Does God Love Introverts?

I should have kept reading in Chapter 2 of Quiet, by Susan Cain, before that last post, because I then came across a section called Does God Love Introverts?. The author meets up with Adam McHugh, who wrote, Introverts in the Church, and together they pay a visit to Saddleback complex (and I mean complex – it sounds like a university campus, with a worship centre, book shop, plaza room, cafes, etc), Rick Warren’s ministry, and talk about extraversion within evangelicalism.

Here again, I think America is further down this road than Australia, and I don’t feel like church doesn’t “suit” me, though I am probably never going to go to one with thousands of people in the congregation and excessively overt ebullience. And I do think introverts can just plain learn things, like talking to people during “meet and greet” at church. I’ve willing signed myself up to welcoming teams at church, and all you have to do is practice that one (when I used to have to pick up complete strangers as volunteers and take them wildlife trapping I felt that it was my social responsibility to engage with them for the week, and I just learnt how to sustain conversation with people very different from me, whom I knew I would never see again). But I did resonate with some of what the author wrote. I have on occasion wondered if I was somehow deficient because I wasn’t transported as apparently as some at large events, but here is what Cain writes:

Events like this don’t give me the sense of oneness others seem to enjoy; it’s always been private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communion with writers and musicians I’ll never meet in person ...

Then later she quotes McHugh:

“Sometimes I feel like I am going through the motions. The outward enthusiasm and passion that seems to be part and parcel of Saddlebacks’s culture doesn’t feel natural. Not that introverts can’t be eager and enthusiastic, but we’re not as overtly expressive as extraverts. At a place like Saddleback, you can start questioning your own experience of God. Is it really as strong as that of other people who look the part of the devout believer?”

I don’t really want to get too hung up on all of this business, but that is encouraging to us introverts, and could be helpful to remember next time I find myself feeling like I might be lacking in my “experience of God” or in enthusiasm in public gatherings. One thing Adam McHugh comments on is that “there is no emphasis on quiet, liturgy, ritual, things that give you space for contemplation”. In my current church we are sometimes given a moment to reflect before something coming up or on something that has been shared, and I do value that. Perhaps churches should make sure they don’t throw that away altogether, given that a significant percentage of the population are actually introverts.

(But if they don't we can always go home and reflect, and it isn't going to kill any introverts to go to church once a week. It would seem that introverts are actually particularly suited to learning from the sermon or lecture style of presenting information, preferring that to seminars and group work, so we win one there.)