Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends in Christ,

I’ve always been a little fascinated by personality type surveys like Meyers Briggs. Now I do recognize that they are not perfectly scientific and that people are much more than any such battery can capture. But nonetheless, I do find them interesting if only for their descriptive capacity. 

I became convinced that there was something to them when I was in a class on personality type and religious leadership. The first exercise we did, after taking the inventory, was gather in groups by our personality type. 

I happen to be an INTP which is classified as “the logician” or “the architect” in various descriptions. One description reads, in part, “They're logical, fast thinkers who excel in analyzing the connections between fine details and small pieces of information and explaining challenging concepts. INTPs view the world as a complex machine with many interrelated parts to study, understand and connect.”

Now, with our groups gathered, we were tasked with drawing a picture that describes “leadership.” Mine was a complicated web of interlocking and interrelated lines of reciprocal responsibility, authority, and accountability connecting various hubs in concentric circles and cross-cutting patterns of expertise and skills.

Others drew one candle lighting another. Others drew hierarchical org charts. Others drew someone talking into a bullhorn with many gathered around.

The really interesting part came next. The professor pulled from a closet a decade worth of the same drawings from previous classes. Each type’s drawings, across the decade, were incredibly similar. Previous year’s INTP drawings were as Byzantine as mine!

So I became convinced of the descriptive power of these kinds of tests. 

The question I find myself asking is what is the descriptive power or accuracy of “Christian” anymore? It means so many different things to so many different people. For some it means kindness. For others it means the opposite. For some it means welcome. For others it means the opposite. For some it means humility. For others it means the opposite. 

We are entering a period in our cultural life when we get to define what Christian means. As fewer and fewer people identify as Christian and as their awareness of even the basic tenets or ethics encoded within it dims, it is incumbent upon us to help them see it more clearly — for us to live it in such a way that its meaning is never in doubt. 

Followers of Jesus have, as our personality type, Christ himself. It is his nature, character, and ministry that define us. The more our life looks like his, the more accurate that type becomes—for us and for the world around us.

The difference between those personality surveys and our faith though is that where those are descriptive, our faith is prescriptive. It lays out a course for us that defines what it means to be authentic Christ followers. It shapes and molds and forms us such that any description of us could be of him too.

That’s the goal at least—that’s the hope with which we live, serve, love, pray, and more.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert