Journal: Journal of Dispensational Theology
Volume: JODT 25:71 (Autumn 2021)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Anonymous

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Book Reviews

The Enneagram Goes to Church: Wisdom for Leadership, Worship, and Congregational Life by Todd Wilson. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021. 166 pp., paper, $17.99.

Todd Wilson, former senior pastor of Calvary Memorial Church and currently president of the Center for Pastor Theologians, is perhaps best known for his book The Pastor Theologian, which he coauthored with Gerald Hiestand. In that volume, Wilson emphasized the need for pastors to be serious theologians. The Center for Pastor Theologians was established to promote this emphasis and, while review of the book revealed some differences, overall it could be applauded (and still is) for the importance he gave to the role of pastors as theologians. Therefore, it was with considerable consternation to discover a man who had placed so much stress on doctrine had written a book celebrating the trendy, pseudo-psychological, personality typing system: the Enneagram. Enneagram should be exposed for its cultic, even occultic, origin, lack of any scientific validity, its hopeless complexity, and its overall unbiblical teachings. While those comments will not be repeated in this review, it is sufficient to say that Wilson has essentially taken all the worst elements of the Enneagram, attempted to convince his readership of the necessity for incorporating it into church life, and has devised ways to do so.

After two chapters about the significance and value of the Enneagram, Wilson devoted a chapter each to incorporating it into various layers of church life: pastors (ch. 3), leaders (ch. 4), preaching (ch. 5), worship (ch. 6), congregational care (ch. 7), teamwork (ch. 8), and churches (ch. 9). The only comment concerning these chapters is to note that the sources for Wilson’s instructions are secular leaders, psychology, Enneagram experts, and personal experience, not Scripture. Indeed, it would be impossible to support the Enneagram from the Bible since nothing remotely like it is found on the pages of divine revelation. Had the author taken his own advice: “The last thing most American Christians need is another fad to fixate on” (p. 15), this book would never have been written.

Given all the Enneagram negatives already mentioned, why would a pastor and scholar of Wilson’s caliber fixate on this fad, and why does he want the evangelical church to follow his lead? His motivation seems to lie in the weaknesses he recognizes in his own life and pastoral ministry. On the first page, he wrote, “If I would have known the Enneagram, I would have

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been a much better pastor.” He believes “that the Enneagram [has] some game-changing wisdom for” him and others (p. 4). When he discovered ...