Someone approached me recently and said, “Justin, we need to get our worship service better organized.”  The first thing I thought In my head was, “What are you talking about?  It’s totally organized.”  As I learned this summer through Bill Smith’s workshop on Personality Types and Prayer, I am an INFP.  In my head, everything is extremely organized – an array of cabinets and intricate file systems.  Outside of my head, not so much.  It turns out that when I think I’ve communicated something thoroughly, I probably haven’t.  And being an INFP, the first thing I tend to do is to take criticism personally (#ThingsIWishIKnew10YearsAgo).  So, I took a step back and listened as this person articulated a thoughtful idea of bringing a better level of communicated organization to our worship service.

Perhaps this is the biggest lesson I’ve learned this summer.  We all have different personalities, and each personality comes with a set of strengths, and weaknesses, and needs.  When I spoke last month on Speaking the Truth in Love, I mentioned that what we need to do before we confront an individual is to determine if the offense is an issue of sin, heresy, or personality.

It turns out personality conflicts often cause the greatest amount of disunity in churches.  And sometimes not being able to recognize that causes the greatest amount of frustration.  It’s like we can’t put our finger on it, but that person irritates us.  We think it must be some sin or character deficiency.  We might say, “They’re so unthoughtful,” or “The way they go about that just lacks spiritual maturity.”   Sometimes that might be the case, but perhaps all it is is that God created them different than us.

Recently, I was challenged by a friend with a particular thought.  Sometimes churches tend to build themselves around similarities – ethnicity, age groups, personality types, worship styles, and interests.  However, as he pointed out, the church is meant to tear down the natural homogeneous barriers that we find so comfortable.

His words come smack dab in the middle of our Life in the Body teaching, Bill Smith’s workshop on personality types, and just as we are getting back into Romans, focusing on the particular passages that deal with conflicting groups in the church.  It forces me to stop and say, “Ok, God, you obviously have something for us to learn.  What is it?”

I think the answer is this.  The greatest challenge for our small church is to love and embrace the diversity that God has created.  We can’t control who comes into our doors, but we can control what we do when they come in.  We’re all different.  We’re all quirky in our own ways.  The I-types may seem unapproachable.  The J-types may seem confrontational.  The E-types may seem too energetic.  It’s going to take a whole lot of love and forgiveness to make a diverse church unified.

Peter wisely instructs us, “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:9).  And he’s right.  The Greek word for sin is hamartia, meaning to miss the mark.  Just think, if we miss the mark with God (who is patient and slow to anger), you can imagine how much we will miss the mark when communicating or working with others.  Haven’t we all had those conversations where we just didn’t seem to be connecting?

It’s easy for us to just pass people off as weird or to choose not to spend time with them because they’re different than us.  It’s easy to gossip about someone when they do something that offends us.  But as Paul instructs us in Philippians 2, “Our attitude should be like Christ Jesus.”

So brothers and sisters, as a fellow human with various quirks and faults, I ask for lots of mercy, grace, and forgiveness.  I ask that for each of us.  Instead of seeing only the shortcomings in each other, let us choose to see the mighty Holy Spirit at work in each other.  When confrontation must happen, let us be eager to clear the air.  When there is hurting, let us be eager to forgive.  Where we might find fault, let us find an opportunity to encourage each other in our lifelong journeys to be like Jesus.  “For in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female…” and neither INFP or ESTJ… “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).