Understand You and Your Group's Personality - Life.Church Leaders

Understand You and Your Group’s Personality

by Heather Brower

Can you imagine if someone came to LifeGroup and unloaded this speech on everyone?

“Hello there, I’m an introvert, meaning after our meeting’s over, I’ll need to recharge with some quiet time. I also feel bogged down by concrete details unless I can use them to create big themes that interpret the world around me. I make most of my decisions based on how I predict they’ll cause the most harmony and least pain for all parties involved. Lastly, I prefer options and flexibility, not final decisions and rigidity. Oh, look! Someone made cookies. Yay!”

Awkward! But, wait. Imagine if your group understood one another’s basic preferences for interacting with others (their personalities). What if you understood who’s best at planning a mission activity for your group? What if you had a grasp on who’ll bring the most thorough solutions to problems your group faces? We’re talking about each member of your group being understood and appreciated for being exactly who God made them to be!

If you’ve used Myers-Briggs personality typing, you may have recognized the person we met in the first paragraph was an Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, and Perceiving person—an INFP. Wait, what? Don’t worry. It’s not as complicated as it sounds.

Basically, some really bright women, Isabel Briggs Myers and her mother, Katharine Briggs, figured out eight basic preferences all people have to some extent. The preferences are on sliding scales between two extremes: Introversion to Extroversion (I or E), iNtuition to Sensing (N or S), Thinking to Feeling (T or F), and Judging to Perceiving (J or P). Much clearer now? Probably not. You still need more information—especially you SJ’s.

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Here’s the bottom line. Pastor Craig always says, “When you know who you are, you’ll know what to do.” Who are we? We’re God’s created sons and daughters. He chose to make us unique—no copies. We’re all members of the body of Christ, each with unique gifts and abilities, created to fulfill His purposes (1 Corinthians 12:12-31). Your group is no different. It’s made up of different parts. Discovering the personality types in your group will help you learn to function as the body of Christ.

Check out the Five Development Tools to discover your personality type today. Want to learn more about the spiritual gifts God’s given you as described in 1 Corinthians? Take this quiz.

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