1 Idea for Your Marriage
About six years ago Taylor and I grew so much through Soul Care, taught by Rich Plass and Jim Cofield. Over the course of two years Taylor and I gathered for two days once a quarter with 40 other pastors and wives to learn from and interact with Rich and Jim. Our marriage and ministry owes a lot to this season of deep growth.
One component of this Soul Care training was Rich and Jim’s even-handed, gospel-grounded approach to using the Enneagram as a tool for growth and sanctification (many leaders go overboard with the Enneagram, elevating it as something more than one of many helpful, common grace tools available to us).
Note: It might be tough for you to get a two-year Soul Care experience from Rich and Jim, but you can access the core of their teaching (which includes some Enneagram content) in their great book that I recommend to everybody, The Relational Soul: Moving from False Self to Deep Connection.
Last month I was looking for something fresh to enrich our marriage/looking for Christmas gifts, and I stumbled upon a book series I’d never heard of. I came across a series of small, well written, concise, biblically anchored books on the Enneagram that looked like content Taylor and I would enjoy reading, talking about, and growing from. I bought the book for my number (can you guess my number?), and I bought the book for Taylor’s number.
And here is what we are doing with these little books: over the course of three weeks we’re each reading/engaging 1 chapter a day on our own (each chapter is only a few pages long and has a few thoughtful reflection questions, with space to write your answers) and a few evenings a week we devote about 15 minutes to discussing what we’re learning from our reading. We’re enjoying this.
That’s it. That’s my 1 idea for your marriage (or, you could do this with a close friend): Buy the book for your number and your spouse’s number, read your books on your own, talk together about what you discover from your reading. That’s it. Here are the books, all by author Beth McCord:
Type 1: The Moral Perfectionist
Type 2: The Supportive Advisor
Type 3: The Successful Achiever
Type 4: The Romantic Individualist
Type 5: The Investigative Thinker
Type 7: The Entertaining Optimist