Have you noticed? Introverts are finally having their day. Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, has made introversion cool. Quiet gives the gift of definition to introverts, and helps extroverts to appreciate the internal thinkers among them. Facebook memes have jumped on the bandwagon, making fun of introverts and extroverts alike, using clever artwork to describe what it is like to live as one kind in a world full of the other kind.
Introversion and extroversion are both good gifts of a loving creator God. He uses both in his Kingdom and the world needs all of us. In this post, I’ll share the gifts and challenges of extroversion and in a future post I’ll share the gifts and challenges of introversion.
Why did God make extroverts? I believe God made us because the gospel of Jesus Christ deserves words. It deserves to be proclaimed, joyously celebrated, and extroverts are wired for this. God uses extroverts to proclaim the good news, to celebrate the good news joyfully with others and to develop strong communities. Paul is my favorite biblical extrovert (read Acts 20; it is a priceless extroversion story). Paul was fearless, courageous, driven, faithful. His conversion intersected with his extroversion to make him the most famous evangelist of all time. He was passionate about Jesus and driven to talk about him. Paul didn’t just love the gospel; he loved people and he was hungry to share the truth with them. Paul understood that the gospel deserves words and he spared none in his proclamation of the good news.
Was Jesus an extrovert? Absolutely! The fact is that Jesus was probably the perfect balance of introvert and extrovert (and in another post, I’ll defend his introversion), but he never allowed his own desires to get in the way of serving others. Jesus understood the power of community, the power of teams, the power of collaboration. He gathered twelve men around him and kept them there all the time … on purpose. He told them that where two or three are gathered, he’d be with them. Even after he’d sent his disciples away to rest, he was drawn by his own compassion back into a crowd of people who were “like sheep without a shepherd.” He embodied self-giving love, and taught by example that one can’t be a follower of Jesus and not have extraordinary love for people. After all, people are not the problem; people are the prize.
How do extroverts sometimes trip up? We struggle with taking every thought captive. Rather than measuring our words, we tend to fill the world with them. Our challenge is learning how to wear out the people around us at a rate they can stand. We tend to think “more is more” when for an introvert, more is death.
Being quiet is hard for us. If “more is more” is death for an introvert, then “being still and knowing” is death for an extrovert. Never mind what the scriptures counsel; learning to be still is a real challenge for people who tend to think externally. And yet, learning to be still is critical for spiritual growth. There is no short-cut here.
Perhaps our greatest challenge, though — and our greatest danger — is that sometimes our talking glorifies us more than it glorifies God. When we use our words to draw attention to ourselves (to defend ourselves, to prove ourselves important), our words become an infirmity. Inherently, we know this (there isn’t an extrovert in the world who hasn’t prayed for God to keep them quiet), but without significant healing we will continue to fall into this trap. On our good days, we expose our wounds; taken to the extreme, our words can actually divert attention from the One who deserves attention.
I suspect most extroverts have no idea just how spiritually dangerous it is to steal glory from God. Defeating that tendency is a battle worth fighting.
What do extroverts wish introverts to knew about them? We’d like our introverted friends to know that being “out there” doesn’t necessarily mean we are healthy (see the above paragraph). Being “out there” doesn’t mean we are all healed and whole and unaffected by your judgments. We’re out there, but we feel it and sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
We enjoy good conversations. We like to talk, but we also really like to listen. We like real conversations, so you don’t have to wonder if we care. We do. In fact, most of us appreciate the viewpoint of the introvert in the room. We know that while we’ve been thinking verbally you’ve been thinking internally and will likely have something valuable to add when you speak.
Extroversion comes in a lot of forms, just like introversion does. The beauty of the Body of Christ is that it is so creatively constructed with so many different kinds of people. Maybe we need to celebrate who we are instead of trying so hard to be things we aren’t, so that the uniquenesses and pains of one another become our instructors in servanthood. This is the good work of sanctification. It is learning to see the marvelous uniquenesses of our created design in one another as an invitation into the servant heart of Jesus.
