Waffles and Spaghetti - A growth group for couples

This Fall, my husband and I will be leading a growth group at Fair Oaks Church based on the book “Men Are Like Waffles-Women Are Like Spaghetti.” This interactive study designed by Christian authors Bill and Pam Farrel is a humorous look at God’s design in the differences between men and women which should keep participants laughing and engaged with video messages from the authors each week, workbook exercises and what promises to be lively discussion!

Men and women know they are different, but what can they do about it? In this interactive study, Bill & Pam Farrel explain why men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti. Men order each element of their lives into a separate box, women weave details of their lives together so everything touches everything else.

This study will help couples use their differences to better communicate and relate to each other as partners and parents. The material in this study is designed to help couples love and support each other in seven key areas:

·         Acceptance

·         Service

·         Encouragement

·         Forgiveness

·         Devotion

·         Motivation

·         Edification

And each of the seven lessons are sprinkled with the secret to all successful relationships – the Word of God. Check out this sneak preview…

If you are interested in registering for this study, click here: Fall Growth Groups at Fair Oaks Church

We will be meeting in the Floyd White Chapel at Fair Oaks Church from 6:00pm – 8:00pm on select Sundays (9/18, 9/25, 10/2, 10/16, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20). Each couple should purchase 2 Waffles & Spaghetti workbooks at the cost of $15 for the pair and are available for purchase at Connection Central at Fair Oaks Church. Check out this promo:

For anyone who has participated in any of my other workshops or growth groups, this is NOT an MBTI study. Although there are certainly some places where descriptions overlap in the functions (S/N and T/F) there are other areas where they are clearly not in sync. A welcome sidebar for anyone interested in discussing it.

Hope to see you there!

You, Me & God

How Personality Type Influences How We “Do Relationships”

For The Spring Growth Group season at Fair Oaks Church, I will be leading a study group on how our personality Type influences how we “do relationships.” This group study is a follow up to the Family Relationships/MBTI Workshops that I’ve conducted at Fair Oaks Church and will build on the foundation of personality Type to explore our relationships with God and each other. Key topics in our discussions will be marriage, family dynamics and spiritual growth.

Because this study is a continuation of the material taught in the MBTI workshops, the participants who sign up must already have a foundation and knowledge of MBTI and Type. It’s not necessary to have gone through one of my workshops, but they need to have gone through the MBTI with a qualified administrator (not just one of those free online tests), they need to know their 4-letter type and have validated that type (meaning they know enough about it to have affirmed it is a true and accurate type for them) and be hungry to learn more and be stretched in their spiritual and relationship journeys.

It will not be necessary to purchase a book for this Growth Group - although you’ll probably feel compelled to before we get to the end of it. I will be supplying the participants with books-on-loan from my personal library for the duration of the Growth Group. The idea is that each participant has something different that they want to get out of this deeper study – perhaps it’s about marriage, parenting, work, spiritual growth, or just more about self – so the participants will be able to choose a book from one of those many topics that will speak to their individual angle of Type as we go through a dichotomy-by-dichotomy discussion at each of our sessions.

So here’s what it will look like (for all you “J” types who need a list and schedule):

When: Every other Wednesday 6:45 to 8 p.m.

Where: Fair Oaks Church Chapel

Session 1: Wednesday, May 4th – Group introductions and discussion of our own type. Selecting the book(s) we each want to use throughout the study.

Session 2: Wednesday, May 18th – Group discusses the Introversion/Extroversion dichotomy.


Session 3: Wednesday, June 1st – Group discusses the Sensing/iNuition dichotomy.

Session 4: Wednesday, June 15th – Group discusses the Thinking/Feeling dichotomy.

Session 5: Wednesday, June 29th – Group discusses the Judging/Perceiving dichotomy and wrap up the study.

Growth Group Resources – The MBTI Lending Library

The following books will be made available to the group participants throughout the study. Participants are welcome to take the books home, highlight in yellow or underline in pencil, switch books out from week-to-week if the one they picked isn’t hitting the mark, whatever helps make the most of the study.

16 Ways to Love Your Lover, Kroeger, Otto & Thuesen, Janet M., New York, NY: Delacorte Press, 1994, ISBN 0-385-31031-5

Differing Gifts: Understanding Personality Type, Myers, Isabel B. & Myers, Peter B., Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980, ISBN 0-89106-064-2

How We Belong, Fight and Pray: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator as a Key to Congregational Dynamics, Edwards, Lloyd, New York, NY: Alban Institute, 1993, ISBN 1-56699-114-5

Just Your Type: Create the Relationship You’ve Always Wanted Using the Secrets of Personality Type, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., 2000, ISBN 0-316-84569-8

Knowing Me, Knowing God, Exploring Your Spirituality with Myers-Briggs, Goldsmith, Malcolm, Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997, ISBN 0-687-01705-X
Life Types, Hirsh, Sandra& Kummerow, Jean., New York, NY: Warner Books, 1989, ISBN 0-446-38823-8

Looking at Type and Spirituality, Hirsh, Sandra Krebs & Kise, Jane A.G., Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1997, ISBN 0-935652-30-2

MotherStyles: Using Personality Type to Discover Your Parenting Strengths, Janet P. Penley, Diane Eble, 2006 Distributed Product, ISBN 0738210455

Nurture by Nature: Understanding Your child's Personality Type And Become a Better Parent, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, Toronto, ON: Little Brown, 1997, ISBN: 0-316-84513-2

Personality Type and Religious Leadership, Oswald, Roy M. & Kroeger, Otto, Washington, D.C., Alban Institute, 1988, ISBN - None, Lib. Of Congress - 88-70758

Personality Type in Congregations: How to Work with Others More Effectively, Baab, Lynne M., New York, NY: Alban Inst., 1998, ISBN1-56699-193-5

Please Understand Me: Character & Temperament Types, Keirsey, David, & Bates, Marilyn, Del Mar, CA: Prometheus Nemesis, 1978, ISBN 0-9606954-0-0

SoulTypes: Finding the Spiritual Path That Is Right for You, Hirsh, Sandra Krebs & Kise, Jane A.G., New York, NY: Hyperion, 1998, ISBN 0-7869-8289-1

The Art of Speedreading People, Tieger, Paul D. & Barron-Tieger, Barbara, New York, NY: Little, Brown & Co., 1998, ISBN 0-316-84525-6

Type Talk at Work: How the 16 Personality Types Determine Your Success on the Job, Kroeger, Otto & Thuesen, Janet M., New York, NY: Delta, 1993, ISBN 0-440-50928-9

Who We Are Is How We Pray: Matching Personality and Spirituality, Keating, Charles J., Myrtle, CT: Twenty-third Publications, 1987, ISBN 0-89622-321-3

Your Personality and the Spiritual Life: Understanding Who You Are Can Deepen Your Relationship with God, Johnson, Reginald, Gainesville, FL: Center for Applications of Psychological Type, 1999, ISBN 0-935652-47-7

Debt-Free in 2011

This week at Fair Oaks Church we will begin a 6-session growth group based on Joe Sangl’s “I Was Broke. Now I’m Not” that teaches people how to win with their money in a way that honors God. As I’ve been preparing to help lead this growth group I started thinking about my own “money story.”

My sister tells people that I still have the first dollar I ever earned. I don’t - although that would be neat if I did – I did eventually spend that dollar and the others I’d been saving up from my paper route. I’ve always been a saver. Starting with elementary-aged allowance, then to the middle-school paper route and teenaged afterschool jobs, what excited me about working was the security of the pile of money in my sock drawer, not the plans and dreams of what I was going to spend it on.

Although some may find that enviable, you have to be careful you don’t become the third servant who buries his talents (Mathew 25:14-30). I’m good at saving and it’s served me well through the financial ups and downs I’ve had, but while Joe Sangl was at Fair Oaks Church last weekend for the Financial Learning Event (and I heard him back in 2008 too), I realized that with all that I may have been doing right, I was still missing something.

He and I were talking between services and I was telling him how we are only a few months away from being 100% debt free using his snow-ball method and he asked me the simplest of questions which was followed by my dumbfounded silence. He asked, “so once you’re debt-free, what dream vacation are you going to put all that extra money toward?”

Now that question shouldn’t have been so challenging (and I think I dumbfounded Joe when I told him I had no such plans) but I haven’t saved up for a planned vacation since our honeymoon. Joe is all about using your dreams (and funding those dreams) as a financial motive for sticking to the debt-free plan. I agree it’s important but I really didn’t need that kind of motive to stick to the plan – I was born to stick to the plan – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have dreams and goals worth saving for.

My most immediate financial goal (which is what I told Joe I’d be putting my freed up money toward instead of a vacation) is my kids’ college fund. It took my husband and I so long to get out from under our college debt that here we are in our 40’s, about to be debt free for the third time (woo hoo) but have never owned a home. We were actually on track to be funding the kids’ 529 plans at the correct pace to cover their tuition fully and have a down payment for our first home when my husband unexpectedly joined the 14.5 million unemployed in the US.

For two and a half years the money we had planned on putting toward college was used for living expenses. There was a little start on both the 529s and the home down payment but they didn’t experience the rapid growth that was planned for them. Now that we’re back to 2 incomes, we have a lot of ground to make up and it’s hard to see past that to some dream vacation.

But it did get me thinking … what are those dreams (after college, a house and retirement are covered) that I need to be working to fund? The family café my husband and I always joke about opening some day? an Alaskan cruise? the ability to work for God full time and man part time rather than the reverse?

What are the dreams you would fund if you were debt free and financially secure?