One of the great fascinations in the church today is with temperament analysis. It is difficult to find a book produced by a church-related publisher that doesn’t discuss cholerics and phlegmatics or thinkers and feelers or motivated ability patterns. I personally have taken the Myers-Briggs Inventory so often I’m no longer certain I have any personality left at all.
Which is why I was so pleased to hear that the definitive personality diagnostic tool is finally available. A friend told me about it, and its elegant simplicity is characteristic of pure science at its finest.
To put it in lay terms, this theory maintains that all human beings fit into one of three basic personality types: the Moe personality type, the Larry personality type, or the Curly personality type.
The Moe type is the person with a high need to be in charge. General Patton and Billy Sunday were Moes. All books with the words vision or leadership in the title are written by Moes. All popes are Moe.
The Larry type is a person who more or less hangs around waiting for Moe to disappear so he can take over. (In meta-church language, a Larry is “a rising Moe.” Larrys often suffer from “delusion of Moe-ness.”) All Christian TV or radio talk show second bananas are Larrys. This is why they are so agreeable.
The Curly type doesn’t have a clue. True Curly types will never be anything but Curly types, and could not even tell you the difference between Moe and Larry. Speakers who specialize in clever book titles (Put the Roadkill on the Table and Call the Kids for Supper!) are all Curly.
(One mystery of the Stooges is that the Stooge with curly hair is called Larry, while the Stooge called Curly had a crew cut with no curls at all. The Stooges had a nice sense of irony, like Aeschylus.)
A helpful exercise you may want to lead your staff through would be to enable them to discover their stooge so you can match their personality type with the area of ministry where they will be most effective. For instance:
Moe: wedding hostess, senior pastor, Alexander Haig impersonator, choir director, church crank, parachurch organization founder, leader of survivalist ministry.
Larry: church secretary, church treasurer, flannelgraph operator (“Call now! Our flannelgraph operators are standing by!”), lay counselor, lay mortician, lay neurosurgeon.
Curly: church bus driver, youth group sponsor, guy who brings donuts to the ushers, denominational chief executive.
Of course, some of you have been in abusive churches where your stooge has not been valued. You may be interested in a book coming out this fall: Releasing Your Inner Stooge.
And if you’re not happy with your particular stooge, just remember: It could be worse. You could have been born a Shemp.
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John Ortberg is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois.
Copyright (c) 1995 Christianity Today, Inc./LEADERSHIP Journal
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Copyright © 1995 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
