Sunday, October 31, 2010

Introverts in church

This short article posits that many Protestant churches have conflated spirituality with sociability, mistakenly making a situation where extraversion is good and introversion is bad. If the author is correct, then it might also have something to do with the lack of men in the church. Anyway, I'd be interested to hear what others think about the article.

3 comments:

Reese said...

I have actually been considering showing up late so that I could skip the meet-and-greet portion of the service. Its good, in principle, but someone like me isn't going to make any connections in that short time, and I probably won't remember names or faces either.
While I have never felt any connection between extroversion/introversion and spirituality, I do feel like the tendency to force people to interact pushes introverts away.

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Jeannie said...

Super interesting article... As one who lies on the far side of the extroverted spectrum I often wonder how to best make those on the opposite end feel welcome. I tend to just carry on being my obnoxiously extroverted self and err on the side of trying to make others feel comfortable by talking to them and asking deep, personal questions, which I would be fine answering myself, to let people know that our community is a place where they can come and be known and cared about. This article (and the comments from the introverts) make me question that approach... And it makes me wonder what a better approach would be. When entering into community there is a level of expectation of interaction with others... Lots of others, in fact. So what is the best way to welcome the introverts without making them run in the opposite direction. It's not that they don't want to know others and be known, so how do we facilitate relationship building in a space that sometimes appears to be counter-introvert?