It is unfortunate that Pastor Zach Tyler and so many other Enneagram proponents have embraced and defended this idol as a spiritual tool through which the word of God is interpreted. Can a Christian honestly accept concepts like “shaman, shamanism, magic songs, altered states of consciousness, animal or nature spirits, channeling, hallucinogens, shamanic soul restoration, divination, automatic writing, and other undeniably dark New Age practices? How are they in any way compatible with biblical Christianity?

One of the recurring themes in the book of Judges is the Israelites’ replacement of the One True God with created idols. We find it in Judges 2:11:
And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals.
God judged His people and then raised up judges to deliver them from the egregious results of His righteous judgment. However, after each judge died, the people turned back to their worship of idols. It was a spiritual process of cleanse, rinse, and repeat. (Judges 2:16-19; cf. Judges 3:7-11) When Gideon broke down his father’s Baal idol and cut down the Asherah, the town’s people were out for blood. Gideon’s blood. (Judges 6:25-30) Christians today are inclined to shake their heads and give these passages a tsk, tsk – while claiming they don’t understand how the Nation of Israel could have so easily turned from the God Who delivered them to idols they had created by their own hands. Is the church that much better, though? It doesn’t seem so.
As the occult origins of the Enneagram are pointed out to those happily engaged in the Enneagram craze, a very common defense is, “Choosing to use the Enneagram or not is like the question of eating meat sacrificed to idols.” (1 Corinthians 8) In other words, Christians are as free to engage with the Enneagram as the Christians in the early church were free to eat meat that had been “sacrificed to idols.” But, as our good friend and associate Marcia Montenegro succinctly points out,
The Enneagram is not like meat sacrificed to idols. The Enneagram IS the idol.
In her October 2022 article, “Is the Enneagram Like Meat Offered to Idols?” Marcia correctly explains that meat is spiritually neutral. It is just food and not a spiritual tool. The Apostle Paul voiced this very sentiment:
Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. (1 Corinthians 8:8)
The issue wasn’t about shunning meat that was used in a ritual to an idol, but that we are to “flee from idolatry” itself. That is pretty straightforward. Even so, Intervarsity Press, Zondervan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, and Russell Moore at Christianity Today are all in on promoting this idol as the current spiritual tool of choice – and why not? Like the very best idols in the ancient past, this one is very profitable.
In a 2010 interview, Claudio Naranjo confessed that he invented the story that the Enneagram is ancient and that he channeled the specific Enneagram types through automatic writing. Naranjo’s lies concerning the Enneagram’s origins and his “channeling” of the specifics occurred six years before IVP introduced the Enneagram idol into the Evangelical church. When informed of its true origins and of Naranjo’s channeling of the types, IVP – and the other publishers we contacted – ignored the evidence and simply resent their form letter asserting its ancient origins. As more Christians are becoming aware of its occultic connection, this is becoming an increasing problem for the Enneagram priests and priestesses. Pastor Zach Tyler at Gospel for Enneagram recently attempted to mitigate Naranjo’s automatic writing confession in his Gospel for Enneagram Youtube video, “Is the Enneagram Demonic? An Informed Response.” Is Tyler providing an “informed response,” or is this an uninformed or deceptive attempt at defense for something that is incompatible with Biblical teachings?
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From the earliest days, local churches have demonstrated concern for the establishment and edification of God’s kingdom beyond their immediate proximity. The Ephesians and Colossians were renowned for their love for all the saints (Eph 1:15; Col 1:4); the Philippians’ koinonia in the gospel was praised and celebrated by Paul (Php 1:5); the generosity of the churches in Macedonia and Achaia towards the poor in Jerusalem earned Paul’s commendation and fuelled his encouragement of the Romans to act similarly towards the unreached in Spain (Rom 15:24-28). Paul’s various exhortations for churches in one location to pray for those in another demonstrates the biblically commended character of the early church. 

I remember the moment clearly. For several years my wife and I had been weighing up the prospect of vocational ministry. I loved opening the Bible with people and helping them to know Jesus better, but I felt inadequate for the task of pastoral ministry.
Our perspective changed when we received a prayer letter from friends who’d just arrived in a new country for their first term of missionary service with CMS. What struck me about their letter was not what I read, but what I saw: a photo of their young children perched on a pile of suitcases at a foreign luggage carousel. They’d packed their life into those suitcases and moved to a place where they had no language, no cultural experience, no friends, and no family. There were so many unknowns and so much weakness. Yet, there they were—for the sake of the gospel.
That snapshot of vulnerability gave me courage. It reminded me that God does not rely on human strength to achieve his purposes. Indeed, it is when I am weak that I am strong (2 Cor 12:10) and when he is most glorified. When we know that the gospel is the power of God for the salvation of all who believe (Rom 1:16), we can be confident that we are more equipped for the task of ministry than we can imagine. Carrying this treasure in jars of clay (2 Cor 4:7) is the way the Lord gives strength to his people (Psa 29:11). This illustrates one small way that exposure to global mission can impact people in our churches and stir them to serve more courageously in our local context.
And our local context is in vital need of the gospel. We long for faithful Christians to joyfully proclaim the good news of Jesus in our streets, suburbs, states and territories. We long for Christ to be heard so he will be worshipped. We long for him to be worshipped so he will be heard.
With so much need locally, what place does global mission have in the life of the local church? With so many people from other nations migrating to our shores, why invest in overseas mission at all? Is the opportunity cost of sending scarce gospel resources out of Australia too high? Does our hunger to see tangible results in our own backyard weaken the business case for mission?
In our right desire to see fellow Australians come to know Jesus, we need to be wary not to neglect global mission. We need to continually consider both the distinction between global mission and local evangelism, and also how they relate. I propose we make a habit of asking ourselves not “Where does global mission fit in our church?” but “Where does our church fit in global mission?” I believe setting our ministries in this wider frame—starting with the ‘ends of the earth’ in mind—will help us strike the right balance and safeguard our churches from becoming introspective and selfserving.
Here are four reasons why this matters:
1. A Global Mission Framework Aligns with God’s Purposes and Will
While mission is not a prominent activity of God’s people in the Old Testament, the trajectory of God’s will and the focus of his purpose is always towards the ends of the earth. We see this from the outset in the creation mandate to “fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen 1:28). It is then reiterated to Noah after the flood (Gen 9:1) and enshrined for the ages in God’s promise to Abraham: “all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:3).
From this foundation, the biblical history continually re-asserts the end towards which God is working (e.g. Psa 19:4; 47:7; 67:2; 1 Chr 16:23-24; Isa 2:3-4; Zech 9:10; Mal 1:11, 14).
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We need to do better by the Reformed faith. We should not shun words like beautiful, nuance, winsome, and missional, but find ways to use them and use them properly: to extol the virtues of the Westminster Standards as a philosophy of ministry and summary of the Scripture’s teaching.

Language shapes the way people think and heavily influences the judgments people make. George Orwell illustrates this well in 1984. We see this in secular culture; simply by adding the modifier affirming to a product, policy, or institution, it is easier to brand opponents of the policy, product, or institution as some sort of -phobic.
Who could possibly be opposed to something that is affirming and who could survive being labeled some sort of -phobic? Language manipulates the way people perceive issues and even whole groups.
Even in the Church labels influence the way people in the Church relate to one another and how we see ourselves relative to others in the communion. Of course our primary identity flows out of Christ as saints, beloved, and children. Nonetheless in a communion as large as the PCA it is helpful to recognize where one stands along the spectrum.
In 2015, TE Bryan Chapell wrote describing his impression of three main groups in the PCA: “traditionalists, progressives, and neutrals.” Nobody seemed to like Chapell’s designations, and the volume of blogs on all sides objecting to the way Chapell described the different groupings suggests he was probably near the target(s).
While I am not a fan of being labeled a traditionalist, the three words Chapell used to describe the three groups were respectful and accurate enough for people to grasp what he was talking about in 2015 without a whole lot of nuance or elaboration. There are simply differences of ministry perspective, philosophy and priorities across the PCA, and people generally fall into one of about three broad categories. Chapell’s three words effectively distinguished the three groups.
Shaping the Message
Not all labels are as neutral as the ones in TE Chapell’s 2015 article. If an elder is described as winsome, missional, outward facing, and/or gospel centered where would we assume he falls in the Chapell Taxonomy above? If a congregation tends to focus or speak much on “beauty” and “authenticity,” where would you tend to assume it falls on the Chapell Taxonomy?
Recently a church website posted selections of references given for pastoral candidate TE James Kessler, including one from now Stated Clerk Chapell.
Stated Clerk Chapell asserted,
James [Kessler] is courageous and gospel centered. He is very insightful of people. James has multiple gifts so he has an extraordinary ministry. He is a true gem. James has been a leader in the denomination, especially of those pastors who are ‘gospel centered.’
Are there PCA pastors who are not “gospel centered,” is there a portion of the PCA which is not “gospel centered?” What would the taxonomic label for this group be? “Law Centered?” We can only speculate, and that is not the purpose of this article.
My purpose is, however, to highlight how men on the more confessional or “traditionalist” end of the PCA spectrum have done a poor job using language to communicate the beauty, loveliness, and grandeur of simple, ordinary, plain, vanilla, Old School, Reformed, Westminster, Confessional, Ordinary Means of Grace Presbyterianism.
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