Introversion & the Church

Merriam-Webster defines an introvert as, “A typically reserved or quiet person who tends to be introspective and enjoys spending time alone.” Takes on introversion and extroversion abound. Whatever we want to call it, a relevant observation, particularly for the church, is that we all have different capacities for social engagement. It matters because God has called us to life together.

Back in 2011, I was an intern with the New England Center for Expository Preaching, which was basically a pulpit supply for New England churches. Every week, we were assigned a text and early on Sunday morning, we were sent packing to preach at a church we’d never been to before. I’ll never forget meeting Donald Dacey, a seasoned pastor who invited me to preach Psalm 73 in his pulpit at Bradford Evangelical Free Church in rural—and I mean rural central Vermont. It was small, wooden church filled with light, with an entire windowed wall facing the Green Mountains.

Before the service, Dacey shared his story with me, that he was in big international business for years, but ended up back in the U.S. at Westminster Theological Seminary and then Yale Divinity to prepare for the pastorate. He spoke of himself as a painful introvert, which is quite a thing for pastor to be. He described his wife as an “off-the-charts” extrovert who loves hospitality. Perhaps there’s some truth in the saying “opposites attract” but nobody has ever claimed to my knowledge that they make good ministry partners. He then shared what continues to inspire me to this day.

When he began his ministry, preferring to be alone most of the week, he largely isolated himself. Social interaction was at times a trial for him, with preaching and short, intentional meetings being his strong suit. But he noticed that not only was his wife, who always had a crowd of friends, was withering due to his reclusive ways, but also the members of the church clearly needed his care. That’s when everything changed. Despite his strong preference to isolate, he opened up his life and his home to the congregation, and it has made all the difference.

The call to engage isn’t merely one for pastors. There are roughly 59 “one-anothers” in the New Testament that call every Christian to know and care for the members of the body. Here are several:

“Love one another” - John 13:34

Bear one another’s burdens” - Galatians 6:2

“Forgive one another” - Ephesians 4:2

“Live in harmony with one another”

“Build up one another”

“Confess your sins to one another” - James 5:16

“Stir up one another to love and good deeds” - Hebrews 10:24

A searching question for all of us is how are we to obey these and many other commands from God’s Word specific to God’s family if we’re not pursuing relationships with one another? The truth is that it’s impossible.

And so, here’s a word to those among us who are shy to jump in—who feel tempted after worship to slip out the door. Take if from a mentor of mine who often says about what he terms “relational capital” that, “whatever you have in the bank, just make sure you spend it.” Yes, and amen! Some of us may be most at home in a crowd. Others, surely not. But whatever capacity you have to do others in the church spiritual good—the call is to press in. It may be just a little. Maybe socially speaking, you’re living paycheck to paycheck. But no worries! Just give Jesus and His people your best effort, and by His grace, it will be enough.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas at Easter” (1960)

Listen Carefully to Jesus

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Seeing is believing,” but Christians live in the age of the ear, not the eye. Rather, hearing is believing, as Paul wrote to the Romans 10:17, So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ. It follows that the Spirit and the Word not only create faith, but sustain it to the end. For this reason, we must listen carefully to Jesus.

It’s here that we need to clarify something else. What is the Word of Christ that Paul goes on about? Isn’t it those specific words that some Bible publishers emblazon on the pages of the Gospels in bright red? Aren’t we to listen a bit more carefully to Jesus’ words in the Scripture? After all, don’t his words come with a bit more authority than Paul’s? Or John’s? Or whoever?

We must answer ‘No!’ All of the Bible is the Word of Christ! Liberal “theologians” from untold ages past have undermined the authority of God’s Word by suggesting that only Jesus’ words are Jesus’ Word. But because God is the ultimate author of Scripture, all of it is Jesus’ Word. We need to listen carefully to Jesus in Genesis and in Judges. We need to hear him in Haggai and in Hebrews. Indeed, we need to lean in whenever the Word is preached and while we sit under the lamp light with an open Bible. And that’s because listening to Jesus in His Word is the food that feeds our faith.

As we lean in as a church to hear what Christ says to us, may our prayer be a corporate one, as Paul wrote in Colossians 3:16:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

A church headed for glory together listens carefully to Jesus. How are you doing, dear friend, at listening? Ask God for the grace to listen a little more carefully to his voice today.

A Happier Prayer Life

“I will lift up my hands toward your commandments, which I love,
    and I will meditate on your statutes.” —Psalm 119:48

What’s the key to a happier prayer life? Is it doubling down on discipline? A focus on the discipline of prayer is needful. But if we hope to have a happier prayer life, our gaze needs to fall on the One to whom we pray. This is why the key to a happier prayer life isn’t merely a calendar overhaul, but a deeper knowledge of God.

This is why Bible intake, rather than being a separate feature of the Christian life, is integrally tied to prayer. If prayer is a fire, the Bible, which reveals God, His Gospel, and His promises, is the fuel. Our prayer life will never rise higher than our contemplation of God’s Word. These two spiritual disciplines, which are often handled separately, are vitally connected.

In Psalm 119, the Psalmist is enamored with the God of the Word and so he goes on about his delight in the law, his commitment to it, and the blessing that it brings when he obeys it. In verse 48, the Psalmist vows to “lift up my hands towards your commandments, which I love…” Though there is no definitive posture of prayer in either the Old Testament or New, the lifting up of the hands in connection with prayer is profoundly emphasized in Scripture (1 Tim. 2:8). It may well be the case, that the Psalmist is modeling for us that our Word life is to be supplemented by prayer, and that our prayer life is to be supplemented by the Word!

How can we be happier in prayer? The key is to be happier in God! So it follows that the Word and prayer are the closest of friends. Or to touch on the analogy earlier mentioned, the Word lights the bonfire of prayer. And likewise, as we prayerfully pursue the God of the Word, the happy fires of prayer are stoked. No more wet wood. No more smoldering prayer. Dear friends, as we pursue a happier prayer life, remember that the key is knowing God. And we know Him as the Spirit reveals Him in His Word.

The Hands & the Heart

“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
    you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
    a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

—Psalm 51:6-7

We’re all tempted to serve Jesus without savoring him. We neglect what Jesus calls in Luke 10:42, the “good portion.” But busy hands without a heart for Jesus is a recipe for sin and misery.

In Psalm 51, a freshly convicted David declares the vital connection between the hands and the heart. No amount of burnt offerings laid on the altar could please God. Superficial worship holds out hands to God, but holds back the heart. The problem was David’s sin-sick heart before the Lord, not a shortage of bulls and goats. One thing we can learn from David’s scandalous ordeal is that the matter of the heart is always the heart of the matter. Worship that pleases God flows from a humble heart.

Friend, are you neglecting the better portion? Have you made peace with certain sin-patterns in your life? Have you resisted church fellowship, one of God’s means of speaking into your life? Do you have busy hands, but a troubled heart? Jesus invites you to draw near to Him without delay. The image of Him on the cross, arms wide open, is an apt image for reluctant worshippers.