Monday, March 21, 2005

Church personality

I am serving as an assistant to Phil Douglass, one of my professors at the seminary. He is writing a book on the personality of a church-- essentially, how a church, as an organism, tests in terms of Myers-Briggs Temperament Inventory (MBTI). His primary goal is to provide a resource for churches, especially search committees, that will assist them in finding a good fit.

This is an interesting area of study, and nobody else (that I have found) has done any good accessible work on this concept like Dr. Douglass is doing. There are tons of church consultants and many organizations and groups designed to help churches with constructing their search process-- I'll recommend a few in another post-- but it doesn't look like anyone is dealing with the interplay of personalities and how they can drastically affect the pastor-congregation relationship.

The great news is that Dr. Douglass is already under contract with P & R Publishing to produce the book that he is writing. This resource will be, I hope, a tremendous source for churches in the process of searching for a pastor or staff member.

2 comments:

Bobby's blog said...

I wonder if he'll require that book for Spiritual and Ministry Formation, or if he'll save it for people to read in a later class he teaches.

Ed said...

Good question-- maybe neither. The angle he is taking with this book is more from the perspective of a church search committee: how do they understand themselves as a church, and find the right match in a pastor. I gather that the book will become more of a resource for churches than for pastors, though pastors will certainly benefit from understanding these principles, too.