The Pastor's Heart with Dominic Steele

Tim Omrod: How personality impacts ministry teams

• Tim Omrod • Season 6 • Episode 45

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I want to be a big hearted encourager like Barnabas. I want to be a reliable assistant like Timothy. I want to be passionate preacher like Apollos.

When you think about the qualifications for Christian ministry in 1Timothy 3, the significance of personality is pretty much ignored.

What is the relationship between character and personality?  Some one is all about structure and someone elose is much more ‘loosy-goosy/flexible.’

When there’s conflict in church or in a ministry teams - it’s often put down to personality difference or sometimes even disorder.

What does the bible say about all this?

Tim Omrod serves with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (AFES) at Griffith University on the Gold Coast and has just finished a study of the co-workers of Paul.

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Speaker 1:

it's the pastor's heart and dominic steel. And thinking biblically about personality. Tim omrod is our guest. I want to be a big-hearted encourager, like barnabas. I want to be a reliable assistant, like timothy, and I want to be a passionate preacher like Apollos. And yet some of us are introverts, some of us are extroverts, some of us have this kind of wiring in chemistry. And how do we make sense of all of that? There are all sorts of tools to help us do that Myers-Briggs, DISC, Enneagram, the Big Five, Strength Finders, those kind of things.

Speaker 1:

And then sometimes there's conflict in our church, turmoil in the ministry team, and it's put down to personality difference or sometimes even personality disorder. But what does the Bible say about this? Anything at all. I mean, when you think about the qualifications for Christian ministry in 1 Timothy 3, the significance of personality is pretty much ignored. So what do we do? How do we think about it? What is the relationship between character and personality? And do some ministries put too much emphasis on one over the other? And how should personality shape our preaching? Tim Omrod serves with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students at Griffith University on the Gold Coast. He's just finished a study on the co-workers of Paul, thinking particularly about what we can learn about their personalities and from their personalities. Tim, thanks for coming in. I was super helped reading your thesis. But what was it in your pastor's heart that drove you to do this massive amount of research and thinking?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's a good question, Dominic. Probably, I don't know. There's probably a whole bunch of things that drove me to want to think about it. A big thing for me was my own kind of ministry experience. I started off with AFES I don't know 10, 12 years ago, but about three or four years into my time with AFES, my position in our team shifted. I went from being just a team member and I took over leading the team. Great, I was a young guy. I thought I knew I could do that, but I took over leading the team from the guy who'd actually planted the ministry originally and the same people in the team had trained under him. In fact, he'd been their only boss in ministry for many years and he stuck around and stayed on the team, still part of our team actually and I think early on in those first three or four years trying to take on this role, I just felt really confused, stuck, even trying to work out. Well, I'm not that guy.

Speaker 2:

Yet this ministry has been really healthy with him leading it and should I be that guy, and what do I need to keep doing? That's the same as him. What am I allowed to change? Yeah, and so that was actually a really difficult kind of thing to wrestle with, and it led me to start reflecting on this, I mean you talk about being difficult.

Speaker 1:

I'm assuming that's difficult internally. Was it difficult in terms of relationships with the others as well.

Speaker 2:

I think it was actually more. I internalized it. That's probably something about my personality actually. So I internalized it and you know, like the swan floating on the water, I had all this stuff going on underneath the surface and I think the team was sometimes oblivious to that.

Speaker 1:

And they were actually great.

Speaker 2:

Our team was great. They were really helpful. But, yeah, I felt really really stuck and confined and not, yeah, kind of trying to work out how do I actually lead this team in a way that reflects how God's made me.

Speaker 1:

So is the Bible silent on personality, or does it have stuff to say?

Speaker 2:

Well, the word's not there, but we know, yeah, I think it does have things to say. It doesn't have heaps to say, but even like right from the beginning of the Bible. You see, you know Jacob and Esau very different, aren't they? One's a man of the open fields and one's a man like a tent dweller, I think is how he's described A library guy.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a library guy, yeah, and you see, you know Moses, you get a bit of a sense of what he's like. So you get glimpses of people's personality but you rarely get. You know, you see it with the disciples as well but you rarely get moments where it's explored or articulated in any explicit way. It's more, you're just noticing things about people and you're going well, they're different to that person and, yeah, we can relate to that just from our own experience of seeing different people.

Speaker 1:

And so my read is that lots of people then just go straight to the secular literature.

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, Well, yeah, as I started to look into this, I thought, oh, I wonder what's out there. And you know we all come across the Myers-Briggs stuff and the Enneagram or whatever, and lots of it's been helpful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's heaps of really useful things. What do you learn about Paul's co-workers, or what can you make from, because you've done quite a detailed journey through the co-workers of Paul?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so I decided I thought how can I explore this topic biblically? Is there a biblical way into it? Are there some people we could look at? And I got reading the book of Acts and Barnabas in particular struck me because he worked with Paul, but the two were very different and I started to notice some things there. And then I looked at Timothy a little bit and Apollos and some of the others. And what's really interesting in the book of Acts, which I looked at with this study, was Luke seems to make a big deal of their personalities, or at least personal traits of them. When he introduces a new character, he'll often spend a few verses telling you a whole bunch of things about them. I was like, well, that's really interesting isn't it.

Speaker 2:

And then I started to trace those so personality matters for Luke.

Speaker 2:

Well, whether he would articulate it that way is he probably wouldn't use the language of personality. But I think difference matters. How God has made people matters, and that actually shapes the way people engage in ministry, do ministry, the way Paul even uses his different co-workers as they take the gospel. Give us a couple of lines on each of them. Well, you said Barnabas, the big-hearted encourager. Barnabas is the guy who'll give you a big hug. He'll work out what you're really good at doing and help you to work out how to put people in the right places and get the best out of them.

Speaker 2:

Timothy, he's like the perfect two. I see. He's the guy every senior minister wants working alongside him. I kind of, yeah, he's like the faithful, reliable lieutenant. And then Apollos well, we all know about Apollos. He kind of does his own thing a little bit, but he's very gifted, he's very passionate and a really powerful preacher, all those sorts of things. So they're all quite different. And then if you start to look at the way kind of their ministries play out, god uses each of them in quite distinct ways and ways that actually fit, I think, the way God has made them and wired them.

Speaker 1:

Now, as we read Acts, there's a debate about what's prescriptive, what's descriptive. Tell me what. The answer is there as you think about personalities.

Speaker 2:

I'm at risk of alienating half our audience here. Look, I think obviously we want to read the scriptures in context. We don't want to read anachronistically back into the scriptures and say, oh, this is a book telling us all about personality and it's a textbook on that. So obviously Acts' purpose is not about personality. But I think what we can see is, if you follow Luke's emphasis, he does highlight these things, and so it's right to pick up on them and think about why is he highlighting this and what does it show about the way the gospel is going to the ends of the earth? It might not be Luke's primary goal, but there are things to learn and glean there. I think you can read the paper and tell me if you agree.

Speaker 1:

How has it I mean doing all this work on personality and acts? I mean, if you came to preach Acts now, how might your preaching of Acts be different to a journey you took through Acts, I don't know, 10 years ago or something like that?

Speaker 2:

It's a good question. I haven't reflected too much on that, dominic. I do wonder, though, if I wouldn't change.

Speaker 1:

You know the big message is the big message right, jerusalem, samaria, the ends of the earth, those kind of things, yeah, the progress of the gospel.

Speaker 2:

I think seeing the personal element is really interesting, and it's not just in Acts, it's in Luke as well. Luke has an interest in not just the way the word is progressing out from Jerusalem, judea, samaria, it's going out through people and he seems interested in that and I think that's wonderful. So I would highlight that I'd see the way different not just different people take the gospel, but the way different people respond and engage to the gospel as well, through accident, yeah. So there might be a slight accent on that in places.

Speaker 1:

It wouldn't be the main thing, but it would be something I guess in that Now Paul says 1 Corinthians 11, follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. Yes, can we say follow the example of Barnabas as he follows the example of Christ, and is every aspect of Barnabas depicted in Acts a good bit?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, sure. Well, is every aspect of Paul depicted as a good bit? I guess would be the question. I think so long as somebody is following Christ, that applies. Paul's not unique in that regard.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to look at my ministry leaders, those kind of people, my parents.

Speaker 2:

Of course, what we sometimes do, though I think with that, you know, follow Christ as Paul does, or follow me as I follow Christ. Sometimes we go okay. So I need to be exactly like Paul in every way, and I don't think that's what Paul means when he says that. You know, paul was a very unique person before he came to faith wasn't he. He was a zealous persecutor of the church, and it's easy, I think, a murderer A murderer yeah, what changes with Paul when he has the Damascus Road experience?

Speaker 2:

Well, it's not his zeal, actually. The Spirit takes hold of his heart and redirects it towards the things of Christ. And that zeal, that particular zeal like we're all supposed to be zealous for the gospel, but that zeal and the way it's expressed in Paul, is now directed towards the things of Christ. I don't think actually Paul is saying everybody needs to be exactly like him, in that he wants us to follow him in being wholeheartedly devoted to the things of Christ. And I think we could say the same about Barnabas. What I love about Barnabas is Barnabas taught Paul most of the things he knew about ministry. There would be.

Speaker 2:

I don't think, humanly speaking, there wouldn't be a Paul without Barnabas, which is something I hadn't really thought too much about. But yeah, who's the guy? When Saul at the time comes to the apostles in Jerusalem, they're scared of him. It's only because Barnabas, the big-hearted encourager who's able to see that God's grace at work in people he's like, he takes Saul to the apostles and says this guy's a good guy.

Speaker 2:

And then when Barnabas goes to the church in Antioch, the apostles send Barnabas to the church in Antioch, the apostles send Barnabas to the church in Antioch. He's able to go to Antioch, recognize God's grace at work there again. But what's the first thing he does once he gets to Antioch? He goes and gets Saul, who's off in Tarsus, brings him back and they work together in Antioch together. So in a way, Paul actually followed Barnabas in a lot of ways, even though the way they did their ministry differed and obviously they have a big fight by the end of their time in Acts together. So yeah, I think, to answer your question, yeah, I think we can follow Barnabas as he follows Christ.

Speaker 1:

So we want to say personality matters, matters and we can say that with not just Enneagram and Myers-Briggs and DISC saying that, we actually say the Bible says that.

Speaker 2:

To a degree, and I think we need to be careful in what we mean by personality, how we define it. I think, yeah, does the Bible talk really specifically about a particular, you know, personality model? No, but it describes what I think. Graham Bainan from Moore College in Sydney. He talks about thick personality. The way an individual presents themselves in the world relates to others, engages in the world, those personal traits that shape who they are and how they kind of show up. Acts is very interested in.

Speaker 1:

The Bible is very interested in.

Speaker 2:

It's not everything, but it's not nothing.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you talk about Barnabas and Paul's dispute over John Mark being driven primarily by their different temperament and gifts.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah. Do you want me to justify?

Speaker 1:

that yeah, go on.

Speaker 2:

People always yeah, it's a fascinating. When I've talked to people about doing this research, they're always like I just don't know what happens there. It just feels really harsh that Paul and Barnabas have this dispute and Paul just goes off and we never hear from Barnabas again. I think what's going on there when they had that dispute about John Mark in Acts 15 is Barnabas is just doing what he's always done.

Speaker 1:

Being an encouraging bear-hug guy.

Speaker 2:

Being a big-hearted guy who sees that God's at work in someone and he refuses to give up on them. And if he didn't do that with Paul, as I said, the apostle would still be in Tarsus, you know, doing whatever he was doing there. If he didn't do that in the church in Antioch, the Jerusalem church would have gone. You know, this is the first true Gentile church would have potentially rejected the Antiochian church. He's just doing that again. So praise God for Barnabas' gifts.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think so and I think when he stands up to Paul which wouldn't be a super easy thing to do, standing up to the greater he seemed to he's pretty well thought out. He'd be a pretty hard guy to argue with. I'm thankful that he did stand up and he said look, yeah, all right, I'm refusing to give up on this guy. I think Paul was doing the right thing too, because the gospel Paul wanted to go into new ground. He takes Silas, they head back, check out the churches they've been to on the first journey, missionary journey and then they head into new ground through Macedonia and Turicaea and those places, and the gospel actually grows as a result of them both being willing to have that conflict and stand up and actually live out how God had wired them and made them.

Speaker 1:

And gifted them. So you're saying Christian ministry workers should not be threatened by our differences?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I am saying that. Yeah, I don't think that's particularly controversial, but I suspect it's pretty common.

Speaker 1:

And we're not obliged to pursue the same ministry goals and priorities, whereas that's a little bit more controversial. Yeah, keep going.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it depends what you mean by that. If we're talking about macro goals of the advance of the gospel to the ends of the earth, we're all on about that. Honouring Christ, seeking to be godly, preaching the word, these sorts of things, absolutely, these are non-negotiable priorities, the way that plays out the context, we choose to work in, the kinds of roles we do, the way we might do evangelism even, I suspect, or we do ministry, I suspect. Actually there's a bit more flexibility there than we sometimes feel that there is and we can be more driven by what others think of us, more driven by our traditions than actually going. How's the best way to leverage this situation, this opportunity, how God's made me, for the sake of Christ being proclaimed, I mean.

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking of two people on a ministry team, yep, and one had read that Steve Timmis, tim Chester book, total Church, oh yes, yeah, and it was all about small groups and thick community, yeah, and that perfectly suited that guy's personality, yeah. And the other was a really gifted preacher, you know. And one wanted a centralised pulpit ministry and with small groups as sub-parts of that, and the other wanted the pulpit ministry to be almost incidental.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

And now there's two I mean two different personalities, yep, and both, you could say, were concerned about the word going out in people's lives. Yeah, and yet I think, as I look at those two, I think what they had both done is they'd not actually realised it was their personality speaking so loudly that pushed them to want to shape the ministry this particular way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I agree, like I think that happens in. I mean, that's a bigger example, isn't it? Yeah, it happens in small ways all the time. Give us a couple. I mean, say, in my circles, afes circles, we have this really silly debate about lighting at conferences. Maybe you have these debates too. Some people like the lights down low in the main sessions of the conference, some people like them up high, full fluorescent, full fluorescent Classroom. Yeah, what I've noticed actually getting to know people over the years is that's how people are at home as well. You go to some houses and there's one little lamp in the corner and the house is quite dark. Yeah, a bit more moody. Yeah, some houses have, you know, bright white light everywhere.

Speaker 2:

I never thought about that topic, yeah, but then we'll have these debates and people will theologize it. They'll be like, well, we're people of the word, so we need the lights really bright so that we can read the Bible. And you're just being all experiential or something, and so you get in this and at one. Yeah, there's merit in those arguments, but I think often it's actually personality and personal preferences that are speaking here and we're just using our theology to justify.

Speaker 1:

I've got a personal preference and then I invent a theology to push my preference. Yeah, and you actually say that on page 85 of your thesis.

Speaker 2:

Do I really?

Speaker 1:

It's not so much that you say no, it's not quite as stark as that, but you do say that we might walk down to a self-indulgent view of Christian service, that I will choose a ministry that suits my personality.

Speaker 2:

Well, I guess the danger of pushing this personality kind of barrow, which I am pushing a little bit, is that critique. Oh well, that's just the culture of our age. Everyone's on about you be you, you do, you, all that sort of thing, and so well, you're just being self-indulgent, just being self-indulgent. I guess what I think is wonderful actually about Barnabas and Timothy and Apollos is that while they do pursue ministry in light of how God's made them and Paul uses them in light of the way God's made them, they never do it self-indulgently. They're actually really sacrificial in a whole bunch of ways and they're always leveraging how God's made them, not for their own personal interests, they're leveraging it for the sake of others and the progress of the gospel.

Speaker 1:

What about the relationship between character and personality? Because we bang on about conviction, character and competency, but say character is king.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, which is right. Character is king and we need to keep believing that. You know, you read 1 Timothy 3, you know those places Titus 1. Character matters so much in ministry. Poor character actually undermines gospel work. We see that all the time.

Speaker 1:

And we have heard stories of, if you like, people that, from a distance, we thought were ministry greats and yet it feels like people around them were giving them free passes on character because they were so powerful and significant leaders. Oh, that's just Mark you know?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly. So we need to hold fast to that, don't we? The Bible calls on us to do. I think, though, what we can do is we can actually conflate the two. Sometimes, when we don't have any place for personality in our thinking about ministry, is we end up saying that character and personality are the same thing, and so certain expressions of personality. We can almost say that personality trait is a godly trait, rather than going. A personality trait is neither godly or not Give me a couple of examples.

Speaker 2:

Well, let's think about hospitality. Right, the instructions to elders in Titus is that he must be hospitable, right, okay. But if you've got a particular view of what hospitality looks like maybe an extroverted sort of having everybody around from church for lunch every week, blah, blah, blah and you go that is what it means to be hospitable, when somebody doesn't fit that mold and maybe is hospitable in different ways. You know they love strangers in other ways. They're just not that extroverted sort of charismatic person.

Speaker 2:

They need enough time on their own, yeah, yeah. And you can end up saying, well, that person's being selfish and ungodly and that person's being godly. And I think sometimes even the examples we can inadvertently do it I don't think the examples that preachers will put forward of what a godly expression of a certain you know, I'll say hospitality might look like can compound that all the more. And so people go, oh, so to be godly, I've got to be extroverted or I've got to do things like exactly like the preacher does. And I think we have to keep pulling the two apart and going what's character here, yeah, and what's personality? And I think personality is kind of like the vehicle through which our character is expressed, and that can mean that it looks a little bit different from person to person and that's a bit nuanced and grey and complicated and all those sorts of things. But I think it's actually really helpful, yeah, as we think about these.

Speaker 1:

What did you learn in terms of teams and how? I'm just coming back to your situation at Griffith University and the little staff team. Yeah, sure, I mean. What do you think? I'm doing this differently now because I've actually gone and looked at the scriptures rather than we've done Myers-Briggs together?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, yeah, I mean doing things like Myers-Briggs great, you know, let's be aware and help try and understand each other a little bit. Let's not put too much weight on those things. But those things are good at just showing, kind of shining a spotlight on the differences and how we work, and that's really helpful as we work together. I think for me, I mean a whole bunch of things that I've learned. One is just not being, yeah, not feeling like, oh, I'm different or you're different, therefore I are wrong, or less adequate or less capable of gospel ministry.

Speaker 2:

Barnabas did some wonderful things for the kingdom of God. So did Apollos. They were very different. They went about things in very different ways, and that's the same in our staff team. So I look at my staff team. We've got, I think, eight or nine of us this year. We've got a few new people on the team and what's wonderful is to be able to step back and go. All these people, they're actually so different. We're all on about the same thing, but each person's bringing a different thing. So we've got a lovely girl who joined our team this year. What she's brought to our team is she's a real feeler in a way that the rest of the team aren't? She feels things really deeply. We'll read the scriptures together and she'll feel it and she'll help us to feel which is so wonderful. Others on our team we've got another guy on our team.

Speaker 1:

That'll influence your preaching when you come to speak about.

Speaker 2:

it Helps your preaching helps the team to keep things. You know, do we actually love? You know, like you had Ray Gilear on a few talking about, do we love?

Speaker 1:

God.

Speaker 2:

She helps us do that. We've got another guy on the team. He's a doer, he just, you know, he's probably a little bit less, you know, emotional than others on the team.

Speaker 1:

They'll be all watching this feeling self-conscious.

Speaker 2:

No, they'll love it because we've got another guy on the team who comes up with ideas. We're like, oh, we've got to come up with a new idea and we're all looking. So it's actually helped me as a leader to go. God's given us this really rich tapestry of people. How can this actually serve the wider thing by getting the most out of everyone, rather than expecting everybody to be bringing the same things to the table and being able to embrace that and rejoice in that, rather than feel threatened all the time by it?

Speaker 1:

What did your study push you towards thinking about conflict and conflict resolution on your team?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, conflict's interesting. I mean because I think I do think conflict a lot of the not a lot, some of the issues that church teams have. Some of the dysfunction that goes on in churches is when it boils down to it, personality differences, isn't it? One thing I really appreciated is going. It's actually kind of to be expected, isn't it? Paul and Barnabas had a pretty significant conflict. They decided not to work together anymore, but in the end it wasn't an issue of sin or godliness or lack of gospel vision. It was just that they were different and they were pursuing serving Christ in different ways. So they decided to go separate ways.

Speaker 2:

They had a really sharp disagreement about it, really sharp. I think that's okay. It's okay to go. You know what, we don't have to work together. That's a little bit liberating, and we don't have to have a massive you know, say that you're right or I'm wrong.

Speaker 1:

What about personality and preaching? Yeah, what did you learn from, I mean, apart from Apollos being awesome?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well yeah, it's interesting. I mean one of the, if not the most cited definition of preaching is by a guy named Phillips Brooks, who defined personality as preaching, as truth through personality, and you know.

Speaker 1:

I think there's some. I don't know where it came from. I've always heard that line but never knew where it came from. It gets quoted in.

Speaker 2:

You know, you pick up any textbook of preaching and there it is. It comes from, yeah, Phillips Brooks, who was an 18th century or 19th century American clergyman. I thought it wasn't Al Stewart. No, it wasn't Al Stewart.

Speaker 1:

He was the one who taught it to me.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's actually a really. There's some problems with how he justifies it, I think theologically, but I think the reason it has such traction is because it's actually it resonates with the Scriptures and it resonates with our experience, and I really enjoyed thinking about this that we don't all have to preach the same, do we? In fact, we don't preach the same. I've heard you preach Dominic. You preach differently, it's great. I've heard preach Dominic. You preach differently, it's great. I've heard, I've, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've heard. One of the interesting ones I have in my team is when it's always an off-putting experience when you've been, you haven't preached for a while and there's been a guest or something, and somebody comes up and says, oh, I really liked how they preached. Do you ever get that? And you get the assistants preaching.

Speaker 1:

Well, there's definitely times when yeah, there's definitely been times when I've not been in the pulpit for a little while and there have been people joined our church and I've not expressed any leadership at all.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and they really like it and it resonates with them. I think let's praise God for that, and you praise God, but I'm sure, look, we're sinful humans, aren't we? Dominic, part of us feels a little bit threatened by that. You're like, oh, do I need to preach like that person? Then what am I doing wrong? And one of the things I think about preaching is God gifts. Some of us gifted Apollos to be an amazing preacher. Not everybody is gifted in the same way, but it's actually okay again to go yeah, that person is great at preaching a really passionate sermon that hits you in the heart and all that sort of stuff, and that might not be you.

Speaker 1:

You might be really good at the you know, I remember talking to one senior minister of a very large church and he talked about a guy on his staff and he said you know, when he preaches, people become Christian. Yeah, he says I can teach the Bible pretty well, but you know what? Not as many people come to Christ when I'm on.

Speaker 2:

But there may be actually other benefits that he's not aware of. Well, there are other benefits the actual teaching, teaching, yeah, but there may be actually other benefits that he's not aware of.

Speaker 1:

Well, there are other benefits the actual teaching, teaching, yeah yeah.

Speaker 2:

And I think we, rather than again being threatened by that, despising that, as you say, we need to learn to rejoice in it, praise.

Speaker 1:

God. What about how personality might change our message, though? Because that's much more dangerous, sure yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, we don't yeah. Sure yeah, yeah, well, we don't yeah. We preach the same gospel. We preach from the same scriptures.

Speaker 1:

Maybe what about our personality? Might be tempted to change our message.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Well, I mean, Apollos is an interesting example, isn't he? Because he was an incredibly passionate, gifted preacher.

Speaker 1:

Because for some of us, for different personalities, that are, if you like, themes in the scriptures that we resonate towards more. I mean, I do remember, I don't know, my first 10 years in preaching. I just did not resonate to the struggles of the psalmist, yeah. And then I walked through this enormous valley and I just wanted to preach on the psalms all the time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I think that's at one level I'd say that's great, because that's God using our human experience and so lean into that. But at another level, we don't want to become.

Speaker 2:

I'm critiquing me yeah we want to preach the whole counsel of God, don't we?

Speaker 2:

But you know, the reality is we're all going to do it differently.

Speaker 2:

Let's make sure we're preaching all of the scriptures, we're not avoiding topics or passages, but let's also accept that the way you might preach on the Psalms might be a little bit different to how Stuart preaches on the Psalms or how I might preach on them, and that's okay. But I think actually being aware of some of your foibles, shortcomings, like one of my I wouldn't call it foible one of my probably the thing I gravitate towards is, you know, rather than being you know the kick in the guts, I'll be more encouraging, right? That's why I love Barnabas, and so I've got to be conscious of that and go. Sometimes actually, people need a kick in the guts, and so I've got to discipline myself to be willing to do that sometimes. But some of us might like to kick people in the guts every week, and so I think actually thinking about personality helps you to make sure you're not just drifting into your natural inclination. So actually reflecting on how does your personality flow out in your preaching helps you do that a little bit.

Speaker 1:

On how does your personality flow out in your preaching helps you do that a little bit, Exercising leadership and type A personalities. Where do we see that in the scriptures?

Speaker 2:

I don't know if we do, do we Dominic? I think there's an array of personalities and there's an array of leadership. I think godliness, as we've said, is key. Our convictions about the scriptures, as we've said, is key. Our convictions about the scriptures, as we've said, are key. I think, then, it's working out okay. So how has God wired me? And if that's how I'm wired, how's that going to help me lead best in this context? And there's some contexts that just don't fit as well with some personality styles as others, and I think that's okay.

Speaker 1:

Are there some personality styles that I mean intuitively, I want to think there are some personality styles that mean, actually I shouldn't aspire to be the team leader, but what would you say from the scriptures to that?

Speaker 2:

Well, I'd say it's interesting, isn't it? Like Timothy is, he is a slow burner. Paul picks up Timothy. He's young and little bit by little bit he gives him a bit more responsibility. He's clearly very gifted we read about that but he seems to whether he lacks confidence or he's just a little bit of a just a quieter gentler sort of doesn't like to step out as easily. He needs more nurturing to get to a position where he can kind of lead the church in Ephesus for example and it's interesting Paul seems to entrust him with a little bit more responsibility.

Speaker 2:

Like go to Thessalonica and you can check on the church there. Or go to Philippi and go to Corinth and go get this money, and then eventually he leaves him in Ephesus to lead the church there. Or go to Philippi and go to Corinth and go get this money, and then eventually he leaves him in Ephesus to lead the church there. Apollos, I mean, he wants to lead a church before he even fully understands the gospel, doesn't he?

Speaker 2:

But you know, he comes to Ephesus, he's preaching, and Priscilla and Aquila, of course, take him aside, and so you don't know anything. Maybe you might want to tighten this bit of doctrine up, oh okay, and say you don't know anything. Maybe you might want to tighten this bit of doctrine up, oh okay. But then what's he want to do next? He's like oh well, can I go to Corinth now? And off he goes, and he just seems a bit more of a self-starter.

Speaker 2:

There's actually a really interesting moment in 1 Corinthians 16 where Paul's just reflecting on his different co-workers and he says when Timothy comes, make sure he's got nothing to fear. You know when he arrives. And he says I asked Apollos to come. He's going to come when he's ready. So clearly you can see Apollos yeah, very much.

Speaker 2:

He's sort of that entrepreneurial sort of guy, and that's going to work better in a pioneering ministry. Of course it is. He'll probably get bored of stuff pretty quick, though, and so he's wise to think about where's that leadership style going to work best? It doesn't mean he's the only person who can do that, but I think that's just good gospel stewardship. Whereas Timothy, yeah, it's probably helpful for him to know. Oh, I need a bit more encouragement, I need a bit more nurturing, and so maybe I shouldn't just rush off and plan the church in some distant place where I won't have any support. So yeah, I think there are different leadership styles, there are leadership styles that fit better in different contexts, but again, the personality stuff just helps us be aware of that rather than ruling them in or out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, great Tim. Thanks so much for coming in. No, absolute pleasure. My guest on the Pastor's Heart, tim Omrod. He is the well. He's the team leader with the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students at Griffith University on the Gold Coast and here with us on the Pastor's Heart this afternoon. My name is Dominic Steele. We'll look forward to your company next tuesday afternoon.

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