How To Apply Enneagram Insight to Missional Neighboring

How can Enneagram insight empower you to invest in your neighborhood with more purpose, compassion, and intentionality, helping you live on mission? Building community is a key component of missional living in your neighborhood, and the Enneagram is a wonderful tool to help you sow into relationships with those right around you.

| Enneaneighboring Summer Series 2.0 |

How to Stop Nitpicking and Rest in Acceptance (Enneagram 1s)

To you, exhausted from trying so hard to be perfect, weighed down by feeling worthless, worrying about what others think of you–let’s take a big exhale together. It’s time for a trade: The intrusive anxiety, the dreaded insufficiency, and the battle in your mind–for acceptance that doesn’t hinge on your perfection.

How to Detach Self-Worth From Your Helpfulness (Enneagram 2s)

You’re quick to see the needs in front of you, but sometimes it feels like no one sees you. You are more than the warm, smiling face greeting us at the door. More than the volunteer we count on for an enthusiastic “yes.” More than the way you welcome both friend and stranger with the hugs we all love.

How to Find Yourself Outside What You Can Achieve (Enneagram 3s)

You can be surrounded by people and still feel a bit alone when you’re stubbornly self-reliant. You can also feel like God is far away when you lean on your quick-start personality or multi-tasking prowess instead of on Him. It feels tender and vulnerable to slow down and invite God to see through you.

How to Know You’re Not Too Much, or Too Little (Enneagram 4s)

Some days you feel like you don’t fit in. At times, you worry you’re flawed and broken. Often, you fear you’re too much. And we hate that for you, because what we see is someone who reflects Jesus’ tender emotions, His genuine care for us, His reassuring presence.

This Is the Truth About a Competition-Free Zone (For Enneagram 5s)

You don’t have to compete for God’s attention. You don’t have to be louder to be heard, stand out for Him to lean in close, or be in the center of the activity for you to matter. You always have God’s utmost attention. He hears every word you say—the ones you thought were drowned out, even the ones still inside your head.

How to Turn Fear Into Faith (For Enneagram 6s)

If you’re like me, you dedicate a lot of mental energy to worst-case scenario thinking. I’ve dismissed many an idea with a slew of reasons something could go wrong. I’ve felt fear rising like a tsunami wave when I’m in a tight spot. And I’ve given my full attention to what’s not mine to control or fix far more times than I can count.

Why Painful Seasons Make for Tender Growth (For Enneagram 7s)

Painful seasons have a way of tenderizing the soul, as if we step barefoot into what the Celtics call a “thin space.” The distance between heaven and earth, in these moments, feels paper thin. The holy and sacred seep into the everyday. Our knees grow weak. 

How to Find Grace for Yourself and Others (For Enneagram 8s)

You’ll find grace when you admit that you need God’s strength. Grace to be a beginner. Grace to try again. Grace to let it be enough. Grace to lean on others. Grace to borrow another lens. Grace to be moldable in God’s hands. This is what I hope you’ll hold onto today: It’s not all up to you. You can let go. You can fall forward into grace.

How to Stop Hiding Inside the Peace You Crave (Enneagram 9s)

Can we talk about how to stop hiding where it feels safe and cozy and predictable? Because maybe what makes you “come alive,” as Howard Thurman famously wrote, is somewhere beyond the line of where risk meets comfort.

| Enneaneighboring Summer Series 2022 |

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 1

Today, we’re talking about you. We’re talking about your fear of not getting it right. Your fear that others will misunderstand your good intentions. Your fear that you’ll never measure up to your own standards. We’re talking about how you’re exhausted from trying so hard to be perfect, but you just can’t let yourself off the hook.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 2

We’re talking about how you rarely let yourself turn down a request for help, how you’re exhausted but don’t want to admit it, and how you don’t like to talk about your own needs. We’re talking, too, about your desire for others to need you—and how tempting it is to find your worth in what you do.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 3

We’re talking about how you can get things done faster than the rest of us. We’re talking about your effortless ability to read the room and adjust as needed. We’re also talking about the way you’re on 10 all the time, but the real truth is that you feel small inside.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 4

You’re not too much for God. He’s not put off by big emotions. He created them, and He feels them too, feels them for you. You don’t have to stuff them down, turn them off, or dismiss them. Your emotions can mirror to others the depth of what God feels for them, and He designed you this way on purpose.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 5

You don’t have to compete for God’s attention. You don’t have to be louder to be heard, stand out for Him to lean in close, or be in the center of the activity for you to matter. Truth is, you always have God’s utmost attention. He hears every word you say—the ones you thought were drowned out, even the ones still inside your head.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 6

God wants to listen. He wants to hear you out. He cares about everything—big and small—that matters to you. He won’t walk away. He won’t tell you you’re overreacting. He won’t interrupt you. He will always be there for you. Without fail. Without condition. And when you’re with Him, you’re safe no matter what’s going on all around you.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 7

Somedays you feel you can’t get away fast enough. Somedays you feel what’s next has got to be better. Sometimes you feel like you’re missing out. Today, this is what I want your heart to hear: Joy is a gift from God, and He gives only good gifts. You are a gift from God, and He gives only good gifts.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 8

Enneagram eight, God is strong—so you don’t have to be. He’s in control—so you don’t have to be. He is perfect—so you don’t have to be. God’s not wowed by what you can achieve. He’s not impressed with what you’ve done or the title you’ve earned for yourself. But He is moved when you move towards Him.

How to Neighbor Well as an Enneagram 9

God doesn’t look at you last. He doesn’t overlook you. He’s wild about you. You don’t have to be an ounce louder, prettier, or successful to garner His attention. He dotes on you, hangs onto your every word . . . His heart breaks for you when you dismiss the value of your own voice, put yourself down, call insignificant who He created with care.

| Blog |

The Road Forward to Missional Community

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 to Grow Friendships with Neighbors Who See the World Differently Than You

Perhaps we’ve spent too much time comparing and criticizing our differences rather than seeing the blessing in them. Too much time looking for commonality as if that alone can bind us together. Too much time arguing about the rightness of our own lens.

Dear Friend, Maybe Today You Need to Know . . .

Dear friend, here is a letter (for each Enneagram type) to you to remind you how you are an essential component of community. Your family, friends, and neighbors need you to be you.

Enneaneighboring: Forming Community in My Neighborhood Out of Different Types of Normal

Ann Voskamp said it in her book, The Way of Abundance, and the words sink deep: “We will never reflect the image of Christ to the world unless we first see the image of God in everyone.” I look out across my street remembering with a tang of sadness the years I lived near neighbors without really knowing them—without seeing the image of God in them.