Books

Assessments

Wagner Enneagram Personality Styles Scales | WEPSS

The Enneagram is one of the most useful tools for understanding personality styles at work, in relationships, and for self-awareness. The WEPSS is a standardized, reliable, and valid Enneagram inventory, the only one published by a major psychological test company and reviewed in Buros's Mental Measurements Yearbook, a respected authority in the testing field.

The WEPSS can be purchased for single use and in multiple copies by individuals, consultants, and workshop presenters. Results and interpretation are immediately accessible online and via email. The test is currently available in English, Spanish, and Danish for this online version and in English and Chinese in the hardcopy version.

Emotional Health & Spiritual Maturity Personal Assessment

Emotionally Healthy Discipleship

Based on the best-selling book, The Emotionally Healthy Church, this diagnostic tool was created to help individuals, teams and churches get a sense of whether their discipleship has touched the emotional components of their lives.

This assessment consists of 47 questions and takes 15 minutes to complete.

Upon completion, you will be given a detailed description of your stage of emotional & spiritual maturity and next steps for your journey.

Teaching

The Journey

John Mark Comer | Bridgetown Church

One of the key tasks of our apprenticeship to Jesus is discovering our identity and calling. Over a millennia and a half ago, St. Augustine famously prayed, “Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.” Self-knowledge, God-knowledge, and others-knowledge are all tied together. 

Yet so many followers of Jesus never discover the man or woman they were created to be. They spend years, and waste copious amounts of energy, living into a parody of their real, true self. Trying so hard to be who they think they should be, or who their family or friends or culture thinks they should be, or who they wish they could be. In the end, they end up failing at being somebody they’re not, rather than succeeding at being who they are. 

But discovering your identity and calling is a process, not an event. And for most of us, it’s a lifelong process. Some of us are just getting started; others are miles down the road, but no matter your age, it’s never too late to start. The goal for Part 1 of this Practice is simply to plot ourselves on the timeline of that journey.

Calling: The Inward Journey

John Mark Comer | Bridgetown Church

On the road to discovery our identity and calling we quickly bump up against the wall of sin. Sin is a bit of a loaded, religious word, but all it means is to “miss the mark,” to fall short of the life that God has for you. 

Richard Rohr defined sin this way: “Sins are fixations that prevent the energy of life, God’s love, from flowing freely. (They are) self-erected blockades that cut us off from God and hence from our own authentic potential.”

So if we want to experience God - the source of life - and reach our full potential, we have to find a way past the “blockades” in our life, i.e. our sin. But our “sin” is more than just our behavior; it’s our shadow side, which Pete Scazzero defined as “the accumulation of untamed emotions, less-than-pure motives and thoughts that, while largely unconscious, strongly influence and shape your behaviors. It is the damaged but mostly hidden version of who you are.” 

The tricky thing is that we are often blind to our own shadow side. The human capacity for self-deception is staggering. 

One tool that followers of Jesus have used for over a millennia and a half to reveal and repent of our shadow side is the Enneagram: a theory of personality test that deals with your root sin and root motivation.

Lent and the Examen

Father Michael Sparough | The Practice

On Sunday (03.08.15) night, Fr Michael Sparough SJ gave one of the most insightful, winsome, and compelling messages I’ve heard in a long time. The way he talked about Lent both stretched and deepened how I engage this holy season. And, of course, his invitation into The Examen was brilliant.

May his words invite us deep into active practice. And may the practice invite us deep into the heart of God, for the sake of the world.

Comforted by Dust and Ashes

John Perrine | The Burning Word Podcast

This episode is all about Job’s confession. For some of us, the term “confession” might summon the sense that now Job needs to repent. Yet that isn’t exactly what we find. Instead, Job’s confession is going to be in a broader sense, a renewed perspective of his existence. All of us live by such confessions, a vision, motto, creed that guides us through our suffering. This is one of the key insights of Job. When God does appear, we each will be summoned to offer our own confession? The question really becomes, in the midst of our suffering what confession will we offer after encountering God? For any who have asked, “Where is God in my suffering?” Job’s confession might just surprise you.

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