The Road Forward to Missional Community

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Almost nothing tops appetizer night—this week there were bacon-wrapped lil smokies, grilled chicken tenders, meatballs, sushi, mini chicken tacos and guacamole, queso dip filled with yummy goodness, mini cucumbers topped with a puff of ranch-flavored cream cheese, peach cheesecake, hummus and crackers and mini peppers. Are you ready to join us yet?! It was our launch night for the fall semester with our neighborhood missional community. Summer has a different rhythm to accommodate all the out-of-town travel; to have so many of us here at the same time just felt right. Newer faces and long-time friends—these are our people. This is our family.

We ate together, caught up on life and adjustments to school, and then sent the kids downstairs with the sitter and gathered in a big circle comprised of our sectional couch and chairs pulled from the dining room table. We talked Enneagram (we are using Ian Cron and Suzanne Stabile’s The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery and the accompanying study guide), but more importantly, we opened up about our motivations that lie beneath our behaviors. We broke ground in creating a safe place to be vulnerable and known as we grow.

The Enneagram, in case you have not heard of it yet, is a personality model that challenges those who study it to grow, not simply become more self-aware. Inside the book sleeve you can read, “The Road Back to You is rooted in this approach to formation, which Thomas Merton described as the one challenge on which all of life rests: to discover yourself in a new way on this Enneagram journey, you’ll also find that you are paving the way to the wiser, more compassionate person you want to become.” The book really is that transformative.

Learning about the Enneagram has already pushed me out of my comfort zone toward growth. I am more aware of when I am inclined to say “yes” just to not create any tinge of tension in a relationship; I am learning too that everything I say “yes” to means I am saying “no” to something else, even if merely in my capacity to be fully present and given to all my “yeses.” I have also found that understanding my reluctance to engage in conflict makes me be braver when avoiding is not helpful. (I am an Enneagram 9, though that may go without saying if you are a fellow Enneagram enthusiast.)

I have not been learning just about my own Enneagram number, though, and am a witness to the depth of compassion for people with other Enneagram numbers my study has sparked. I can parent my kids with more understanding and empathy as I see their own core motivations and fears at play in their outbursts and sibling contentions. I am likewise more cognizant of how I communicate with my husband, and this has led to greater connection. The Enneagram has helped me put my feet in others’ shoes, seeing more clearly what it feels like to be a 5 and wake up feeling like your time and energy is an exhaustible resource, or a 1 and have a relentless inner critic. My compassion for others grows as I at least try to see the world from their perspective.

It would be an understatement to say I’m stoked about studying the Enneagram together with our neighbors and friends in our missional community. The potential positive impact on our marriages and our families, our group itself, and all the others we individually interact with is limitless. How perfectly this study fits into the definition my husband and I recently coined to describe the essence of what a missional community is. Let’s revisit that definition together:

A missional community is a small group of people in close proximity united by a common mission who intentionally do life together and cultivate growth in three key areas: spiritual formation, authentic community, and loving others in practical ways.

Our enneagram study fits like a glove, providing ample opportunity for growth in all three key areas. I cannot say we thought through it this concretely before choosing our next study, but what if we had? What if we evaluated all our future studies in the same way, asking how they may help us grow in these pivotal areas: spiritual formation, authentic community, and loving others in practical ways? These key words that describe so much of how we do life—if they are truly important, the studies we choose should reflect that.

To find a healthy balance, we want to pause often and see where we might be lagging in growth. Are we just focusing on community-building? This is essential, but a tight-knit social group alone is not the end goal. Are we challenging each other to grow individually in practices that will form us into looking more like Christ? Again, this is very important, but we don’t want to be full of head knowledge and not willing to step into the spaces where Jesus frequented—where there are people broken and in need a tangible expression of how loved they are. Are we excelling at community outreach and a champion of social justice causes? This is amazing, but simply doing may fail to teach us how to be. We can be so busy with doing things for Jesus that we forget how in need of Him we are too. We can’t sacrifice time in His word and at His feet to be His hands and feet to others. In the same vein, if we aren’t intentionally letting ourselves be open and known by those we are in community with, we are missing a vital piece of the abundance God has for us. We were created for community—togetherness—and we live this life of learning and doing far better when we are not doing it alone.

All three growth areas are important, and that is why we seek to balance the attention we give to growing in each area. We want to focus growth on the areas—all the areas—that matter.

Would you walk through this with me as I apply the three growth points to the Enneagram study we have begun? I encourage you to do the same with the studies you choose as well, no matter the term you use to describe your group, so let’s practice together.

1. Spiritual Formation

The Enneagram is not a feel-better-about-yourself model by any means. Quite the opposite, in fact. Learning about your own number is a bit like having a bucket of ice water poured over your head. Of course there are so many beautiful and perfectly commendable attributes of each number, especially when an individual is a healthy version of their number, but because it’s easier to resonate with the worst of our number, this is what fills most of the pages of The Road Back to You. The chapter on each of the nine numbers concludes with a section on spiritual transformation and ten number-specific paths to transformation. I love the concise and direct way Cron and Stabile put it in the study guide: “The point of learning your type is so you can relax your grip on those parts of your personality that are holding you back from living a fuller life, not so you can resign yourself to them” (7). They go on to say, on the same page, that “information is not transformation. Knowing your number casts a light on what should stay and what you can afford to let go in your life.” The Enneagram can be an incredible tool for fostering spiritual growth, forming us to look more like Christ.

2. Authentic Community

A group study of the Enneagram necessitates authenticity and vulnerability. It offers connection over “me too!” moments, understanding the “thing beneath the thing” for the others in the group, and the shared experience of embarking on this process of self-discovery together. It invites everyone into a deeper level of community, and changes who we are together as we move forward into other studies and all the other ways we do life together. The introduction to the study guide encourages us to “be curious and open-minded about different points of view—the advantage of learning the Enneagram in a group is that you’ll get to hear firsthand what it’s like to see the world through the eyes of the other eight numbers” (6). I listen to Annie F. Down’s #ThatSoundsFun podcast; her EnneaSummer series, in which she interviewed personal friends that resonate with each of the Enneagram numbers, helped me better understand the other eight numbers. But studying the Enneagram together as a missional community (or other type of small group) means that the stories you will hear will help you see from the perspectives of people you do life with. This is powerful and exciting!

3. Loving Others in Practical Ways

We want to put into action the things we are learning about—to be “doers of the word not hearers only” (James 1:19 CSB). When we step into other’s shoes and feel the compassion for them that the Enneagram grows us in, we can better show Christ to the people we seek to love in practical ways. Perhaps you have a neighbor who you think may be an Enneagram 2 (may I caution you here to please not tell others what you think their numbers may be as you may be wrong, or you may make their own discovery about themselves less meaningful). This neighbor, you have noticed, almost never asks for help and appears to care deeply about meeting everyone else’s needs. If you are correct in your number assessment, helping your neighbor with that project may help them feel the message God would want them to know: “you are wanted and [your] needs matter” (The Road Back to You, 2). Even if you miss-guessed your neighbor’s number, seeking to love others in practical ways communicates God’s love in a powerful way across all the Enneagram numbers. Regardless of your outreach goals—neighborhood-specific or beyond—you will find that people everywhere can be better understood, and thus feel more profoundly valued, the more you learn about the Enneagram.

In closing, could we sit for a moment—even half a moment—and think on the wonder of the One who loves us so very much He doesn’t want us to stay stuck, stay in the ruts of things in our personalities we need not hold so tightly to? He loves you. He knows your name. He knows absolutely everything about your personality and your motivations and the fears that lie beneath the surface and the mistakes you have made and will make over again—and you know what? He still loves you! He still wants more than anything else for you to want to be near Him.

Thank you, Jesus, for your ever-present, always true love and the way that it transforms us. Thank you calling us higher to a better version of ourselves—one that looks a whole lot more like You. Thank you for tools like the Enneagram that can pave a road forward to grow in the things that make a missional community a missional community: spiritual formation, authentic community, and loving others in practical ways.

Cron, Ian and Suzanne Stabile. The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. InterVarsity Press, 2016.

Cron, Ian and Suzanne Stabile. The Road Back to You: Study Guide. InterVarsity Press, 2016.

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