An Introvert in an Extroverted Church

I've been attending a local church for the past nine months or so, pretty consistently, and it's starting to feel like a place I would like to set down roots. It's nice to have a church that feels like home, after a couple of years of wandering. I am not someone who likes "church shopping," as it's called. I prefer commitment to a community. If I could, I think I'd skip the first two to three years at a church, and jump right into the phase where you know and are known, without all the awkwardness of "getting to know" on both sides.

Regardless, I'm now at a church that I really, really like. There's just one thing--it's the most extroverted church I have ever encountered. And I am perhaps the most introverted person you could ever run across. I vividly remember a youth ministry course in which we did the Myers Briggs Type Indicator to learn more about our personalities and how they might impact who we are as we do ministry. In that class, the prof reminded us that while we'd ultimately end up with a particular type based on sets of opposite personality inclinations, all of them are in fact continuums and "nobody is 100% introvert." Except, according to my results, I was.

Right now, I am an introvert who has been highly stressed and managing crises on a couple of different work-related fronts for the past several weeks. While things are starting to get better, I've pushed myself to my limits lately, and there's a cost to that, as most of us have discovered at some point in our lives. One of the costs of that is that I can only recover what's been lost by guarding my alone time. That's how my energy returns.

My new church, on the other hand, has been shaped by extroverted leaders. Weekly worship includes lots of times of congregational conversation--sharing prayer requests and church news items by open mic, and having a sharing time after the sermon where people are invited to speak their responses to the sermon at the mic. Never have I been invited to more social gatherings, lunches at people's homes, etc than I am weekly after Sunday worship.

I love it. I love the ways that this congregation is working hard at being family to one another, and at sharing life with one another. I have appreciated the warm and genuine welcome. I love the way this congregation is embodying what it means to be the body of Christ.

And yet, I find it a weekly struggle to engage in this community as a person who is profoundly introverted, and who works hard at not one but two extroverted jobs throughout the week.

And on days like today, when I'm living so close to my own limits already, by the time I got home from church and errands afterward I was feeling anxious about insignificant things--a reflection of the cost of doing too many social things with too little reserve.

I think it's okay to live with this tension for a while. I wonder if the gift of Kathy to this congregation might even be found in the fact that I am an introvert in an extroverted community--a gift of balance in some way that I cannot yet articulate. And I wonder if the gift of the congregation, by the same token, is that its beauty is found in its extroversion. (For a fabulous book on this subject, I highly recommend Introverts in the Church by Adam S. McHugh.)

But now, if you'll excuse me, I need to put the groceries away. And clean the apartment. For the rest of the day. By myself.