Introvert/Extrovert: Is Sociability Really Next To Godliness?
- Kate Gaston
- Mar 12
- 16 min read
by Kate Gaston
Note: On Thursday, March 20, Kate is hosting a lunch discussion titled Questions as Creativity: Faith, Loneliness, and the Hospitality of Conversation via Zoom, exclusively for Rabbit Room members. Support our work and join this event.
You can also connect with Kate and the Rabbit Room at the upcoming Inkwell Evening in Nashville at Belmont University for a night of arts and ideas on Friday, March 21.
It’s Sunday morning. You slip through the double doors of the sanctuary just as they are closing, bulletin in hand. You beeline to your spot. The second-to-last row, three seats in. No one notices your arrival except the guy sitting on the opposite end of your row. The two of you share a nod, acknowledging your back-of-the-sanctuary-solidarity. You like it this way. The not-being-noticed. It’s the reason you arrive late, skirting around the crowd gathered for the pre-worship coffee hour, dodging the handshakes, and the wide, bright-eyed smiles of the church ladies.
You know from experience that you won’t escape the morning unscathed. The handshakes and smiles are inevitable. You know it’s coming: the passing of the peace.
As the service lurches forward and the moment approaches, you decide today is the day for a conveniently timed dash to the restroom. By trial and error, you’ve found if you time it right you can avoid the whole ordeal, returning to your seat for the doxology, the conclusion of the whole awkward business.
You prepare to stand and make your getaway. But then, in the split second before you rise from your seat, the guy sitting on the opposite end of the row, the one with whom you’d shared the comradely head nod, stands and slips toward the exit.
You can’t believe it. He stole your move.
Flummoxed, you remain seated. You can’t very well stand up and follow him out now. It would look too obvious. The feelings of camaraderie melt away as you realize, with a deep sense of foreboding, that you’re about to pass that peace whether you want to or not.
The moment arrives, and the congregation stands as one. You notice, not for the first time, that for some members of the congregation, the invitation to pass the peace is received with the alacrity of a starting pistol. Within seconds, these people are on the move, shaking hands, giving hugs, slapping backs. There’s a certain gleam in their eye as they make the circuit of the sanctuary, peace-passing like it’s an Olympic sport.
You know, rationally, that this span of time lasts less than five minutes. You know, too, that all that’s required of you is to stand, shake a few hands, and act normal, to blend in by mimicking the social behaviors of the other humans. So with resignation, that’s precisely what you do. You stand and greet the couple in front of you. You shake their hands. You ask how they’re doing. They’re fine, they say. And you? Oh, you’re fine, yes, just fine, thanks. Silence descends. The three of you form an awkward hypotenuse. The ol’ Sunday morning standoff.
Thankfully, at that precise moment, one of the predatorial glad-handers interrupts, and the mantle of conversation passes effortlessly to his shoulders. Entirely unprovoked, he tells you about the shrimp scampi he ate for dinner last night, and before you can formulate any sort of quippy pasta rejoinder, he gives you a hearty slap on the shoulder and glides toward the next row of church-goers.
“Peace of Christ,” you murmur, a moment too late.
I’ll confess: the passing of the peace has always seemed a bit of a mystery, plunked down in the middle of the service for no discernible reason except to dissect, with surgeon-like precision, the introverts from the extroverts.
It’s a moment when that particular division of temperaments seems a particularly large one. It is, historically, a divide full of barbed misunderstandings, a chasm into which tumbles our compassion, our empathy, and our embrace of each person’s Imago Dei. Into this chasm, too, topples our wide-eyed wonder at the breadth and depth of God’s creativity. He’s made us each in his image, and each of us possess such mind-bogglingly different callings, strengths, and temperaments.
If we accept the premise that each of us reflects some aspect of God’s creative glory, it follows we should embrace these varied reflections rather than giving them the stiff arm. We should welcome the uniqueness we each bring to the table rather than eying each other with mistrust and dismissal.
Though Sunday morning is prime time for evangelical posturing, the assumptions we make about good Christians—how they look, how they sound, how they act—follow us, specter-like, through the week. These assumptions lurk behind our preconceived ideas about how we should be offering hospitality. They skulk around our psyches, kicking up guilt and shame, convincing us we can never offer hospitality like we think we should. These assumptions hamstring our ability to love people from the strength of our own giftings.
We often believe—even if it’s a subconscious assumption—that there is only one right way to love people. And that one right way to love people requires an awful lot of gregarious small talk.
We assume, somewhere deep down in our social substratum, in order to love people well we must be extroverts. Or at least pretend to be extroverts. As Susan Cain writes in her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, we all suffer from a biased belief that sociability is next to godliness.
It’s time to broaden the boundaries we’ve so meticulously built, to pull up the stakes we’ve planted. We must exercise a broader imagination toward how, exactly, the Body of Christ works. We are his hands and feet, yes, but we must also accept we are his kneecaps, liver, elbows, and toenails. There are many pieces that make up the whole body, pieces we’d desperately miss if we found them missing.
God made parasitic worms, puppies, and slime mold; he made aardvarks and kangaroos. He made extroverts and introverts. Why, exactly, did he make these things? Because it pleased him to do so. We take our kids to zoos and aquariums to gape at the creatures in all their bewildering uniqueness. The world would be a changed place if we applied the same sense of wonder toward the specimen sitting next to us in church. That human is a whole mixed bag of mysteries, of thought and feeling, of fear and wisdom.
As much as I like to pretend otherwise, I am a finite creature. There are strengths I don’t possess. There are gifts I can’t give because I don’t have them. But hallelujah and thanks be to God, those glorious refractions of glory go humming out into the world with your gifts, your words, your thoughts, your hands.
This admission that I’m limited is a hard pill to swallow. It’s hard to swallow because I believe I’m a unique, beautiful flower. This isn’t wrong. I am a unique, beautiful flower. The trick is remembering I’m only one of roughly 8 billion unique, beautiful flowers.
I, like most humans, tend to take my specialness a hop, skip, and a jump too far. We are inclined toward navel-gazing, and we become quite pleased with ourselves in the process. We are naturally predisposed to believe the way we see the world is the right way—perhaps the only way—to see the world.
The dynamic between introverts and extroverts is one of the many places this tension arises. We allow the differences between us to represent moral failings rather than simply being what they are: differences.
Here’s a hard truth, applicable to all of us: Whether we’re an introvert or extrovert, we will always experience tension extending ourselves beyond our comfort zones for our neighbor’s sake. But extend ourselves we must.
Adam McHugh, in his book Introverts in the Church, wrote, “Jesus said go make disciples. He didn’t tell us how to do it. He just said to do it. Do it however it works best for you, however you’re gifted to do it.”
At the heart of the matter is this simple fact: No one gets a pass on making disciples. You don’t have a choice about whether or not you are a “people person.” By your very nature as a follower of Christ, you are a people person.
Again, McHugh writes, “We who follow a crucified Messiah know that love will sometimes compel us to willingly choose things that make us uncomfortable, to surrender our rights for the blessing of others.”
Love must often be sacrificial in nature. It will require something of us. That cost will be different for you than it will be for me. When it comes to obeying the command to go make disciples, your personality preferences don’t matter. They matter tremendously, however, in the specifics of how you obey this command.
Remember that we all, whether we like it or not, hold a bias toward how we think a good Christian acts. Take a moment to observe your own biases. Push against them, and test them for weaknesses.
In your heart of hearts, you probably don’t believe Jesus loves outgoing people more than others. But do you still find yourself acting like he does? Or perhaps your bias swings in the opposite direction. Do you assume someone is spiritually shallow because they talk more than you? Do you subconsciously believe that true holiness must always be hushed and internal? Or is it possible that an anecdote about shrimp scampi can be precisely what a stranger needs to feel he has a place among the people of God?
If you see someone sitting alone, do you assume they are standoffish? Selfish? Rude? If a person is not involved in outwardly industrious forms of hospitality, do you assume that person is failing in their Christian duties to love their neighbor? Or do we make space for the possibility that the gift they bring to the Body of Christ might be, say, intercessory prayer and that their silence is a sacred one?
When we live with people in community, week after week, year after year, but don’t make time to know them, we begin to make assumptions. Believing these assumptions are true, we assign these people their boxes. And once we place someone in their box, it takes intentional work and curiosity on our part to release them.
One of our primary means of resistance toward assumption-building is the same tool we use to spring people from the boxes we put them in. We ask questions. Specifically, questions to which we don’t already know the answers.
Curiosity is difficult to maintain in the context of community. But we must trust that the person we’re tempted to write off as a “lesser Christian” is experiencing communion with the Holy Spirit just like we are. Communion that is no less real simply because we aren’t privy to it.
Allow for the possibility that God is working in ways beyond your comprehension, and beyond what’s true to your experience. Accept the reality that your experience—your singular data point of human experience—doesn’t prove the rule across the vast expanse of mankind’s existence.
Let’s return to the concept of sacrificial love. Love will require something different from an introvert than it will require from an extrovert.
For some of us, words come quickly and easily. It doesn’t necessarily follow, however, that those words are always the right words. It might behoove us to stop talking. To consider that maybe, just maybe, we should choose silence as our act of hospitality toward the person who might not be willing to speak over us. Further—and this stings, doesn’t it?—we must be willing to consider that the other person might have a more nuanced viewpoint than we do.
For those who tend to verbally process their thoughts and emotions, pay attention to the level of energy you’re bringing to the conversation. The bounding, Labrador-like enthusiasm of unbridled extroversion can overpower a social situation. Notice the faces of the people you’re talking to. Are their eyes widening and pupils dilating in mild panic at your frenetic verbalization? If so, that’s your cue to pipe down.
When in conversation with someone quieter than you, you will feel the conversational void yawning open, screaming to be filled. But when you feel the compulsion to fill the void with words, resist.
Here’s a fun experiment. In your next conversation with a quiet friend, allow space. Literally, count to ten before you say anything. See what happens. Maybe it’ll be awkward. Okay, it will definitely be awkward. But you might be surprised by what happens when you don’t glean all the way to the edges of the conversational barley field, when you leave silence as a margin.
Silence can be a powerful means of communicating welcome. It can be restorative. But it requires courage to relinquish our stranglehold on the first word. And the last word. And all the words in between. Exercising silence as a form of hospitality will require, for many of us, a lifelong practice of discernment.
In the same way a thoughtless extrovert can siphon all the social energy from a room, an introvert's unwillingness to lean into a relationship sends a palpable message, too. Whether you intend to communicate it or not, refusing to spend a measure of your energy broadcasts the message that the person in front of you isn't worth your investment.
Just as it takes courage on behalf of extroverts to intentionally create conversational margin, it will take courage for introverts to step forward and offer the gift of their thoughts. When you, as an introvert, welcome the outsider into your internal landscape, when you trust them with your perception of the world, this is a gift of hospitality. Yours is a topography of nuance, of complexity. It is a place of finely-tuned attention and thoughtfulness which I, as your neighbor, might desperately need.
Introverts, recognize there is power in your quiet, focused greeting. You aren’t required to chat with everyone in the building. Your gift is in attending to the person in front of you. Let that be enough. Because it is.
Whether we’re inviting someone into our homes or into a conversation, many of us believe that the more people we gather, the more magic happens. For people who are energized by people, squeezing another body into the mix can feel like social steroids. This arms-wide-open approach presupposes that the gift of hospitality is simply in the invitation.
Have you ever had the experience of repeatedly inviting a friend to your 90’s-themed dance party—the party you throw every Friday night, complete with costumes and karaoke—only to have them just-as-repeatedly reject your invitation? While it would be easy to write them off as a stodgy troglodyte who doesn’t know how to have fun, consider that your invitation might not be expressing what you think it’s expressing.
Walking into a crowded room full of noisy, talkative strangers in costume doesn’t feel welcoming to, oh, half the population of the world. Quite the opposite. It can feel downright unwelcoming.
Perhaps you intended for your invitation to be received as love. But forget for a moment what you meant your invitation to convey. Ponder instead how your friend receives hospitality. You think your open invitation is hospitality, but your friend experiences it as an absence of personal welcome.
Granted, you can’t tailor every social event to every person in your life. Nor should you. Keep having those 90’s dance parties. But take note of the friend who sends her regrets week after week. Karaoke won’t do, but an invitation to coffee or a walk at the park might be just the ticket.
If you’re questioning how to use your gifts and temperament effectively, consider ways you’ve struggled to be engaged in community in the past. These struggles don’t have to be for naught. When we feel unseen or misunderstood, when we feel the ache of loneliness, the struggle represents a net gain in experiential knowledge.
We could simply chalk this up to “you live, you learn.” But it’s more than that. You learned something about yourself, yes, but you’ve also been shown something about the culture you’re inhabiting. The lack of engagement you suffered signifies a dropped stitch in the social fabric, a gap between what is and what could be.
When you notice the absence of that thing, whatever shape it takes, you have a choice. You can accept the absence as a part of life and move on. That’s not the wrong choice, necessarily. You’ll encounter many such gaps in your life. The alternative is, of course, to do something.
Frederick Buechner’s iconic quote is right on the money: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” In the past, I’m guilty of reading these words with an eye peeled for my calling—that unicorn of a thing. What is it? Will I know it when I see it? What if I miss it?
What I overlooked in my fervor to discover my calling is the reality that my deep gladness exists before the calling. My deep gladness is already part of me, just as it is for you. It abides within us, singing through our bones and marrow. We can’t miss it because it’s humming through all those eccentricities that make us who we are.
What is that thing that brings you deep gladness? Is it your conversation, your ability to ask questions, your ability to see the big picture, your ability to use intuition, your ability to empathize, your ability to problem solve, your ability to organize data, your ability to spelunk into the deep emotions without getting lost in them, or your ability to think analytically?
These are gifts, first and foremost, to you. The way the neurons fire in your brain is not a mistake. The way you engage the world is not a character flaw. Your temperament is not a social failing you must endeavor to overcome in order to assimilate into a vanilla-pudding world. Be spicy carrot cake. We need spicy carrot cake.
What might this look like for you, exactly? I have no idea. The best I can offer is this: pay attention. Notice your energy rising or falling. Notice that thing you’re longing for. Notice the ideas pinging around your heart and mind. Pay attention to your own unmet needs, and then, if rectifying that rift in the social fabric is worth it to you, get to work.
Are you a bullet-point person? This one’s for you:
Identify a need.
Is the need strong enough to warrant an expenditure of social energy?
If yes, proceed to question 3.
If not, carry on with life as usual.
If the need is strong enough to warrant an expenditure of social energy, do you have social energy to spare for it?
If yes, proceed to question 4.
If not, ask yourself if social energy is being wasted in other areas of life.
If social energy is being wasted elsewhere, just stop it.
If the need is strong enough to warrant an expenditure of social energy and you have the social energy to spare for it, make a move:
Invite the friend to your aquatic Zumba class on Tuesday afternoon.
Play the piano at the nursing home for an hour this week.
Initiate the coffee date.
Join the prayer ministry at church. If there’s not one yet, create one.
Buy the beautiful stationery and write the letter.
Pick the book for the first Whiskey and Dead Philosophers discussion night.
Write the haiku for the poetry open mic.
Realize you are terrible at haikus and write something else.
Schedule the D&D campaign.
Polish your broadsword.
Let your passion be a catalyst for creating that thing that currently doesn’t exist. Utilizing your creative energy to reweave the fabric of our communities? This is the closest we mortals will ever get to creating ex nihilo.
A word on social energy, if I may. Repairing a rift in the fabric of society is not easy work. Remember, the place of calling is where our deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. And hunger represents an emptiness, an urge to consume. There will be a net loss as calling requires something of us. But be of good cheer; the energy will be there for the taking when you need it. Perhaps not always when you want it. But certainly when you need it.
People are time-consuming, irrational, emotional messes. You will occasionally feel tapped out by their needs. Again, you’ll be required to pay attention. Notice your energy dwindling. Recognize and acknowledge your finite, limited, creatureliness. Honor your need for solitude. It’s good and right, sometimes, to step away. Preferably before you feel resentment tapping on your shoulder.
Determining your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger will be a lifelong dance. Sometimes it’ll jive along beautifully. Sometimes it’ll be an awkward, left-footed affair. It is worth it, though, to be the hands and feet of Christ. Let people be the thing on which you’re willing to spend energy. Then go home and take a nap.
I’m embarrassed to admit how many years I’ve been passing the peace without knowing what it’s all about. Theologians and seminarians alike have made it their life’s work to parse each wrinkle of the liturgical service. I’m not about to swerve into their lane, but I am going to share the thing which catalyzed, for me, that lightbulb moment.
Passing the peace is not a chance to fill your coffee cup or have a quick catch-up with your friends. The key to understanding it is in paying attention to what comes just before it: the assurance of grace.
Sunday after Sunday, an assurance of God’s grace is pronounced over a roomful of lucky sinners. The message is, on its surface, simple. It’s this: In Christ, we have peace.
When we receive that peace—extrovert and introvert alike—we then, mysteriously, bizarrely, embody that peace. As we shake our neighbors’s hands, we speak that peace into their hearts. As a congregation, we speak good tidings of great joy; we speak a cavorting chaos of peace. And then, just as quickly as we diverged, our cacophony is gathered back into one unified voice as we sing the doxology.
Whether we shake all the hands and slap all the backs, or whether we slip quietly out the double doors, we remain this embodiment of peace for our neighbors. As Sunday rolls into Monday, each of us, with our wildly differing gifts and temperaments, welcomes the stranger. We offer hospitality, and in doing so continue to offer the ongoing, mysterious embodiment of Christ’s peace. It is, perhaps, the only means of peace some of our neighbors will ever know.
More often than we’d likely care to know, we are God’s best plan for each other. So smile and shake a hand if that’s your thing. If it’s not your thing, find your thing. And once you do, pass that peace like you were created for it. Because, my friend, you were.
For your further reading pleasure:
Susan Cain: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Adam McHugh: Introverts in the Church
Frederick Buechner: Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC
Find yourself wasting social energy or experiencing bondage of the will? Stop it.
Need inspiration for your next campaign? D&D Beyond
An Alabama native, Kate Gaston was homeschooled before it was even remotely considered normal. She completed her undergraduate degree at Bryan College and went on to graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. For eight years, Kate worked as a PA in a trauma and burn ICU before ping-ponging across the nation for her husband’s medical training. She and her family are currently putting down roots in Nashville, Tennessee. Today, Kate enjoys homeschooling her daughter and tutoring in her local classical homeschool community. She also finds deep satisfaction in long, meandering conversations at coffee shops, oil painting, writing, and gazing pensively into the middle distance. You can read more of her work at her Substack: That Middle Distance.
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