Introverts Gonna Introvert


            Apparently, January 2 is World Introvert Day. It became an unofficial holiday in 2011 and you celebrate it by letting introverts introvert, especially if you yourself are an introvert. As one article puts it: “It’s all about pajamas and Netflix.”
            But I think we can celebrate introverts every day! Having a special day for something might bring awareness to it, but it also marks it as separate-from-normal-every-day-things. So today I’m celebrating introverts. And I’ll celebrate introverts tomorrow. Because I, myself, am an introvert.
            The biggest thing I want people to know about me as introvert is that introvert does not mean anti-social. I think more and more people are understanding this in our culture today, but there are still times when an introvert personality trait can come off as cold or unapproachable. The reality is that I love people. My call is to be with people, and I enjoy the one-on-one meetings that I have with people. I love going to the coffee shops Monday mornings and spending time with people (my new favorite drink is the sugar free strawberry rose flavored iced tea). Being an introvert doesn’t mean you hate being around other people (far from it!). Being an introvert simply means that I draw energy from solitude. I refill my spiritual well in silence, like when I journal at night or when I go up to Bangor, PA and walk around the monolith park. I process a lot of things internally and deeply enjoy spending time with a few close friends vs. going to big parties.
            You can usually tell when I’m “peopled out” and in need of the recharge. A good friend of mine and I have coffee sometimes and he’ll tell me that he can see in my face when it’s time to wrap up. He’s super extroverted and I highly value our friendship. Introvert does not mean that we don’t get along with extroverts. It also doesn’t mean that we can’t be extroverted from time to time. Introverted simply means I value my solitude for spiritual growth.
            I just finished reading Adam McHugh’s great book, Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture. My favorite thing that he does is point out all the different gifts introverts bring to the church’s table. He wrote, “As introverts grow in understanding how to maneuver in community, we are greatly helped in knowing what we have to offer others, more fully discovering our gifts as we seek to use and cultivate them.”[1] The top things McHugh says introverts excel at are compassion, insight, listening and giving space, creativity, and calming presence. His point isn’t that extroverts can’t offer those things, but these seem to be the top gifts that introverts offer their churches.
            So it made me think of all the ways our church has opportunities to involve both extroverts and introverts. In this space, I want to celebrate the introverts and all the ways we contribute:
1.      Working the audio/visual equipment during worship
2.      Singing in the choir or playing hand bells
3.      Helping to edit the church bulletin
4.      Providing food for fellowship hour or special events
5.      Baking cookies or helping to prepare a meal for our mission project where we serve a meal
6.      Serving as an usher (handing out bulletins, lighting the candles before worship, making sure doors get open and shut at the right times, putting the numbers on the hymn board, changing the water in the glass for the worship assistant, etc.)
7.      Gardening
8.      Crafting for our big craft fair
9.      Sending cards to people
10.  Helping to keep our church building looking clean
11.  Visiting one-on-one with homebound members (I’m so grateful for our deacons, who are both extroverts and introverts!)
12.  Attending Bible study discussion groups
13. Joining me for one-on-one conversations at the coffee shop

That’s just the start! There are so many different ways to celebrate introverts in the church. We may cringe at the suggestion to get a partner and do some group work. We value those moments when leaders of workshops invite us introverts to be introverts and choose not to get a partner but answer reflections questions on our own (love it when that happens!). McHugh highlights our biblical brothers and sisters who are introverts (even Jesus seemed to value going off in the mountains by himself to pray!).
            So today, I celebrate you, my fellow introverts. If you are an introvert, what has been a meaningful practice for you to express your introvertness? What ministries in the church help you joyfully be an introvert? What else would you like to see for introverts? I’d love to hear from you in the comment section below (blog interactions = great for introverts)!

[1] McHugh, Adam. Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in An Extroverted World. (Intervarsity Press: Illinois, 2009). Page 96.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not My Favorite Bible Story

I just finished a sermon series on the psalms. One of the passages was Psalm 69, which is a lament psalm that cries out to God for help (“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.” -Psalm 69:1). It was a tough passage and I told the congregation from the sermon that it’s okay to admit you’re not okay. And sometimes these hard passages in the bible remind us that it’s okay to not be okay.             And then there are passages that just…don’t seem okay. Those passages that you read and think, “Thank God THAT story never comes up in the lectionary!” In an article from 2006, Barbara Brown Taylor calls these the “terror stories.” In her article, called “Preaching the Terrors: When Your Text Is Bad News,” Taylor wrote that the Bible is “a book about a sovereign God’s covenant with a chosen people, as full of holy terrors as it is of holy wonders, none of which we may avoid without avoiding part of the truth.”             That hit me in a raw way because I had just
Read more

The Great Social Media Detox of 2018

Image
My iPhone does this new thing where it sends me a message once a week to tell me how much time I spent on the screen in the past week. It even breaks it down for me: how much time do I spend reading, or on social media, or playing games. I’m glad that most of the time seems to be spent reading and not playing, but still. Last week I had a screen time total of 28 hours and 36 minutes. Holy. Cats. I saw a picture that said, “Sometimes you have to disconnect in order to connect.” It was the illustration for an article on why taking a break from screens can be a good thing. The article got into different ways to take a break from screens, including a social media detox. Since I do read a lot on my phone’s Kindle app and use the map app quite a bit, it’s unrealistic to go cold turkey no-screens ever. But a social media detox? Now that sounded like a good thing. I decided I would take a seven-day social media detox: no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram for seven days. Monday I put
Read more

Death and Taxes But Mostly Death

Disclaimer: I know, I know. Who needs disclaimers?  But  this is a topic on my heart today and when there's a topic on my heart after a week of trying to come up with a different topic for a blog post and not being able to, I have to go with what's on my heart. The following is the stuff I've been thinking about. I do not intend it to be morbid...I encourage you to read on thoughtfully and consider where you are in your own thoughts about death.             I am not a fan of those times when my husband tells me that he will most likely die before me. Actually, “not a fan” isn’t even strong enough language for how I feel when he says that to me. Not that he says this a lot: but occasionally, we get on the topic of death and inevitably, this remark will show its ugly face.             My husband and I are both in our thirties and relatively healthy. Neither of us plan on kicking the bucket anytime soon, but death is a reality (just like taxes, I’m told). To that end, we’
Read more