“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” – 1 Peter 4:10-11 ESV
Chris Huertz was in the slums of Cambodia in one of Phnom Penh’s poorest neighborhoods, working with fellow activists and humanitarians when he had an immediate and visceral gut reaction to something that many of us can likely relate to, no matter where we live. He described feeling curious and simultaneously suspicious, both intrigued at the possibility before him while concerned that what he was about to discover might not be congruent with his Christian faith. His discovery? The Enneagram.
The Enneagram Controversy
The Enneagram specifically, and personality typing in general, can provoke strong reactions, especially among Christians. Some love personality tests, some hate them. Proponents claim fresh understanding about themselves and the people around them, while detractors worry that too much priority is given to what are essentially extra-Biblical tools. Some reduce everything to personality type and see the world rigidly through that lens—you’ve likely met them on social media already! —while others ignore the clear thumbprints of the Creator in the various personality characteristics we all have.
Many years later, now the author of The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth and having taught the Enneagram all over the world, Huertz reveals a simple truth that “when it comes to recognizing the truth of our own identities, most of us experience a symbolic version of blindness that keeps us from seeing ourselves for who we really are.” [1]
Just as the Enneagram allowed Chris to see himself in a new light, allowing greater freedom to serve and know God, so too can self-assessments, like the Enneagram and others, help us better understand our own creative calling and what God has uniquely called you to do.
More than voting. More than arguing on social media. Committing to real cultural change requires so much more. Discover your creative calling today.
Discover How You Can Create for Change
Beyond a Tool for Excessive Inward Focus
Wait a minute? Does all of this inward focus mean that we have an excuse to fall into the paradigm of self-fulfillment, self-advancement, and self-aggrandizement? Is this a Christianized version of The American Dream, promising that the more we know about ourselves, the more we can live for ourselves?
No! But to fully live for God’s glory requires an understanding of how our Creator has made us and how the ultimate Gift-Giver has gifted us.
“One of the most transformational insights that the Enneagram can provide is that we are not our personality.”[2]
As believers, our identity is in Christ, not in our personality type.
The Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, DISC, & Yet Another Test?
Okay, but come on, do we really need yet another self-assessment? The Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, DISC, the list goes on. And then there are the overtly Christian ones: in addition to the Enneagram, there’s Younique by Will Mancini, even a Christian DISC test that touts itself as a Biblical Personality Test. Not to mention the growing market of Christian spiritual gifts tests. Is it right to feel at least a little cynical?
Well, despite what you believe about the efficacy of any individual test, most only offer insight into a narrow slice of who we are. Personality tests measure personality and spiritual gift tests measure spiritual gifts, but God gave us both our personalities and our spiritual gifts, among other gifts.
To compound the issue, most tests have the foundations all wrong. They label people as either a “creative type” or a “non-creative type”. Or they see the world through a secularist, naturalist, mechanistic perspective that offers a very stunted view of who we really are as holistic, complex human beings created in God’s image.
Understanding Your Creative Calling
What if there was a better way to understand your creative calling?
To be Biblical, and true to reality itself, there are three important foundational truths to understanding your creative calling.
- Everyone is creative, because our Creator made us in His image.
- Everyone is creative in different ways, because our Creator has gifted us uniquely.
- Everyone has a responsibility to create for change, because our Creator has given us the Creation Mandate.
Understanding and living out #3 is the goal of our Created for Change community, but we will never connect that truth to our daily lives if we don’t come to terms with #1 and #2 in a deeply personal way.
Why The Creative Enneagram?
Yes, take a personality test. Take a spiritual gifts test. Do some research to understand your Enneagram Type. But the greatest problem many Christians face is not a shortage of assessments, but a shortage of clarity about what that means for each of us in our everyday lives. We want to create for change, but we need to know how our unique creative calling should be lived out, in practice, not just in theory.
And that means understanding how we are called to create for change together. Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, positions the chief value of the Enneagram as simple observational (as opposed to theological) classifications that are “often strikingly accurate” for better understanding the people God has placed in your life because “I have a tendency to assume everybody is like I am… Even spending just a little time thinking through these personality classifications has helped me to better minister to other people, and to see different motivations that I just don’t have.” [3]
Learning the Enneagram has helped Dr. Moore understand his wife, children, and colleagues better, though he cautions that the Enneagram, or any other personality test, certainly does not have the certitude of a blood test, people cannot be classified neatly into unchangeable and immutable silos, and discerning Christians should not believe every non-Biblical thing they read or hear.
Finding Your Creative Type
So, if you already know your Enneagram Type, yes, there is a correlation between the Enneagram Types and the Creative Enneagram Types below, so try and restrain yourself from racing ahead to “your type.” After all, we should all keep in mind we are not just one type, but are often shades of multiple types, and even more so with the Creative Types immediately adjacent to either side, called your “wings” (Example: one and three are wings of two, nine and two are wings of one, etc.)
Just remember that our goal should not be merely inward focused, but on how we might live out our creative calling in community with those around us—but even if you don’t know an Enneagram from a pentagram (probably where a lot of the suspicion comes from, honestly!) then the Creative Enneagram will still be very useful to you in connecting your creative calling to the opportunities and activities of your daily life, and even finding Creative Practices for Your Creative Type.
List of the Enneagram Creative Types
Here is a list of the Creative Enneagram Creative Types (based on the list of Enneagram types):
Which one are you? Find your Creative Type now!
More than voting. More than arguing on social media. Committing to real cultural change requires so much more. Discover your creative calling today.
Discover How You Can Create for Change
[1] Huertz, Chris The Sacred Enneagram: Finding Your Unique Path to Spiritual Growth, p. 15
[2] Don Richard Riso The Wisdom of the Enneagram: The Complete Guide to Psychological and Spiritual Growth for the Nine Personality Types Bantam June, 1999 p 28
[3] Signposts with Russell Moore, Episode 120 https://www.russellmoore.com/2018/05/18/what-about-the-enneagram
