Andy Frost from Share Jesus International explains about the Faith Sharing Profiles they have developed, which can help us find the most effective way each of us can share our faith
Myers-Briggs? Enneagram? Strength finders?
There are a whole host of personality tests out there to help us understand ourselves better. But I’ve been wondering whether there is a way to help us better understand how we share our faith.
Over the last 25 years I have been working with local churches and individual Christians who want to share their faith. What I have discovered in that time is that many of us can feel pressured to share Jesus in a certain way. And when we fail to do so, we can end up feeling really guilty!
I believe that faith sharing is not a ‘we-have-to’ but a ‘we-get-to’. We get to share Jesus with our friends, family, colleagues and neighbours. I also believe that each of us has a unique personality and temperament and God uses that as we share about Him.
At SJI we have conducted a piece of research in an attempt to better understand how different people share their faith. Quantitive and qualitative research has helped us configure six faith sharing profiles that give some broad brushstrokes as to how we share Jesus.
We then created a short online quiz to help practicing Christians discern how they tend to share their faith. With the caveat that our approach will change according to context and situation, these profiles help us discern our natural tendencies.
The Profiles help Christians to understand one another better and over the last few weeks, I have done this quiz with church leadership teams who have been able to recognise how they come at faith sharing from different perspectives. Each profile has some attributes to celebrate and some ideas to help us all stretch ourselves a little bit too!
You can take the online quiz here: https://www.sharejesusinternational.com/sj-quiz/ and you might like to reflect on these questions afterwards:
Do you agree with the Faith Sharing Profile you received?
How does it make you feel?
What might you do having taken this quiz and seen your results?
What do you want to keep doing and what you might you want to tweak?
