Book Review: Introverts in the Church

I've been reading lately, so I thought I'd do some reviewing.

First up Introverts in the Church: Finding our Place in an Extroverted Culture by Adam S. McHugh, IVP. 222pp including discussion questions, further reading, and notes*

Who should read this book
Introverted pastors or lay leaders who feel like they are always out of steam or lagging behind.
Average Joe introverts who find many church ways alienating and difficult to connect with.
Extroverted pastors or lay leaders who have an uneasy feeling that some people are being sinfully anti-social.

About the book
The book starts off arguing that we live in an extroverted culture that prizes those abilities that come naturally to extroverts. Then it discusses characteristics of introverts, affirms those characteristics and then in response to the extroverted culture, calls introverts to healing.

McHugh covers a number of different aspects of introverted spirituality, from private devotions to community relationships to evangelism to church service. However, clearly the McHugh's heart is for introverted church leaders specifically pastors.

Thoughts and commentary
Well, turns out that I'm not the target audience for this book even though I am an introvert and a member of the church universal and a local church. I'm not the target audience first because I have embraced being an introvert. I have spent the better part of a decade and a half thinking about and working out how to be an introverted follower of Christ. I have no problems telling extroverted pastors to pound sand. I'm also not the target audience because I am not and do not desire to be a pastor. You can just tell that the pastorate is what jazzes McHugh. That's fine, that's just not me.

I was interested in the introverted spirituality chapters and I think these are the chapters that would interest the average Joe introvert in the church. The chapter on evangelism was particularly good.

Despite both being introverts, my husband and I didn't completely connect with some of McHugh's experiences as an introvert, nor do we completely connect with one another. And while McHugh does mention this, I think it must be stressed that introversion isn't the only reason a person responds in a particular way. There's a lot of diversity across introverts. For example, in the chapter on introverted evangelism he encourages introverts to leverage listening well to people to connect with people and walk with them on their faith journey. First, just because an introvert isn't talking doesn't mean that they are listening. They might be talking to themselves. Second, everyone including extroverts should work to listen better.

Conclusion
I was personally disappointed in the book because of the various points of disconnect. However, I am tempted to buy a bunch of copies and give them to various leaders in my life. Heh. Introverts new to this stuff--sure, check it out from the library.

*Not an affiliate link

Fact Family, Faith Family

Yesterday, I asked in passing what the unit for capacitance was fully expecting my husband would know. He did; it's the farad.

We are a fact-y kind of family. We like numbers, trivia, and random details that tend to fall in the nerd/geek realm. This is the environment our children are being raised in. Whether they pick up on this themselves in unpredictable, but they will know that some people, their parents specifically, play with these sort of ideas and trivia. I guess in other families it might be baseball or music which have the advantage of being more mainstream.

We're fact-y, but are we faith-y? Do I have equal confidence that our children will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that their parents love and trust God? We don't tell them we're nerds; we just are. Do we need to tell them we follow Jesus, or is that also simply part of who we are?

In case it isn't obvious, I'm in a phase where I'm thinking and reading and praying about what it means to "parent toward the cross". Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." (The good news according to Luke, chpt 9). This saying is hard and fights against my sense of self-importance, but I have found following Jesus to be deeply life giving.

I want our children to not just enjoy facts about the world or even facts about the Bible. I want them to experience living water that comes from Jesus through his death and resurrection through taking up their own crosses and following Him. What will they learn from how we live?

Stewarding what we have: Children

I have occasionally written about stewarding what we have and have always considered financial resources. But recently our daughter had another asthma attack that got so bad so quickly, I really feared for her life. It was a complete wide-eyed-mom moment at the medical check-in counter with a "Dear Jesus help them help my baby." She's fine now, but the incident brought me face to face with the mortality of our children.

As I've documented on this blog, I was slow to warm up to being a mom, but two years in, I'm all in. I am in the guts of mother-child relationships. Bowels might be more appropriate since this week we're back to potty training. This stage of parenting is so physical. There's a lot of hands on wrangling which inhibits abstraction. The diaper is wet or it's not. The spit up stinks or it doesn't. The plate of food is going in the stomach or on the floor or in the hair. Tickles result in full throttle laughter. Items are banged, slammed, and torn. I think this close physicality made me forget how thin the line between life and death is.

Being awakened to that reminds me that whether I spend a few more days and weeks with my kids or decades, their whole existence from before time into eternity is wrapped in the hands of God. In our overlapping time, however long that may be, I've been entrusted to take care of them as beloved children of God. On the one hand, this means that we've a much higher calling than to make sure they stay alive and learn not to be embarrassments to the family. And on the other hand, this means that God is particularly interested in each of them and active in their care and nurture so we don't have to bear the burden in our own strength and wisdom.

So the first step in parenting toward the cross is to remember that God is the ultimate creator and designer of these little lives. It's not about us creating our own little kingdom and our own family name. It's about realizing that like money, our children have been entrusted to our care for a short while.

Smiles

I'd say that I'm out of the physically miserable part of newborn care--the phase of truly wretched sleep deficiency, engorgement, and gas-induced baby wails. This happens to coincide with magnificent smiles from little DW. He beams from the core of his being. It's fabulous and frequent. So while there are plenty of bumps and humps in family life right now, this is one thing I'm really enjoying.

On clothing--Apropos nothing

Timed well with On Expecting's post on body image I suppose.

I finally went through my dresser and pulled out the winter clothes and the maternity clothes! Woohoo. I surprisingly fit back into my pre-maternity unmentionables which feels like a huge win, so I put the maternity ones away too. I also thinned out my closet of old stuff and stuff that never fit well.

At this point I have about three-and-a-half sizes of clothes. Maternity stuff for when I'm huge; big stuff for when I'm bigger than normal but not huge; normal stuff; and skinny stuff. There's not a ton of skinny stuff but I have a few items from when I inadvertently lost a lot of weight before my wedding. I'm currently wearing big stuff, but they are starting to be noticeably big. So I think I'll soon be back into my normal stuff. Hooray!!

Since things have calmed down with the baby, I'm willing to consider a third kid and I haven't got rid of all the big and maternity stuff. However, that'll be it's own day when all that stuff finally goes to goodwill.

I found a lot of t-shirts from college that I have a hard time parting with. And it reminds me that I need to "grow up" with regards to my clothing. And I fear that I'll go from a slouchy grad student right into a sloppy housewife. I definitely dressed better when I was teaching, so I'm trying to figure out where to land at this point.

I would like to eventually have a minimalist wardrobe of classic, quality clothing for summer and fall/spring--the two primary seasons here. But there are several obstacles: 1) a deficient fashion sense 2) a loathing of shopping 3) an aversion to spending money and 4) an unstable body size and shape. Currently, I'm using #4 as an excuse to not figure out ways around #1-3.

Anyways, we'll see. Right now I'll just revel in the prospect of fitting back into my old jeans soon.

Reflections on existential angst

I am dealing with a bout of existential angst. Basically, I'm realizing that whether we try to have a third kid is a big deal to me in a who-am-I way. Part of it is that I still have dreams of becoming a professor and there's a study out that found very few women with 3 kids in academia. And trust me, I get it. If we have a third kid, I am probably harming my potential to get a tenure track job in a big way. (Arguably, being geographically inflexible is equally or more harmful.)

So I've been pondering what is the big deal about getting a job, particularly since my husband provides handsomely for our family?

In no particular order:
1) What I do is fun for me. I like both teaching and research. I whine and moan about aspects of both, but at the end of the day I enjoy them. Part of the fun has been the people. I have worked with fantastic people and on fun projects.

2) I have been heavily invested in. I've been given a lot of money and time by various institutions and people who think I have a particular ability to contribute to society in this way. While they invested with no strings attached--I don't contractually owe anyone anything, I feel a responsibility to this investment similar to the parable of the talents.

3) I like "unlocking achievements". I'm told in video games that when you do enough of X, you "unlock an achievement". Seems like a fancy system of getting enough stickers to turn in for a bigger prize. Whether it's training from being a student most of my life or my bent, I like getting feedback that I'm doing the right thing, that I'm doing well. I've unlocked quite a number of achievements so far, but I have a few big ones left undone like getting a job, publishing in journals, and getting tenure. A teaching award would be icing on the cake.

Let us contrast this with being a stay at home mom.

1) I don't like a lot of things that go with motherhood. These include things like being physically miserable, dealing with someone else's body fluids, and a host of things that fall under "not being able to do what I want to do when I want to do it."

2) I have very little idea what I'm doing. Where professionally, I had an advisor who showed me the way and colleagues to work with, I feel fairly alone in this motherhood thing. Not completely, but I certainly don't feel as engaged as I was professionally.

3) There are no mommy merit badges. I want my merit badge for changing 2500 diapers, for taking all the night shifts, for nursing through mastitis, for not screaming or crying when I actually feel bonkers inside. As far as I can tell, there aren't real mom metrics. Your kid is alive still, clothed, and unabused. You're a mom. Yay.

With a comparison like this, it's easy to feel all sorts of negative things. Yet I as I review these sentiments, I am struck by how I have a special opportunity to live by faith and continue to be formed in Christ. I have been reflecting on how a theme in the story of Jesus is that he served individuals and humanity. The king of the universe became a servant. If I say, "I'm on his team," and I do, then my life should look like that too. While part of me resents the unheralded service my life has been "reduced to," I also recognize that the is an opportunity to live in the grace I've been given. And while part of me worries that my career is slipping away from me, I have the opportunity to trust that God is actively interested in my particular life and will take care of me. To top it all off, I have the opportunity to learn all this with a great family. My husband is a great husband and father and my kids are people I'm enjoying getting to know. While my angst is what it is, I have to acknowledge that I am living in grace abounding.

Weakness as gift

My mom is visiting her mom after having spent 5 weeks with us as we welcomed baby DW into our lives. So this week is the first time we've been left truly alone with our kiddos. One thing I've enjoyed is all the cuddle time with both my children. L, who has always been very independent, has wanted and enjoyed hugs and kisses more in this time of transition. And DW just patently prefers being held to pretty much anything else at this point. And I'm happy to accommodate.

But I was thinking back to my early 20s when I did a fair amount of living overseas for months at a time. This was pre-skype, pre-convenient email. And I suffered from intense bouts of loneliness. It did not help that I traveled to countries with little sunlight and lots of foul weather. During one of those trips, I read the book Five Love Languages. This book proposes that different people have different love languages and if you try to "speak" a language that another doesn't understand, they won't see your actions as love. The "languages" were quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, physical touch and receiving gifts. Quality time and physical touch resonated with me as languages I understood.

But there I was, on some distant continent, far from people I cared about and I wanted to throw a bat through a window. It seemed extremely unfair to have physical touch be a love language when I was extremely single. At the time, I had never dated anyone and would not have known how even if the opportunity presented itself to me. And then there was the whole deal about how God designed sex for marriage and man, if dating felt far off for me, marriage really felt far off. Basically, I felt cursed to have an empty love tank. Ultimately, living a healthy life in my body would be a struggle the rest of my singleness. It was something I managed by God's grace--I took up more athletic endeavors in my mid-20s--with alternating bouts of peace and torment.

Now, I'm writing this as my newborn sleeps in my lap. Those days seem very far off. As the mother of young ones, I'm constantly touching and being touched. Books sometimes warn parents that moms can be worn out from constant touching and want alone time away from her husband. Maybe it will come to that someday, but that day certainly hasn't come yet for me. I love the sweetness of our current phase. My daughter will sit in my lap and rest her head on me while describing the most mundane realities of life. "Daddy blue eyes,""Baby DW sleeping,""Red bowl,""Blue shirt,""Stacky blocks all-fall-down." My son loves being held and petted. I could do without the wailing parts, but really the rest is great.

What once seemed like a curse has now become a gift. I have hugs for my kids all day and when my husband gets home I've got plenty more snuggles left for him too.