The Main Thing or the Gimmicks?

I remember when major league baseball had a players strike a couple of decades ago. Baseball was in dire straights. Fan turned against both players and team owners. Some say that had Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals not closed in on and surpassed Roger Maris' single season home run record the nation would not have returned its interest to the supposed national pastime.

I think that was when owners and stadiums started to ramp up the entertainment value of what can be a slow sport. Jumbotrons became standard equipment in stadiums. Various contests and mini-shows filled the time between innings. At the stadium where I follow my favorite team, you can text messages that will show up for all the fans and God to see all around the infield. League officials assumed that if the entertaining add-ons were attractive enough, people would show up to games. That was the desired goal - get as many people as possible through the gates.

Now, closing out the first decade of a new millennium, the same rule has proven true that has governed baseball forever. People will follow a team that consistently wins. The goal is to win baseball games, playoffs, and World Series pennants. I am a fan of the St. Louis Cardinals. Across the state the Royals baseball club calls the Kansas City area home. Both teams do the same cheesy stuff between innings to entertain the fans - hot dog shoots, kiss-cams, guess the attendance, etc. One team packs their stadium on a regular basis. The other struggles to keep their stadium even half full. What's the difference? One team gets into the playoffs consistently and has ten World Series pennants in the outfield. That team doesn't depend on the attractive bait of entertainment draws. It depends on the main goal of baseball - winning games. Once that's in place, people will come.

It isn't much different in my world - the world of churches. Many, many churches and church leaders sweat and strain over the right combination of advertising, slick programming, entertainment value, and whatever will get people in the buildings. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but sometimes it can take the place of the main goal; connecting with the real Presence of a living, dynamic, life-transforming God. United Methodist pastor, author, and teacher Terry Teykl says, "While other churches are seeking more people, the Presence based church is seeking more of God." Such churches focus on the latter as the main thing, and, as a result, don't have to worry about the former.

I'll see you around the next bend in the river.

In Defense of Shy People

In my childhood years, back in the Jurassic era, shyness was regarded as some kind of a character flaw or at least a social hurdle to be leaped. Role models, heroes, leaders, and popular people were obvious extroverts. We presumed that life was easier for them. For the rest of us, we would have the added challenge of overcoming our natural inclination to not assert ourselves. For example, I attended a very large high school where a person could become relatively unknown easily. As a conscious choice I went to a small college where I would have better mathematics odds to become more socially involved and to be a campus leader.

I have no doubt that for some people shyness is some kind of interpersonal pathology. For most introverts, however, who and what they are is not some dysfunctional characteristic that needs correcting. It is, in fact, a personality type. Personality types are neither innately good or innately bad; they just are. (See instruments such as the Myers-Briggs assessment, the DISC, etc.) Some of us are designed to draw energy in life from within rather than outside of us. It doesn't mean we don't like people, nor does it mean that we should not push ourselves outside of our comfort zone from time to time in order to be more gregarious. However, nor does it mean that something is wrong with us when we are quiet for an extended time or perfectly content with our own company. There are advantages and challenges to every personality type. Introverted people have the disadvantage of not having the natural comfort in groups of people which is the blessing of extroverted people. Yet introverted people tend to not be a approval-needy as some extroverts can be, and a few deeper relationships comes more naturally to them than they do to extroverts.

Still, in many groups, processes, and organizations, we tend to presume an extrovert's world. Take my world, for example - the world of weekly worship in a church. If, for whatever reason, a person chooses to attend a worship service for the very first time, he or she is likely to enter a world that seems, on the surface, to be an extroversion extravaganza. (It isn't, really; but it will seem that way to someone who is new.) People are greeting one another like they've known each other all their lives. Familiar faces beam at the sight of familiar faces. Conversations seem to be continuations of familiar topics, as people clump together in their regular, weekly, interpersonal groups. In contrast to this, in many churches, the "guest" gets a smile, a bulletin or handout, a "thank you for coming; here's your seat" and that's it. An extrovert might get past all this, and push her or his way into the life of the congregation. For an introvert, you might as well put Mt. Everest in front of him/her and say, "Climb it alone. Good luck."

Just something about which to think. I'll see you around the next bend in the river. Or I might just paddle for while by myself. Don't take it personally, extroverts.