Graham Hunter writes: I have spent a good deal of time in recent years reflecting on questions of personality, role and my impact on others in my work as a Vicar in an inner-city east London parish.
In my early years in ministry, if anything was going wrong, or was troublesome and challenging, I would tend to assume the fault lay with others: ‘It’s not me, it’s you!’ (Indeed, I took some consolation in the phrase of an American community organiser: ‘You’ve gotta change the people, or you’ve gotta change the people’.)
However, as the years in ministry have progressed, I’ve become more interested in self-examination and reflection to understand how my strengths and weaknesses, priorities and blind-spots have an impact on others around me. It’s often commented that ‘as goes the leader so goes the church’—or in the world of education, ‘as goes the headteacher, so goes the school’. This is a central premise of emotionally healthy leadership insights from Pete Scazzero and others.
Now, I think there’s a whole other conversation about organisational structures and family systems theory to explore as well—but for my purposes here, let’s stick to the question of how we understand our ‘self’ and our impact on others. I’ve taken to saying that for me it’s a matter of self-awareness for self-regulation. (To take this further, John Calvin said ‘without knowledge of self, there can be no knowledge of God’. But that will have to be a different article.)
A recent Grove Booklet by John and Paul Leach has been really helpful for me to articulate some of my thoughts on this subject—and in particular in how it explores the question of persona in public leadership. The booklet is entitled ‘Who Am I As A Worship Leader?’ but the authors are clear that this is not just about those who lead the congregational singing from the guitar or keyboard, but rather anyone who is involved in the leading of public worship services.
Some of their examples—and an associated video interview with John Leach—help us to realise that this area of discussion is not just relevant to those involved with Christian worship services, but is helpful for those who present ‘from the front’ in a variety of settings. Teachers in particular will benefit from this booklet, along with people in any commercial setting in which they lead a team or give presentations to clients, boards and so on.
The central premise of the book is that we all adopt a ‘persona’ when we are leading in a public setting. The persona may relate to our personality but it is not the same as our personality. (Personality studies theory tend to explain personality as the ‘armour’ we adopt from an early age to help us navigate the world around us. All of us have healthy and constructive attributes in our personality alongside traits that are less helpful!)
Persona in the authors’ view is to do with what we project about ourselves to the gathered congregation in a public setting. They offer some examples, such as ‘Eternal Optimist, the Jaded Cynic, the Pantomime Animateur, the Apologist’ (p 4). Their descriptions and examples of how these types might welcome people to a church service on a Sunday were witty and instantly recognisable. They gave me pause to reflect and consider my style and approach to leading worship.
They remind us that very often we adapt our persona without even recognising it. I recently saw this play out in front of me in the leadership of our amazing Head of Kids & Youth. On an average Sunday morning she will jump up on stage to announce kids and youth groups with bundles of energy and enthusiasm. An exhilarating ‘Good morning church!’ always announces her presence like a piece of formal liturgy.
But we recently held a prayer meeting for those affected by conflict in the Middle East (we have a large number of Iranian refugees and asylum seekers in our church). This was held on a Wednesday evening, and she was leading the prayer meeting she instinctively switched to a more reflective, sombre and empathetic tone as she invited people to join in prayer.
Our style must be suitable for the setting; our persona must meet the profile of performance.
By highlighting this question of persona, the authors are drawing attention to something which is often unexamined and employed unconsciously. Most of us probably just imitate others without really reflecting and considering the impact of our persona on others. Once awareness of persona is raised, we can be more intentional about how we ‘show up’ in the public space. And of course, this ‘showing up’ is not limited to public worship; it may be useful to consider how we ‘show up’ in supervisions, team meetings or even social occasions with friends.
In the exploration of persona, the authors also consider how they relate to personality types. In particular, they draw upon the 12 archetypes developed by psychologist Carl Jung. But in the video interview about the book, there is also discussion about how this relates to character. This is a helpful additional element to explore.
Each of us have a basic personality, developed in early years to help us navigate the world. We will have both healthy and less healthy aspects in our personality, but we can explore and develop our self-awareness through tools like Myers-Briggs, Gilmore-Frayleigh, shapes, colours or the Enneagram. The point with all of these for me is ‘self-awareness for self-regulation’—understanding the impact we have on others and using that constructively.
We also can develop greater understanding of the range of personas that we can adopt for different settings. Ideally we will adopt personas that are congruent with our personality. The way I’m wired no-one will ever believe I’m being authentic if I adopt a ‘loveable clown’ or ‘disorganised scatterbrain’ persona.
But in both cases, these must (in my view) be subsumed by the development of godly character. For our quest in Christian life is not to imitate Jesus’ personality (to many contextual constraints for us to meaningfully engage with this); nor to adopt his public persona (which one would it be? There are many); rather, we should seek to develop Christlike character, chiefly through the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23) being cultivated in our lives. That is what is principally meant by being ‘conformed to the image of God’s Son’ (Romans 8:29).
If we want to help people grow in the knowledge of God through Jesus Christ, then we must get to grips with the helpful and sometimes unhelpful ways in which we present him to the world through our words and actions. Understanding of our own personality, the personas we employ, and the character we are developing can help us more faithfully and fruitfully re-present Christ in our churches, communities and the wider world.
C S Lewis said that ‘humility is not thinking less of yourself but rather thinking of yourself less’. I agree of course, but the paradox is that with John the Baptist, if ‘I must decrease, he must increase’, we will first need to know a bit more about the ‘I’ that is serving Jesus and others. So in that sense, it’s not you, it’s me! I’m probably the problem, and to be transformed I’ll need to reflect on persona, personality and character for the sake of honouring the one in whose image I’m created.
This Grove booklet will be helpful reading for us all.
Revd Graham Hunter is Vicar of St John’s Hoxton, an inner-city parish in Hackney, London. He has written Grove Books on charismatic liturgical worship and the use of affective language in worship, and is working on a longer book on broad-based community organising, mission and church growth. His main interests are in worship and doctrine, political theology and Christian social justice.
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Sigh, another psychobabble naval gazing piece.
Whatever happened to “let this mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus”Cf. Col 3:12
Jesus paid scant regard to his persona, as did Paul,
how they were perceived or received.
What was important to them was the focus of their mind:
In Paul’s case having the mind of Christ and being obedient to the law of the Spirit of life IN Christ Jesus.
The feel good about yourselves preaching in a safe space
Is a false gospel. The Gospel is about shaking people up a bit.
The Church should not be a safe or comfortable place for sinners
ACTS 5 v. 4 & 5
St. Paul says,
“To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” (1 Cor 9:20-22)
That strikes me that he is deliberately adopting different ‘personas’ in different contexts.
I would also suggest that “know thyself” is necessary, not psychobabble.
No, I don’t think Paul was talking about persona. He was well educated, a serious thinker, receiver of a life changing encounter with the ascended Jesus, and had devoted the rest of his days to a work of evangelism – specifically bringing the gospel to the gentiles who were obviously a diverse audience. Surely the urgency to be effective in this work, wherever he found himself, was about taking the trouble to understand the local culture and beliefs before plunging in with a pre-rehearsed message which wouldn’t open the minds of his hearers? So I think this was more about having an intellectual grasp of his audience and what they needed to understand than putting on an act which wasn’t his true self.
There are people whose life experiences (of different people and cultures) are considerably wider than those of others. They will be naturally at ease with a wider selection of people and more capable of relating to them without putting on a false act or being artful in way. I’m sure Paul would have fallen into that category or perhaps had learned from past mistakes.
This ^^
David – if you type in ‘persona meaning’ into the search engine, it gives the meaning ‘The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one’s public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self.’ I don’t think that this is at all what Paul was doing. When he ‘became like’, he really entered into the mind-set of, in such a way that he could identify the need of the group he was dealing with.
I see in Acts 17 that he deals with (to use convenient categorisations which may not be entirely accurate) the Spiritual bankrupcy of the Thessalonicans, the intellectual bankrupcy at Athenians (the unknown god), and then in Acts 18 he moves on to the moral bankrupcy of the Corinthians. In each case he holds up Christ Jesus and Him crucified to meet their needs.
I suppose this should find its way in a very vital way into worship – you should endeavour to understand who you are dealing with, what is missing that prevents them from putting their trust in Christ, which may be different in different situations (e.g. the Thessalonicans, Athenians, Corinthians), but I think I agree with Alan Kempson, because I don’t really see how ‘persona’ comes into this – I think that Paul was a pretty straight kind of guy and the real Paul was the Paul you got – it’s just that he worked very hard (and used his brain) to figure out what was lacking and the issue that really was preventing people from coming to Christ.
Alan, other blogs are available.
Thanks, Graham, for this very helpful post. Your point about recognising the sense(s) in which we can and can’t imitate Jesus is vital. Teasing that point out would be worth a book, or a Grove Booklet at least! And I agree when you say, ‘We also can develop greater understanding of the range of personas that we can adopt for different settings.’ Self-awareness is a close brother to humility. One area where we perhaps struggle to adopt an appropriate persona is online. The impersonality of the medium can trick us into writing things very fast using language and a style we would never use face to face. We easily foorget that the impact of words on a screen without context, facial gestures, tone of voice, etc can be very different to what we intend. Thanks again.
“We also can develop greater understanding of the range of personas that we can adopt for different settings”
Quite. If anyone doubts this, just get find a teacher (preferably primary school) in your congregation, ask them to lead something, and watch them transform their persona in front of your eyes.
Sorry to touch a nerve Ian. As with you, people do not always agree with one,some do agree in part to our comments; it is the nature of a blog. your curt response does not address your concerns or
opinions on the content of my post but a personal opprobrium.
Shalom
It is just a bit tiring when people make lazy and dismissive comments which appear to be based on personal prejudice.
How about actually engaging with the issues here?
Ian Paul – I’d say that the article is lazy, because the very concept of ‘conviction of sin’ is not present. As David Wilson points out, the Apostle Paul sets the example of ‘persona’ (if you want to use that term) when he endeavours to ‘get under the skin’ of those to whom he is trying to communicate the gospel message – and, in Acts 17 and 18, we see how this is played out – he looks for the ‘raw nerve’, how to communicate the need and the answer (which is Christ Jesus and Him crucified) in different situations. The point is (of course) to get people to a Luke 18:13 understanding *of themselves*. I see absolutely nothing of this in the article suggesting that this is actually the intended aim.
The points that AJ Bell make are (of course) correct as far as they go – but again fail to tie in the idea of ‘persona and personality’ in ‘leading worship’ to the basic idea of ‘conviction of sin’, either leading people to a Luke 18:13 understanding of themselves or leading worship for people who have come to faith (i.e. reached such an understanding of themselves and, based on this, have come to trust in Christ for their salvation).
You broke the first law of blogging: If you disagree with your host, do so courteously.
“Understanding of our own personality, the personas we employ, and the character we are developing can help us more faithfully and fruitfully re-present Christ in our churches, communities and the wider world.”
100% this. The mistake people can make is thinking that they don’t employ personas or that personas are in some way fake. But how you present yourself on holiday isn’t the same as at an interview or you at your wedding – but it always an honest you. To an extent we know that we need to think about this – it’s fairly common for a priest to set aside time for prayer and contemplation immediately before leading a service. Why? To settle themselves into what they are about to do. If they just flew into the vestry, and then immediately bounded out and began the service they would have a quite different persona and the atmosphere of the service would be quite different as a result.
But whilst you have lots of personas that are authentic facets of you, that does mean that all choices are open and authentic, and it can be hard for people who think a certain persona is required that isn’t quite in their wheelhouse. We need to consider carefully both what we want to bring and what we have available to bring. I remember one rector in the church I grew up was appointed without anyone explaining to him that we had a large children’s church (50+ kids for a regular family service, and a holiday club that would be 200+). This poor man in his 60s approaching retirement, with little experience or affinity for children’s ministry, had to work out what to do. He was never going to be the jumping around hi-energy kids vicar doing children-centred sermons, and if he’d tried it would have fallen very flat. But he did manage to tap into this kindof inquistive grandad persona that equipped him to deal with having a sea of small children in front of him at Easter or Christmas, or when the holiday club take over. At the other end I’ve seen vicars who you can see are trying invoke a persona that they were impressed by, but isn’t really them and they’re not equipped for. Eventually it collapses into apology, and that overwhelms what you really need – confidence.
Thanks for these insights. Your account of the vicar who avoided the temptation to be a big, extrovert personality rings true. People quickly see through any pretense.
Thankyou Ian for your responses.
Your comments are characteristic of the persona
that you wish to employ and convey at this time.
Dismissive, lack of engagement, an invitation to find another blog,
Now accusations of laziness and prejudice.
It seems to me redolent of the Labour councilor who, if one should stray from the Path of spotless progressive enlightenment, one is a Nazi, not, A Brother.
As the saintly Job might say “No doubt, wisdom will die with your death”
One might laugh if only one might cease from weeping.
Shalom.
Alan Kempson, I am not the only one here, who often finds your comments dismissive and devoid of any real engagement. On another thread (Mutual accountability in Galations, June 30), I raised the issue of what Christ’s laws might mean as this is a central tenet of the Baptist DoP, hoping that people might engage constructively, and that it might provide further enlightenment as to what that might entail. Despite your oblique insinuation that Baptists make these up arbitrarily, I can assure you that Baptist theologians strive to understand clearly the missives of our Lord and how they should be applied in a modern context.
Sometimes this process fairly straightforward to elucidate, but at other times time it is not, leading to much debate among us. There are some Baptists (like me), who argue that the DoP should be more credal formulary, while others do not. This is a moot point and I was hoping for more helpful comment. Instead, your overall summary of my comment was “sheesh” so I decided it was not worth engaging with you any further.
However, I find your intemperate comment on IP above, quite incredible. Surely you are not suggesting that IP is redolent in regarding you as a nazi ? I don’t think he has ever claimed to be on on a road of spotless progressive enlightenment’. If so, then I must have missed it.
I think there are some important issues raised in Graham Hunter’s article which cannot be easily dismissed as ‘psychobabble’ and are relevant to those of us who have to preach and stand in front of others. For myself, I find my normal persona sometime changes when I am preaching as if I am being inspired by what I believe to be the Holy Spirit, which is a departure from my normal way of communicating and people have said this to me after a service -I hope it is the HS BTW!. Some people call this the ‘anointing’ whatever that means.
I have noticed that you comment frequently on this blog and confess I find your writings are often long and make platitudinous reading – almost like a sermon in many ways, but then is that your only and authentic persona?
How about consideration of the ‘persona’ of God who is to be worshipped as may be enfolded in the ‘Simplicity’ of God?
That rings bells here.
Perhaps the only small quibble might be about,
“Our style must be suitable for the setting; our persona must meet the profile of performance.”
It’s probably not meant in the entertainment sense but I’d prefer “context ” to “performance “.
On the quibbling about “persona” in the comments: no one presents (as it’s impossible) the whole of themselves in one context or in one situation. Putting all the different analysis tools on one side, I think this stands on its own intrinsic merit… as in “obvious innit”!
Thank you, Chris, for your observations.
Unfortunately, your comments belie a misreading, misunderstanding and misrepresentations of my comments. Forgive me if that sounds dismissive.
It seems to me that some of us might have been smitten by the hot sun this week,which is quite understandable and easily forgivable.
You claim that many find my comments objectionable, with broad brush strokes.
At no time has anyone ever raised your assertions with me during the years that I have been involved here, that includes IP.
No one has pointed out occasions that I have “gone off piste” inc. IP
No one, to my knowledge, has been invited to find another blog, despite given the invectives often displayed here, behaviour unbecoming.
To my knowledge, I have never resorted to personal invective,
nor have I maligned anyone’s’ character.
Again no one has ever maligned me as a “one trick pony,” as you infer.
May God graciously give you/us understanding ….to walk worthily.
Forgive me if in mentioning Scripture sounds preachy.
Shalom.
Ian has asked others to take their arguments elsewhere, he did it recently.
By starting off with ‘sigh’, you clearly thought this was a rather pointless posting. I can understand Ian’s frustration, perhaps particularly as this was written by a guest who had taken the time to write it. My own policy is that if Im not interested in a particular posting subject, I just dont bother posting a comment.
PC1 – I don’t defend Alan Kempson at all – because I didn’t see ‘conviction of sin’ (or a failure to tie in ‘conviction of sin’ with the topic of ‘persona’) at the heart of his objection.
I, personally, am *very* interested in what passes for Christianity and I find Ian Paul’s blog a very useful insight. I am seriously alarmed by a consistent avoidance over all the time I have been following things here to acknowledge that reaching a Luke 18:13 understanding of oneself is vital and necessary for being saved, i.e. for entering into the Saviour’s family.
AK is quite wrong to dismiss the ‘persona’ business as ‘psychobabble’, since that is exactly what Paul was doing, but Paul had a pointed agenda, which was to bring people to the Luke 18:13 understanding of themselves – and also the ‘after sales service’ (with apologies for a crass way of putting it) once we are ‘in Him’.
I’m still worried about the ‘intimacy’ post (a couple of weeks ago), because it doesn’t ‘chime in’ with what I understand faith to be all about – when we come to believe, the Holy Spirit is planted in us as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come – and a direct corollary of this is that we therefore have intimacy with God – and also with each other – whether we like it or not.
So I’m concluding that my own faith is very seriously at odds with the faith of Ian Paul in a very fundamental way.
Jock – if you only ever see conviction of sin and little else, then I dont think you are seeing the fuller picture. Whilst the cross is clearly central to the NT, even Paul does not only talk about it but various other subjects in his letters.
It is, after all, the Holy Spirit who convicts anyone of their own personal sin, whether during conversion or ongoing in their Christian life. Of course people should preach about it, but not just about it.
Im not sure what you mean about intimacy. Yes by definition if the Spirit lives in the believer in some weird and wonderful way, then yes we should have intimacy with God. But it is also relatively easy to effectively ignore God as it seems he rarely booms. And I suppose when we do we lose some intimacy. As Paul said, we can grieve the Spirit.
Finally I think youre being unfair to Ian. I have no doubt he is a man of faith and a good teacher in the church. Im sure the cross of Christ and the resurrection is also central to that faith, otherwise it is pointless. But that doesnt mean he needs to bring every subject that he teaches on back to that.
Peter
PC1 – well, conviction of sin is central. I very much hope you see the *necessity* of coming to a Luke 18:13 understanding of self; any ‘faith’ that does not have this basis is not a Christian faith. In fact, go back to the discussion we had about Revelation 13 and the second beast. This beast does its best to imitate Christ and thus deceive people by putting up the appearance of being Holy (and it’s for this reason – as we discussed – that I remain very sceptical of the view that the *primary* meaning of the 666 was a reference to Nero – since Nero didn’t try to put up any subtle pretence of being Holy at all – he was a blatant opponent of everything that was good – of course, it’s highly likely that John was having a subtle dig at Nero, but this can’t be the primary meaning).
Sure, I think we all agree that Paul talks of *corollaries* of being ‘in Him’, but there is never any doubt about the starting point, which is conviction of sin (c/f Ephesians 2:1-3 – this is a statement about ourselves which we are required to accept before we proceed to the rest of the letter – Paul continues on the assumption that we accept this about ourselves).
Christian teachers are required to ‘lay their cards on the table’ in this matter (conviction of sin / offence of the cross), because I think we’ve all seen zillions of times over the last 40 or 50 years (and probably much longer – but my own observations do not go back further than that since I’m too young to have seen it) how the subtlety of the beast, when imitating Christ, manifests itself, by presenting a false gospel which doesn’t require conviction of sin and which airbrushes out the ‘offense of the cross’ (blessed is he who is not offended in Me).
So I very much hope you’re right – and that I am being unfair here – but unfortunately, I simply haven’t seen the evidence that ‘conviction of sin’ (i.e. the necessity of a Luke 18:13 understanding of self) is the basis and I have seen lots of evidence that this is being airbrushed out.
I think that pretty much everybody would agree that Paul moves on from this, but it’s also pretty clear that he expounds this basis very clearly before moving on.
Moving on from ‘conviction of sin’ is (of course) strongly related to what the Holy Spirit does to people when He enters into those who have come to faith and works within them. That discussion (I think) should probably be left to a different occasion.
Some extraordinary things have come to light here.
Thanks, guys, for your interest, comments and pointing out
my shortcomings. I will be more considerate when critiquing a
Grove booklet in future. Consider me chastened.
Shalom.
That is very gracious of you Alan.