This idea recurs in The Rule of St. Benedict. At first glance, it looks regimented (an order for prayer, for work, for finances and chores and devotions and even rest so that one's entire life can be oriented around union with God). But Benedict constantly reminds those charged with spiritual care to tailor their actions to the individual.
"Each age and understanding requires its own discipline," he writes. "One he must coax, another he must scold, another he must persuade, according to each one's character and understanding. Thus he must adjust and adapt himself to all." A good abbot plays chess, not checkers.
Getting Out of Default Mode
Years ago I was talking to Neil Warren (the eHarmony guy; he was the dean of the psychology school I attended) about how to help one of my children. Neil said that just as there are the three laws of real estate (location, location, location), so there are three laws of relationship: observation, observation, observation. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of observation in giving spiritual guidance.
Why? Because the default mode of human beings is to assume that I define normalcy, that other people are like me. In churches, pastors can be unhelpful to people with different temperaments or in different seasons of life. How much guilt have extraverted mothers of young children felt because an introverted senior pastor who was not deeply engaged in caring for his own children stressed how long his quiet times were in the morning?
And when I recognize others are different than me, then I am always tempted toward either envy or judgment. I think of one couple (not me and Nancy, honest!) where she is an activist people-magnet and he is a stoic introvert. He tends to judge her as being superficial because she has a low capacity for solitude; she tends to judge him as unloving because his desire to be with other people only surfaces once a year or so. Both feel secret guilt for their own deficiencies.
It's interesting how we all tend to perceive the church as having been designed for somebody other than me. Adam McHugh (an introvert) has written a wonderful book, Introverts in the Church. He notices that churches are constantly pulling people together for worship and for small groups and for serving activities; he points out how often introverts feel disenfranchised or judged. On the other hand, my wife is convinced that all books on spiritual formation have been written by introspective bookish males who make extroverts feel superficial and guilty.
The reality is that every difference carries its own possibilities and its own challenges. Our task is not to evaluate which is better. Our task is to observe, to diagnose, and then to prescribe what will be most helpful to lead each person toward maturity in Christ.
What do I need to observe to help people who are different than me? Here are a few key questions.
What brings that person life?
Looking for a conversation stopper? Try asking someone: How are your spiritual disciplines going? Most people think of a very short list of activities that fall in the "I ought to do this, but I don't do it as much as I should, so I feel guilty just thinking about it" category. So here's an alternative question: What do you do that makes you feel fully alive?
Everybody knows what it's like to feel fully alive, and everybody longs for that. Allowing someone to answer that question will go a long way toward telling you the sort of person you're trying to help. For one friend of mine, it's surfing. For another it's feasting on fabulous food with deep, joyful, disclosing friends. For another, it's fixing stuff. For another, it's the blues.
The Spirit of God is called by the apostle Paul "the Spirit of Life," and one of the great signs of the Spirit's presence in someone's life is great vitality.
A spiritual discipline is simply an activity you engage in to be made more fully alive by the Spirit of Life.
A helpful distinction here is that some spiritual practices produce life in me because they fit my sweet spot, and some spiritual practices are used by God to transform me by overcoming sinful tendencies in me.
So, for instance, an introvert naturally leans into solitude, because we feel God's presence more intensely apart from the demands of other people.
At the same time, that introvert may wrestle with the tendency toward self-absorption. Therefore the practice of fellowship, or of servanthood, may also be critically important—not because it feels "natural," but because it helps correct what could otherwise become sinful.
But while "corrective" practices are important, they cannot provide the fundamental power for spiritual life. That comes only as I experience God's presence—doing what Jesus called "abiding." And helping others grow in this will surely require noticing what God uses to enliven them.
Sustainable spiritual growth happens when I actually want to do what I ought to do. This means I have to change how I think about what "counts" as spiritual. For what makes an activity "spiritual" is whether or not I do it with and through the Spirit. It's not the activity itself. It's the quality of the presence and interaction with the Spirit while I'm doing the activity.
So in addition to temperament, here are four other areas to observe in people who are not like you.
What's that person's spiritual pathway?
Author Gary Thomas has written about how we all have "sacred pathways," ways that help us experience the presence of God. Often we'll know them because we find ourselves most often being changed or making key decisions when we're doing this particular activity.
Some people connect to God best through nature. Some through service, finding God naturally when they are charging into a cause. Intellectuals find their hearts filled with the Spirit when their minds are filled with great thoughts. Some connect most naturally with God in solitary contemplation; others feel closest to God surrounded by friends. Some sense him nearest in worship.
Most people will find one or two pathways most resonant with them. Understanding this is immensely freeing; most folks carry secret guilt because certain practices are hard for them, and they're relieved to find that the activities they love actually "count" with God.
What's that person's learning style?
God wired us to learn in different ways. Spiritual growth is not restricted to people who like school. It helps to know how the people we're working with actually learn.
One man is quite bright and devoted to God, but he hates to read. Because pastors often love to read, he ended up feeling like a spiritual loser. So approaches to spiritual growth that require much reading are not going to help him. For him, finding resources he could listen to was liberating. He learns by listening: conversations and podcasts and talks.
Some people learn mainly by doing. If I try to assemble something, I'll read the instructions seven times before trying to put tab A in slot B. But my friend Sam is a hands-on guy. He will try to build a nuclear power plant without looking at directions first. Trial-and-error is the way he learns best, which is fine as long as he is not packing my parachute. For Sam, sitting in a church listening to a talk will never be his primary path to growth. An hour of doing is worth ten hours of listening.
Nan learns best when her emotions are engaged and expressed. She will be impacted most by information that is wrapped up in imagination and art. Her husband, Wendell, on the other hand, doesn't experience life that way. Deep emotion actually interferes with his learning.
What's that person's signature sin?
Every person wrestles with a unique set of temptations. No one sins exactly like anyone else. Michael Mangis calls these "signature sins," the patterns of rebellion or sloth or selfishness that particularly appeal to me. Much of my own signature sin has to do with the need to look better than I really am, and not wanting to be confronted with evidence to the contrary.
Not long ago, Nancy and I got home from a party with folks at our church. Nancy said to me, "This is a small thing, but I noticed tonight that when you talked with people you often didn't look them in the eye. People love it when you look directly at them."
My first thought was: Who died and made you body language queen?
My next thought was: I'm Swedish. Swedes never look anybody in the eye. Not even during eye examinations. That's why there are no Swedish ophthalmologists.
But then eventually I had another thought. I'm glad I'm married to someone who cares enough to notice, and who loves me enough to speak.
Everyone you try to help wrestles with their own signature sin. Asking permission to speak into this is critical.
During the early days of the Methodist movement, people actually used to have to answer the question: "Are you willing each of us should speak whatsoever is in his heart concerning you? Are you willing that in so doing we should cut to the quick, and speak whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we feel concerning you?"
Such questions, from a loving, observant believer, leads to purity and growth. The presence of attention and the courage to face sin have transformative power.
What's that person's season of life?
How people grow depends on the season of their spiritual life. When a plant is very young, it often needs more external support to help its growth. Tomato plants or young trees get tied to stakes; vines may need a lattice. But as they grow, the framework that was needed in the early days may actually inhibit its growth later on.
In spiritual life, structure is often most important in early days. People have so much to learn. Worship, prayer, the Bible are all new. But as the years pass, what helps in one season may not help in another.
One woman I know always loved to read and study the Scriptures. Then her husband died, and she found that in her grief, reading the Bible was not helpful to her. This was not because she was resistant. In her great pain, for many months, it was like dust. So she had to live on what she had already fed her mind. Her hunger for Scripture returned eventually, but for a season of grief she had to receive grace in other ways.
Sometimes people experience stretches of spiritual dryness; then it's the spiritual director's task to help them understand why before they start prescribing. Sometimes spiritual dryness is caused by sin. Nathan told a very compelling story to David so that David would repent after his murder of Uriah and adultery with Bathsheba.
But often, for instance in the psalms of lament, spiritual dryness is a greater mystery, and may require patience, or gentleness, or creativity.
I remember Dallas Willard telling me about a person he met with to talk about spiritual growth. This man had been attending church for years out of duty and obligation. He kept showing up, but it was making him feel farther from God and less alive spiritually.
"Here's an idea," Dallas said. "Stop going to church. Wait until you want to go again. Find out why you want to go. Trust that, if you truly seek, God will bring the desire back to you."
John of the Cross said that the dark night of the soul is indispensible to spiritual growth. But the dark night is not simply a synonym for suffering; it was a technical expression describing a season in which God deliberately withdraws spiritual consolation from the soul so that a person can become devoted to him alone and not simply the consolation that he brings.
To tell such a person that they should try harder in their devotional life or church attendance would be to harm and not help them.
The Divine Telescope
I was with friends recently in a setting where we could see for more miles than we could count; to the ocean, to the stars, to coastal foothills and large ranch acreage and rocky beaches and craggy foothills. Someone had left a telescope, and we were able to know and enjoy a level of seeing that we never could have enjoyed on our own.
C.S. Lewis said once that perhaps we are all created differently so that we can see and enjoy and point to a part of God that no one else is quite suited to see and praise. Perhaps, he said, that's part of why there are so many people. Perhaps that is why we are all so different from each other.
Perhaps we are all together part of a great lens that enables us collectively to see what none of us can individually.
If that—or something like it—is true, then my helping people who seem different than me to grow is not something I do out of sheer altruism. I do it because I, too, will be enriched by the other person's vision of God.
I, too—by myself—am the weird one. I, too, am the one waiting for you to see the vision of God that will be seen and sung by no other.
John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.
Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.
