Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture

Introverts treasure the close relationships they have stretched so much to make.

When introverts go to church, we crave sanctuary in every sense of the word, as we flee from the disorienting distractions of twenty-first-century life. We desire to escape from superficial relationships, trivial communications and the constant noise that pervade our world, and find rest in the probing depths of God's love.

Introverted seekers need introverted evangelists. It's not that extroverts can't communicate the gospel, either verbally or nonverbally, in ways that introverts find appealing, it's that introverted seekers need to know and see that it's possible to lead the Christian life as themselves. It's imperative for them to understand that becoming a Christian is not tantamount with becoming an extrovert.

God has always been about the business of shattering expectations, and in our culture, the standards of leadership are extroverted. It perfectly follows the biblical trend that God would choose the unexpected and the culturally "unfit" - like introverts - to lead his church for the sake of greater glory.

In a team setting, leadership is shared by a community of people, which counters the tendency for pastors to form congregations in their own images.

Let God make you fully you. Rejoice in your God-given temperament and use it for God's purposes. This point cannot be emphasized enough. We must be authentic. If we try to be someone we are not, people will see it instantly.

The verbal tool of exploring mystery together is not confrontation or preaching but dialogue. We subject ourselves to the same questions we pose to others, and as we traverse them together, we may arrive at surprising conclusions we could never have reached when simply trying to defeat one another's logic. Our questions are open ended, granting the other person the freedom to respond or not to respond. The questions stick with us, even haunt us, long after we ask them, and we await insight together. The process is more important than an immediate decision.

Introverts have a constant internal monologue rushing through our heads.

In community, introverts follow a rhythm of engage, then retreat. Too much time in social interaction, no matter how satisfying, is disruptive and disorienting for introverts, and they need to step back to rediscover a sense of identity. They can lose themselves in community and need to retreat into solitude in order to be restored into shape and to find the power to give themselves fully to others when they reengage.

While extroverts commonly feel loneliness when others are absent, introverts can feel most lonely when others are present, because ours is the aching loneliness of not being known or understood.

Though introverts look calm on the surface, our brains are bubbling with activity, and thus we require less external stimulation than extroverts.

We may be in particular danger for depression because we internalize our emotions, and we may also carry inside us the dysfunctions of our families in ways that extroverts don’t.[2]

Growing up constantly being compared to extroverts can be very damaging. Most introverted children grow up receiving the message overtly and covertly that something is wrong with them. They feel blamed—why can’t they answer the question faster? And defamed—maybe they aren’t that smart. Forty-nine of the fifty introverts I interviewed felt they had been reproached and maligned for being the way they were.”[1]

Other voices will try to categorize us and tell us what is wrong with us, but true identity is discovered as we meet the One who created us and as we allow him to identify us. We are never strangers or outsiders to Jesus.

Introverted wounds bleed in our minds and hearts, and bleed out in our behaviors, actions and relationships.

Introverts’ wounds usually begin in childhood. Our families of origin convey to us messages about introversion, which set us on a path of either self-acceptance or self-criticism.

Introverts are rarely content with surface-level relationships and do not generally consider our acquaintances to be friends. We may find small talk to be disagreeable and tiring. Because we often prefer to spend time in one-on-one interactions, rather than group socializing, our relationships can run deeper.

Introverts are energized by solitude. We are recharged from the inside out, from the forces of our internal world of ideas and feelings.

Introverts have layered personalities, and they prefer to slowly unpeel the layers as they bond with people over time.

introverts often feel more freedom in worship services that feature traditional liturgy than they do in ones that feature more open, informal, unstructured styles of worship. Introverts often appreciate the depth of liturgical prayers and hymns, as well as the rich symbolism that fill traditional churches.

Many evangelical megachurches, in their hope to create comfortable environments for seekers, have stripped their sanctuaries and worship services of any sense of mystery and the sacred. Their fast-moving, high production events may entertain us and their avid employment of modern technology may dazzle us, but many times, they cannot help us hear the still, small voice of God.

Introverts move a little slower, speak a little less, and rest a little more.

I'd like to think that the work of God might be displayed through my introversion, and not in spite of it.

The healthy Christian is not necessarily the extrovert, ebullient Christian, but the Christian who has a sense of God’s presence stamped deep on his soul, who trembles at God’s word, who lets it dwell in him richly by constant meditation upon it, and who tests and reforms his life daily in response to it.

We who follow a crucified Messiah know that love will sometimes compel us to willingly choose things that make us uncomfortable, to surrender our rights for the blessing of others.

Introversion and shyness are not synonymous. Introversion is a natural personality trait where we go inside ourselves to process our experiences. Shyness, on the other hand, is a condition marked by fear or extreme anxiety in social situations.

We seek healing both from the internal wounds of distorted self-understandings and feelings of inadequacy, and from the outward wounds of alienation from others and exclusion from our communities. We desire the freedom to be ourselves and to love others as ourselves.

Introverts often prefer writing to speaking, because writing uses a different neurological pathway in the brain than speaking does.

The combination of solitude and internal processing means that many introverts are more oriented toward ideas than they are interacting with people.