Aug 31, 2010
What's Your Church Personality
By Timothy R. Butler | Posted at 0:47:5
For one of my classes, Ministry Leadership, we had to take a “church personality” test. It is a diagnostic rather like the Myers-Briggs, but not entirely so. In the test, which I linked to on Facebook a few days ago, apparently I came out as an ICF (“Relational Church”) personality.
If you'd like to give the diagnostic a spin, you can get to it here. Dr. Douglass hired me to write the little program that works with his formulas a few years back. Needless to say, it was rather fun to then have need of taking the very same diagnostic!
In any case, apparently, Dr. Douglass developed the test to help make people aware of differing ministry styles with the goal of minimizing the potential for church conflict. Consider me intrigued.
Right. The idea — which Dr. D describes in his book on the subject — is that you have about 30 “opinion leaders” (not necessarily entirely overlapping with the “official” leadership) take it and then you synthesize the results.
As for individuals, the results are geared to helping those going into ministry understand how their ministry styles relate to the style of the church they are going to serve in.
It seems it's trying to describe churches, but it's really describing the individual taking the profile. My guess is that it would be best used by a leadership team or church staff in assessing how they work as a group, how they see goals and paths similarly and differently, and recognizing strengths and weaknesses of their group in leading the church.
I got part way through and found it too annoying and quit. The terms exclude my primary interests and concerns, so I don't fit anywhere on the scale.
All the more reason to do it, Ed. See if you can blow the program up.
Actually, the diagnostic's results overlay on the Myers-Briggs, so you would fit somewhere.