It has been revealed in a story broken by Capstone Report that a church planted by David Platt’s church planting ministry in partnership with the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board (NAMB) heavily promotes the use of the Enneagram to train its ministers for the gospel.

What is the Enneagram

The Enneagram touts itself as a way–apart from the Scriptures–to gain insight into one’s “true self,” restore balance and develop more desirable qualities to one’s personality and reach a state of spiritual “freedom.” The Enneagram is believed to have its roots in ancient occultism and its earliest mentions can be found in the writings of the Ouspensky, a Russian occultist. Essentially, it is an extra-biblical “personality test” with its roots in the occult.

Francis Roles, an associate of Ouspensky and architect of the Enneagram stated that “what we should be interested in is True Knowledge, whether in Western form or in the form of the wisdom of the East. Both are united for us in this symbol – the universal symbol of the Enneagram – from which everything that we have taught here in this house since Mr. Ouspensky died has been derived.”

The Enneagram is not only unbiblical, but more often than not, it is found to be at complete odds with what the Scriptures say about man, sin, and spirituality.

Richard Rohr, a prominent emergent church leader is one of the primary proponents of the use of the Enneagram in Christianity. Bob DeWaay explains, “It is clear that the theology that underlies Enneagram is lacking a view of God that is consistent with His self-revelation in the Bible epitomized by having spoken to us in His Son.”

Citylight Church

The New City Network, as its website explains, “was established in 2016 as the church planting ministry of McLean Bible Church in an effort to carry out the vision of ‘multiplying churches among all nations beginning in greater Washington, DC.'” The New City Network website also reveals that it is in partnership with a D.C. area church, Citylight Church.

According to the Citylight Church website, “Citylight officially launched September 15th, 2019. That very first day God showed up big and He has continued to do more than we ever could have imagined. We started with a commitment to bring light to the darkness and to do so by planting community center churches. We wanted to model the holistic ministry of Jesus in Luke 4 and Isaiah 61 to serve the soul and the body.”

The church, which is pastored by Nate Crew, offers a training manual to train ministers called The Basic Training Booklet. In one particular part of this training manual, it states that the church will be contacting its ministers in training to submit to an Enneagram test to “help identify your type.”

This is part of the church’s session on Spiritual Gifts and, accordingly, will be used to identify, apart from Scripture, how a future minister can best serve the body.

North American Mission Board (NAMB)

The NAMB has been embroiled in scandal for as long as its current leadership has been in office.

Reformation Charlotte reported that the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board (NAMB) put out a statement denouncing women pastors and stated that the organization would no longer support churches with female pastors.

But that was after NAMB president, Kevin Ezell held a church planting conference with women pastors just the month prior. After the statement was released, another NAMB leader, Dhati Lewis–who was president of NAMB’s Send Network–joined women pastors at an Evangelism Conference. The Amplify Outreach conference, which featured several well-established woke types including Ed Stetzer, Ann Voskamp, and Dhati Lewis himself was just held this week and featured Reverend Michelle Sanchez.

NAMB has also been caught up in a court battle making its way all the way to the Supreme Court involving allegations of money laundering and fraud.