Pushing the Pendulum Back to Introverts

I recently posted on Facebook a link to a TED talk with Susan Cain on introverts. In it, she clarifies what introverts are: people who get their energy from solitude. This is not the same as being shy, which is being fearful of people. Introverts may love being with other people but do their best work when they have time to think things through alone. American society has been devaluing introverted behavior more and more, and Susan Cain does a beautiful job of describing why this is a mistake. http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

In my Facebook posting I commented that I wished teachers and church leaders would be forced to watch this. A friend of mine from high school, Ken, asked why church leaders? The short answer is because churches are full of the same people, modern day Americans, who work in corporations where decisions are made in meetings and innovations come from think tanks. Add to this the fact that people who go into ministry are by nature people persons - extroverts. Add to that a desire to include everybody in everything and you end up with a whole bunch of meetings. And meetings end up making decisions, as Susan Cain puts it, based on the person who talks the most.

You can buy books on this from Christian book companies - the benefits and indeed, Biblical soundness, of doing ministry as a team. Doing everything as a team has been the buzzword in churches for the past couple of decades. I don't mean to downgrade the idea of teamwork. I'm all for it. You can't accomplish much with a lot of lone wolves running around.

And speaking of lone wolves, how about those characters who step away from accountability when it comes to religious doctrine and start to wing it on their own? Rev. James Jones! Drinking the Kool-Aid! One of the best criteria for deciding if something is a cult is to look at the leadership. Is there one guy who makes all the decisions and holds all the power? Huge red flag. So when I say church leaders need to value the introvert more, I'm not talking about doing away with teams, especially when it comes to matters of doctrine. Teams are good.

Recently our church was putting together a statement of core beliefs, and one of the proposed versions included a line that began something like this: "Because we recognize that no spiritual growth comes independent from other believers ..." This line had passed through many hands unchallenged before I saw it. No spiritual growth? What about all the centuries of monks who took vows of silence for the very purpose of spiritual growth? What about the mountaintop experiences of feeling closer to God? What about near death experiences, answers to prayer, and most important of all, what about the working of the Holy Spirit? Doesn't this imply that the Holy Spirit doesn't do anything except through other people? What they were getting at in the core beliefs statement was that they wanted our church to focus on mentoring one another. This is a loving thing. But let's not overstep ourselves, because that would be arrogant. Sometimes in order to hear the Holy Spirit we need everyone else around us to pipe down.

It would probably be a good idea for me to interject something personal. I'm not a true introvert. I've taken the Myers-Briggs test (there is a free online version here http://richardstep.com/myers-briggs-mbti-personality-quiz/) many times throughout my life and I'm actually pretty close to the middle, leaning slightly toward introvert. I'm an ambivert, as Susan Cain said. I like team meetings for some things and find them stimulating. For other things I find them annoying. Sometimes I need to get by myself for a while and think things through. I'm going to guess that most people actually feel like that. It also depends a lot on who else is in the meeting. Throw a very strong extrovert into the mix and that person's ideas will always prevail because they will talk the most. I've been the most extroverted and the most introverted in groups. I've seen both sides.

Ken didn't also ask, why teachers? But I'm going to answer that one anyway, for two reasons. First, because I felt bad afterwards. It's not the fault of the teachers. It's the current pendulum swing in teaching theory, and all the administrators have jumped on the bandwagon of kids doing everything in groups. Second, because in preparing kids so thoroughly to work in groups I'm observing them graduate from high school and suddenly look around and go, where's my team? They are not being prepared well for working independently. Much of life is independent, especially right after graduation. They graduate and feel a need to reference their team, their tribe, for everything. They don't know what to do.

This is so very different from when I was in school. We were always told to do our own work. If someone looked at our paper we would cover it with an arm and say "stop copying!" There were group activities like sports, but academics was all about you mastering the subject on your own. Schools are completely different now. The desks are all in little groups. All of the work is done in little groups. Then they take the SAT all alone. They apply to college all alone. In college it's back to little groups. Then they graduate and completely scatter. No group. No natural leader to direct them. No consensus about where to live and what job to get.

In the old model of schooling the introvert did well. Introverts work well alone. In the current model of schooling the extrovert does well. Introverts are being made to feel inadequate. I won't expound upon why this is so ridiculous because Susan Cain already covered it.