Video Transcript: People Types

Welcome back. We're continuing in our study of developing great commission  skills. What we're going to be doing with this session is we're going to be taking  a look at the skill topic, people types. Now we all understand that people are  complicated creatures. They've been subjected to in depth analysis over the  years. Now we don't have time to dive into completely in depth analysis, but we  are going to take a look at some of the the obvious differences in people, and  how that might affect vision casting and creating ownership. You know, there are lots of tools out there that have been used to measure personality, to look at  trends or strengths or temperaments among people. You know, including things  like the DISC profile, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, Gary Smalley has his  personality classification. We also have Tim Rath, Tom Rath's strength finder,  and, more recently, Enneagram personality test. There are many, many more  out there. And you know, I'm a fan of these kinds of things. I think they can be  very helpful in helping to understand what makes a person tick. But we're not  going to take that deep dive, but we are going to look at four basic personality  types, types of people, and we're looking through this lens of how they are going to respond to a new vision, in particular, a great commission vision. So let's take  a look. When we look, first of all, the first type we're going to look at theorists.  Now, theorists are people who can grab hold of an idea in its theoretical form, in  its projection, in its visionary form, it's hypothetical. It's not real yet. It's just  projected. It's foreseen. It's envisioned. And so what we have with the theorist is  someone who can catch that idea, can buy into the theory and make a  commitment, and that's all they need. Is the theory of it. If it sounds like a good  idea, that makes sense, if it's appealing, if there's some compelling element to it, the theorist is able to buy in. Now note that, on average, there are a small  number of theorists. When you look at percentages of population, a small  percentage of a population will be a theorist, and when you look at the church in  particular, you look at congregations as they go through plateau into long term  plateau into decline. The deeper that a church gets down the backside of the  church life cycle, the less likely the presence of theorists would be prevalent.  Theorists would have a tendency to be among the first to leave a church that  was struggling from long term issues, because that just wouldn't be compelling.  It wouldn't be attractive, it wouldn't be motivational for a theorist. So that's kind  of a rule of thumb, that the deeper a church is into the backside of the life cycle,  the less likely the presence of theorists. Now I understand this mentality of  theorists pretty well, because I am actually a theorist myself, and I've got  numerous things in my background that that can attest to that. You know, first of  all, we've got a lot of moves that our family has made. One such move was a  move from our home base in Richmond, Virginia, out to Southern California to  plant a church. Well, the idea of it was compelling. God had already shown us  as a family that something was coming, that something was going to be  centered on Evangelistic ministry that it would be away from Richmond. In fact, 

we were already preparing the house to sell and making plans to be making  some kind of move. Now, we weren't thinking Southern California at the time.  And. I was in a very different mindset professionally. Truth is I was working as a  professional musician, which was my career path as a young adult, and our plan was to move to Nashville, but an opportunity presented itself to Southern  California, and it was so compelling. I just knew. I just knew right away God was  in this, a theorist is able to respond in that kind of short term. I don't need to  know all the details. I just need to know what the idea is. And of course, I had  the sense that God was in it. It was in it. Well, one of the things that the offer  entailed was the person that was giving me that offer said to me, Well, let me  bring you and your wife out here for a week, and you can look the place over,  get a feel for what's here, and after you've had a chance to do some  investigations and research, you can have a better sense of this is going to be  right for you, and whether or not you could make This journey, make this  commitment and come out here, and here's what I said to this gentleman. I said, You know what? I said, I'm so convinced that this is the right move for us. Let's  save the time and money that it would take for us to come all the way out to  Southern California to check it out. We don't need to check it out. We know. We  know that this is the right move. Don't need to see it well. That's a theorist  thinking. In this case, I'd like to think this is a sanctified theorist who is  responding to the leading of God. But the way I'm wired, I didn't need to see it.  The idea was enough. The theory was enough. The plan was enough, the vision was enough. Now, interestingly, about five years later, having made the move to  California and that church had grown substantially, and I had felt God calling me  to become more deeply involved in ministries other than the music and arts  ministry that I was leading. And I felt that I needed some seminary training, at  the time, theological training, and would need to pursue the credentials toward  becoming a licensed and credentialed pastor. And so there was one occasion I  was looking at going to a seminary in Orlando. Now understand that at this time, I was about 39 years old with four children. So the idea of picking up and  moving was not something that we took lightly. But in this case, I had an offer  from someone at the seminary to come out and spend some time at the  seminary, to check things out, to meet the professor, sit on some classes,  discuss things with some of the key staff at the seminary, and try to figure out if  this was was something that God would have us do. Now, this was a bit more  complicated than the move to California. There were more, more elements at  risk, at stake. Well, my wife and I went out to Orlando and spent about a week  investigating, checking it out, meeting with people. And when I came back to  Southern California, I sat down with the church planter with whom I served, and  he says, Well, what do you think? What do you think the plan is? Did you find  out? What you needed to find out? Well, this was my response. I said, You know what? I came away with more questions than answers. But I just know in my gut

that this is what I need to do. Classes are going to begin in August. At the time it  was, it was in March, said classes are going to begin in August, and I fully intend to be in class. Well, that's a theorist talking the idea of it. A theorist, you know,  has certain questions that he's thinking about. The questions are, is this new? Is this exciting? Is this innovative? Is this challenging, you know, is this in line with  with. Vision. In this case, I'm talking about a personal vision of engaging in the  corporate vision of first, the church plant, second, becoming engaged in  theological study. But this is the way the theorist mind works. This is what we  are thinking about as theorist now moving on, the next people type is the realist.  Now the realist is not going to be able to commit to the theory, to the idea. The  realist needs to see what this looks like in reality. The realist is not going to be  satisfied. Is not going to be able to make the jump just based on idea or theory  or vision alone. The realist needs to try to emphasize needs to see it, hear it,  engage with the new proposal to determine whether or not this is going to work  for me, whether or not this is going to make sense. So the kinds of questions  that the that the realist is concerned about are questions like this is, what is this? Is this turning out to be what I was told it was going to be? Does the reality live  up to the theory? You know, there was, there were those things that I was told  about this. I took them at face value, but are they proving to be so is this working for me? Could I get behind this and really support it? So you see, the theorists  and the realists have two different sets of criteria that need to be considered and that will determine whether or not they will be able to commit next comes the  pragmatist. Now here's what's up with the pragmatist, the pragmatist is not  going to buy the theory. The pragmatist is not going to buy even the reality the  prime the pragmatist is looking at a different set of key questions, questions like  this, is this change producing positive results are the outcomes, what was  predicted, what was promised. What I want you to notice here is that there is  going to be a time lag the theorist is able to commit early in the process, the  realist is going to require a little more time, because the realist needs to see the  proposed change, the proposed vision in action, before he or she is going to be  able to commit. Now the pragmatist even needs more time, because the  pragmatist needs to see if, if there are early returns on this investment that  makes sense, and at that point, if so, the pragmatist would be able to to get on  board that time lag is very important. You see, if you're expecting a pragmatist to commit early in the process, you're going to be very frustrated, and the  pragmatist is probably going to feel pressure from you to commit. Well, don't ask people to do what they can't do. And if a pragmatist, if you understand that this  person is wired to be a pragmatist, don't expect them to get on board just  because it's an exciting new idea. Don't expect them to get on board just  because there's there's delivery on what was promised, and people are able to  see what's been proposed in action, the pragmatist has got to know, does this  work? Are the outcomes what I was told they would be? Is this turning out to be 

as promised? Now let me give you an example of a pragmatist scenario. Our  church in Arizona, I mentioned to you, we started at 13, well, the last month that  we were holding services in the middle school, we averaged 129 in attendance.  Let's round that up to 130 and at our final Sunday in the middle. School, we  made an announcement. We announced that we would no longer be holding  services at the school. The truth is, I think I mentioned this in an earlier session.  The school district would only allow us two years in their facility. Now we ended  up being there two and a half years, because when we hit the two year mark, we had already purchased property. We had architectural plans approved by the  city, and we were in the process of construction. So the school district  recognized that we were en route to moving on. So they allowed us this this  grace of an additional six months, but that was it. So on the final Sunday of that  grace period, we made the announcement we will not be holding services here  any longer. Okay, that was clear. What was not clear is what was going to  happen the next Sunday. Here's the problem. We did not yet have a certificate  of occupancy from the city, and we would not be allowed in the building until we  had that certificate. And so here's what we did. We made an announcement that final Sunday at the school, next Sunday, we will be meeting at our new location.  We are hoping to be in the building, but we don't have the certificate of  occupancy if we don't get it by Sunday, we cannot meet in the building. So what  we'll do is we will set up a temporary meeting space, probably under a tent out  in the parking lot. So we cautioned people not to invite any, anyone new. This is  not a grand opening. This is not a big celebration. Don't invite any newcomers  yet, because we might end up being out in the parking lot. So just come if we  can get inside. Great. If not, fine. We'll have our service, and hopefully, in the not too distant future, we'll have our certificate of occupancy, we can legally meet in  the building, and once we know for sure that we can do that, then we will  announce to the community that we're making the move, and we will have some kind of Grand Opening Sunday. Now with that in mind, with that in mind, the  following Sunday, here's what happened. Late Saturday, we received our  certificate of occupancy, and so that allowed us to meet in the building on  Sunday morning, but with no advertising, no promotion of any kind, no big  rollout, you know, no hot air balloons, no big celebration, no announcement, no  launch. Sunday, we had 180 in attendance. We went from 130 to 180 on that  first Sunday, traveling without any any promotion. And guess what? We never  really dropped back below that. That that additional batch of people that showed up, for the most part, stayed with us. Well, what was going on with that? Well,  here's what was going on. We discovered in interviews with that group of people as they assimilated into the life of our church, we discovered that many folks in  our community had become very interested in our church. I think back to the  levels of commitment. You know, they had moved through that, that stage, you  know, where they were observing us, they were considering us. They were 

visiting, or thinking about visiting, but they were hesitant to visit. Why? Well, two  reasons. One is lots of folks didn't want to meet for a worship service in a  school, partly because many churches had attempted to get a foothold in this  community, had reached that two year mark with the school district and had to  fold up shop. And so there was a sentiment in the community of distrust that any church that's meeting in a school is probably not going to make it long term. So  let's just not get involved. Let's wait until we're certain that this church is going to survive in this community and become stabilized and permanent. And what was  an indication that that was happening. Well, the indication was that when this  church moves from the school into a permanent facility on property that it owns,  in a building that it owns, that's when we will know that we can trust this church  to survive. Now this was not a concerted effort. In other words, that wasn't a  group of 50 people that were that were hovering together waiting for this to  happen. These were individuals. These were couples. These were families, not  connected to each other, not connected to our church, just sitting on the outside, looking in. But the moment we were in our facility, they were there. That is how  the pragmatist mentality works. Now it would be incredibly unfair and  unproductive to try to get the pragmatist mentality to buy in early in the process,  as if they had a theorist mentality. Okay, so we've got theorists, we've got  realists, we've got pragmatist and the last group I'm going to call preservationist. Now, preservationists are folks that are so married to whatever the status quo is, it's very unlikely that they're going to make that change, that they're going to be  able to transition from whatever used to be to whatever's coming, and so our  expectation needs to be fairly low that the preservationist is going to get  involved. Now there are times when preservationists do get involved, but it has  to do for reasons other than their personality or their temperament. It might be  because, you know, there's, there's some family member, maybe a son or  daughter, with a with a family that are attending. And so the preservationist  decides, well, I'm not really happy about this, but I want to be where my family is sometimes there's a denominational affiliation that folks want to, want to uphold,  and so they'll try the new thing based on that. But you see that preservationist  tendency is not to make the move from whatever the past has been whatever  the status quo has been, to the new thing. Now, I'd like for you to stop for a  moment as a pastor, as a leader, and I want you to think about specific  individuals that are part of your church. And I want you to consider this set of  questions. Who do? Who do you know that might be a theorist? Think about that person and think think about what makes them tick. Think about how they've  responded to new ideas, new vision in the past, who do you know that might be  a realist, that might be a pragmatist, that might be a preservationist? Now,  remember, you have, you have tools at your disposal in terms of vision, casting,  remember the divide and serve principle, remember to avoid the town hall  meeting. Remember private vision casting. Remember the complementary 

element of public vision casting. But it's very, very important as you cast vision  that you are keenly aware of the people types that you're working with. If you  want to build momentum, work with the theorist first, and then move to the  realist, then move to the pragmatist, and by all means, we want to include the  preservationist. Just don't get your hopes up that they're going to jump in  particularly very early. You know, people are different. They're wired differently.  And here's the thing, the very thing that is compelling to a theorist might actually  be scary for a. Preservationist. So each person needs to be considered for who  he or she is. We need to understand what works for them, what doesn't work for  them, what the criteria are for that person to make a commitment, what kinds of  questions you need to answer, how you might approach these various people  types with various elements of vision casting. Now that completes our video on  this subject of people types. Next time we're going to be considering the skill  topic, Team casting, working together as a team to cast vision. So may God  bless your continuing efforts to serve Him in the name of Jesus. Amen.