Enneagram -- Intro

The Masks of Front Street:

Darth Vader

Heart Attach Restaurant

Nuns and Gene Simmons

Marla and I walking out… “I just want to visit with them and discover — what is this about?”

The Latin word “Persona” - we get our word personality from it - means… “mask.”

We all wear them...

We are wired for survival… as kids we learn to place our personalities in areas that we assess need protecting.

Proverbs 4:23 ESV

23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

We come to understand “keeping” and “protecting” only through the lens of keeping injury, injustice, and insecurity away...

Our lives and churches become more socially acceptable versions of Front Street.

Over the next 10 weeks we are going to explore a TOOL which can be used to take off our masks and step more toward the persona that God created and can redeem for us.

1 Corinthians 13:11–13 ESV

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The Enneagram

The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery The Nine Personality Types

The Enneagram teaches that there are nine different personality styles in the world, one of which we naturally gravitate toward and adopt in childhood to cope and feel safe. Each type or number has a distinct way of seeing the world and an underlying motivation that powerfully influences how that type thinks, feels and behaves.

Ennea — Greek word for nine

Gram — Greek for drawing or figure

Here are the Nine Enneagram Types:

The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery The Nine Personality Types

TYPE ONE: The Perfectionist. Ethical, dedicated and reliable, they are motivated by a desire to live the right way, improve the world, and avoid fault and blame.

TYPE TWO: The Helper. Warm, caring and giving, they are motivated by a need to be loved and needed, and to avoid acknowledging their own needs.

TYPE THREE: The Performer. Success-oriented, image-conscious and wired for productivity, they are motivated by a need to be (or appear to be) successful and to avoid failure.

TYPE FOUR: The Romantic. Creative, sensitive and moody, they are motivated by a need to be understood, experience their oversized feelings and avoid being ordinary.

TYPE FIVE: The Investigator. Analytical, detached and private, they are motivated by a need to gain knowledge, conserve energy and avoid relying on others.

TYPE SIX: The Loyalist. Committed, practical and witty, they are worst-case-scenario thinkers who are motivated by fear and the need for security.

TYPE SEVEN: The Enthusiast. Fun, spontaneous and adventurous, they are motivated by a need to be happy, to plan stimulating experiences and to avoid pain.

TYPE EIGHT: The Challenger. Commanding, intense and confrontational, they are motivated by a need to be strong and avoid feeling weak or vulnerable.

TYPE NINE: The Peacemaker. Pleasant, laid back and accommodating, they are motivated by a need to keep the peace, merge with others and avoid conflict.

The Big Idea:

Each of us determines our own type by engaging in an instrument and conversations to land at a reasonable place of identification.

Each week, I will do a message exploring each type… Next Sunday I will begin with a sermon on Type 8… and go numerically from there.

We take our type before the Lord and others and invite God and others to speak into that type for maturing and redemption.

We engage our authentic personality in the journey of knowing and becoming like Jesus rather than hiding from God, others, and ourselves with our Front Street Personalities.

Socretes said — “The unexamined worth is not worth living.”

The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery Discover Your Deadly Sin

“A humble self-knowledge is a surer way to God than a search after deep learning.”

Thomas À Kempis

This series is a journey toward you coming to know and understand who we are much and far better and more honestly than we do...

I’m consistently saddened by how poorly people know themselves.

This series is a journey toward you coming to know and understand the power of the Gospel of Jesus in your life and the most basic and firstline level — your personality.

1 Corinthians 15:1–10 ESV

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

An understanding of your true personality can change your life, and sometimes for the better. An understanding of the gospel’s impact and influence on your life can transform you more and more into the image and person of Jesus.

To close:

We want you to take the enegram

We want to celebrate the gospel by the Lord’s Supper

We want you to grab a wrist band that corrolates to your Enneagram Type.