PJ’s Notes: January 4th, 2020

Get a new start in the New Year on the road back to God so you can live more fully into who you were created to be….So what is your number?

Christmas has come to a close for most people in the world, trips over the break have come to an end and thoughts have moved on to the new year and things we want to change in our lives.

But in the church world, we are still in the Christmas season (decorations are still up) and we have a couple of days left to go in the 12 Days of Christmas until we get to Epiphany ( January 6) which we will celebrate tomorrow by lighting candles and eating Kings Cake after worship. And in our world, our family invites you to celebrate Epiphany at our home for our annual open house ( all the info is below).

And January begins our new sermon series Becoming Us. Over the next several weeks we all have a chance to get a new start in a new year on the road back to God so that we can all live more fully into who we were created to be. Becoming Us is focused around something that has become popular in Christian circles over the last couple of years.

It is called the Enneagram. It has gotten a lot of press lately. People are interested in it; they’re taking online tests, listening to podcasts and buying books (For example, The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery, released at the end of 2016 and sold over 100,000 copies in just a little over a year. Or Richard Rohr’s book, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective.

What is it? The Enneagram is a personality assessment tool with a Christian perspective based on a numbering system—one through nine—and your number helps to uncover your unique God-given personality traits.  Think of any number of personality type tests like Myers Briggs, DISC, Strengths. Except this one’s focus is different.

The Nine Types of the Enneagram have been called “The Nine Faces of God.” Each type reveals something of God’s own nature. Each type is also a path toward transformation in Christ. It’s not just a way of being, it’s a way of becoming who we were made to be.

At our staff retreat this year we all learned our Enneagram number. It was a great day of self-discovery for all of us I believe. The Enneagram is teaching me what it looks like to love God with my whole self, not just my intellect, not just my instincts, not just my emotions, but all of it.

The Enneagram urges us to integrate head, heart, and hands. True worship and spiritual transformation is a process that includes thinking, feeling, and doing. That is what makes it different from just a personality test.  And it is also important to remember that is just a tool of self discovery and not directed by Scripture. You can learn more about the Enneagram and take a test here ( I chose this simpler one to get us started) and in the bulletin tomorrow.

Then we will be applying the Enneagram types to characters in the Bible and what we can learn from each of them about us and our relationships. Tomorrow is FIVE: The Observer or Investigator. I chose this type first because our main stars for tomorrow are the Magi and their visit to the King of Kings. And I can’t think of better FIVEs than these astronomers and court sages ( wise men). What makes them a FIVE? Find out tomorrow and that maybe you are a FIVE too. 

So here we go on a new journey with God and the road back to you. I hope you will join me as we learn more about one another, our relationships and how God created us uniquely. So the question I will be asking every week is What is your number?