different personality types. Todd, you should check it out. I think youd like it.

Really? I replied. I could hardly veil my skepticism.

You see, at that time I just wasnt into talk about personality types, even less so convoluted discussions about wings, arrows, or lost childhood messages. To me, it was all a bunch of psychobabble.

Listen. I was a pastor-theologian. I was a scholar, with a PhD from Cambridge University, and I much preferred the headier stuff of conservative, Reformed evangelicalism. Those were my peoplepeople who read books by John Piper, listened to sermons from Tim Keller, gathered at places like the Gospel Coalition, and debated the finer points of Calvinism and Complementarianism.

That was my theological tribe, not Richard Rohr, Rob Bell, or mainline Protestantism.

If ever there was an unlikely Enneagram convert, it was me.

And yet, while I thought I had all sorts of theological and ecclesial reasons to avoid the Enneagram, I knew I had some very compelling personal and practical reasons to strike up a friendship with it.

For starters, I have a large and complex family. My wife and I are the proud (and often pooped) parents of seven children. We have three girls and four boys. One is in college, three are in high school, one is in middle school, and two are in elementary school. Our seven kids attend four different schools, with (you guessed it) four different curricula, protocols, administrators, and, yes, spring break schedules. They range in ages from nineteen to ten, with a pair of twin fifth-grade boys bringing up the rear of our often-zany family.

Life in our home is, shall we say, complicated. Its easy to be overwhelmed by the buzz of activity and relentless stream of needs and wants. Truthfully, I sometimes feel like the mayor of a small town, except that I dont have to run for reelection and cant ever retire.

Keeping the house clean and the refrigerator stocked is, naturally, a huge task. Harder still is getting kids to and from soccer practice, gymnastics, and the dentist.

But, to be honest, more daunting to us than the complexity of our kids schedules is the distinctive variety of their personalities. And add oursmy wifes and mineon top of theirs. Now, you have nine different people, and potentially