Introverts and the Church: The pain of performance and perceptions

What does it feel like to be an introvert in a high-pressure, driven church environment.  Here are a few stories from some introverts:

• Dan says: 
  As an introvert in ministry leadership at two different churches I often perceived I didn't measure up because I would feel empty, tired, and in need of time alone following ministry events. I thought there was something wrong with me because I wanted to barricade myself in my office after preaching on a Sunday morning or leading an evening with students as a youth pastor. Understanding the "gift of introversion" has been a blessing. 

• L.H. says: 
  I think 'high-reactive introverts' may be in high numbers among the pioneers of what is often termed "emergent church." [Things that drive "high-reactive/high-sensitive introverts crazy are]: the loud music, the showiness, the competition, the mixed messages, the performance-based environment, the hypocrisy, the frenetic busyness.  Being a highly-sensitive Christian lent itself to being intensely uncomfortable and discontent at traditional church nearly all the time. 
  

• Amy says: 
  Unfortunately, for years all I got was the message that I wasn't good enough. The church institutions I was involved in were all well-propped up by natural achievers who thrived on always doing more. I often encountered teachings and articles written by blazing extroverts that said do more, work harder, run faster, keep up the good walk for Jesus! Remember, He's keeping your scorecard and you want to hear Him say, Well done, good and faithful servant! You don't want to be one of the ones that hears, Depart from me, I never knew you!  ...
  
  ...This type of religious environment cuts especially deep with introverts. We tend to be more sensitive by nature, and more deeply internalize the arrows hurled at us by the enemy, who unfortunately finds his job all to easy to do through the hands of often well-meaning religious leaders. We also find it more difficult to find a place to belong in the midst of the frenetic activity and performance of today's average church institution.

Related posts:

• "Why Accusation Is So Debilitating To Sensitive Hearts"


• "Were You A 'High-Reactive' Introverted Kid?"

PODCAST: "GOD WITHOUT RELIGION" ........... part one: Guest Andrew Farley joins Jim Robbins

Podcast:  GOD WITHOUT RELIGION - part one.  Interview with author Andrew Farley

This is part one of a three-part series Drew Farley and I will be doing.  Drew is the author of The Naked Gospel and his new book is called, God Without Religion:  Can It Really Be This Simple.  His writings have been featured in national news and media outlets including PBS, CBS, and FOX.

• During this interview, Drew and I ask whether or not the Law is still appropriate as a guide for Christian behavior, and examine why it is not.


• You'll discover that using the Law [including the Ten Commandments] as guidance for godly living will actually cause more sin, not less.


• We also talk about the troubling passages in The Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is delivering harsh warnings and unattainable standards for righteousness.  What are we to make of those passages?  Is there a more accurate and hopeful way to read them?

This podcast offers hope and peace for the Christian who is tired of religious self-improvement and pressure to be spiritual.

'Side-effects' of the false gospel

What side-effects does a person living under the false 'gospel' experience?  Religious duty and the constant pressure to be more spiritual and sin less comes with long-term adverse consequences.    [By the way, a Christian doesn't sin less by becoming obsessed with sinning less.]

SIDE EFFECTS:

• Spiritual pressure to measure up to expectations.
,

• Spiritual heaviness.
,

• You suspect God, is in fact, not really pleased with you.


• You're constantly being asked by leadership to be more committed.


• Every message is about getting you to do something, or to stop doing something.


• The leadership is more concerned with managing people's sin than releasing a new life that is now within them.


• No one ever talks about the heart, and when they do, it is with suspicion -- even in the case of the believer.

What have you experienced when you've encountered a substitute "gospel?"


Too much of the Church's message is about sin.

History has brought us to the point where the Christian message is is thought to be essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin:  with wrong-doing or wrong-being and its effects.  Life, our actual existence, is not included in what is now presented as the heart of the Christian message, or it is included only marginally.  -- Dallas Willard, 'The Divine Conspiracy'

The Gospel is not primarily about rescue from sin. It is a rescue from death:

• Rescued from deadness of heart [spirit/will],
• Rescued from deadness of disconnection,
• Rescued from deadness of disorientation,
• Rescued from deadly and demeaning desires that are less than us.

The Gospel is about a life-giving-life:

• A life-giving heart,
• A life-giving connection with God and others,
• A life-giving re-orientation around the Incarnate Life himself
• A new set of life-giving desires.

Jesus' primary offer is not forgiveness of sins [although he does forgive our sins]. Rather, his offer is a great restoration: returning to us the things that Death has stolen from us.

Do I like the guy I'm following?

I was asking God today what he wanted for me this year - the focus or emphasis of the next 12 months.  What came to mind unnerves me a bit:  The desire that surfaced was,

"I want to know you more so that I can like you." 

I wish I was farther ahead in my journey of more than four decades, that I didn't need to ask God to help me like him more.  So often we Christians have been pressured to love him with all our hearts, minds, bodies and souls; yet fail to ask if we even like the guy we're following.  Would I be drawn to him; find myself eager to get some face-time with him?

As I processed this with Jesus, I didn't feel any scorn or guilt from him.  Rather, I felt understanding:  "I know you want to like me more; but your mental image of me has been so colored by poor teaching and false assumptions.  I'm not mad at you for this."

So I'm praying, "I want to like you Jesus.  Let's strip away all imagery and conviction that has misrepresented your true heart."

PODCAST - QUIZ - Recover Your Good Heart

Quiz - Recover Your Good Heart -- Take the quiz with Jim as he exposes the tragic assumptions we've made about our hearts as Christians.  You may be surprised at the answers.

You can also get Jim's free e-book, The Gospel of the Heart - exposing the false gospel that manages externals and sabotages the heart.

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As always, feel free to leave your comments below!

"The Misunderstood God" - review

Our emotional health is directly tied to our view of God.  Faulty assumptions about God will sabotage your heart.  For that reason, I highly recommend Darin Hufford's new book, The Misunderstood God - the lies religion tells us about God, because the book so ably exposes those harmful assumptions and invites the reader into a deeper freedom. 

The book also has staying power.  I found myself reflecting on key portions of the book long after I'd read it.  The chapter exposing the myth of  "The Angry God" reminded me that, "Love is not easily provoked."  And despite what we may have been told, the Holy Spirit is not easily wounded or offended.  Our God's heart remains supple and open without the fragile neurosis that plagues most of us.  We need him to be strong like that.

This book will help you get that heavy pack of religious assumptions and misunderstandings off your back, because you were never meant to carry that.

Here's a link to Darin Hufford's website.

Free e-book from Jim - "THE GOSPEL OF THE HEART"

I'm making this e-book free of charge.  Download or share it as much as you want.
This short e-book exposes the false gospel that manages the externals and sabotages our hearts.

E-Book-The Gospel of the Heart-Author Jim Robbins

Now available as a free download

I'm making my first book, OUTPOSTS OF THE KINGDOM - LIFE AFTER CHURCH-AS-WE-KNOW-IT available as a free download to anyone who is interested.   Not just a sample, but the whole book.  Enjoy.

Click here to read more about the book or to download it.

The full interview - Steve Brown interviews Jim about his book, Recover Your Good Heart

Full interview - Steve Brown interviews Jim about Recover Your Good Heart.

TODAY - "THE MISUNDERSTOOD GOD" - interview with Darin Hufford

Darin Hufford, author of the upcoming book, THE MISUNDERSTOOD GOD - THE LIES RELIGION TELLS US ABOUT GOD, will join me on the podcast. The book will be published by Windblown Media -- publishers of THE SHACK. Darin is also the creator of The Free Believers Network that is helping church return to its natural habitat.

Episode airs on Monday, July 6th.  1 p.m. Eastern.  Podcast will be available for download following the 'live' episode.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE.

"The Year of Living Biblically" - part II

After a long delay (Sorry, I got distracted), we're moving on to months 4-6 in A.J. Jacob's "year of living biblically:"

The author decides to take the command "Let your garments always be white" (Eccl. 9:8) to heart, wearing, "white pants, white T-shirts, a white sweater, and a white zip-up jacket from the Gap..." like an Hasidic John Travolta.

Though looking a bit like a nomadic pastry chef in his whites, wandering around New York City, Jacobs indicates,

"...the thing is, I'm enjoying it.  My white wardrobe makes me feel lighter, more spiritual.  Happier.  It's further proof of a major theme of this year:  The outer affects the inner.  Behavior shapes your psyche as much as the other way around.  Clothes make the man." 

What do you think?  Is the Christian journey an inside-out life, or an outside-in one?   Is there any truth to Jacob's position on this?  Which one is the New Covenant (new way) Jesus invites us into?

How spiritual transformation happens

What are the mechanics behind how we change; particularly how the new heart within us is strengthened, nourished and released?  How do we end up doing the things our restored hearts really want to do, while not yielding to false substitutes?

Invitation to the Jesus Life - Experiments in Christ-likeness, by Jan Johnson, is refreshing, gracious and full of well-textured thinking on the spiritual life.  The author suggests that God "loves [us] into goodness, drawing [us] with irresistable grace."   Loves us into goodness.

Isn't it true that when we feel most loved, pursued or valued, we are least likely to fall for lesser things?  So how do we access this loving-into-goodness life?

The means is through new habits of the heart, mind and body (spiritual disciplines), but the goal is not to become better Christians, the author surprisingly points out.  The goal is connecting with God.  When we connect, we receive love, and the Spirit does the transforming.  We, as Dallas Willard suggests, are then becoming the kinds of persons who naturally do and say the things Jesus did and said.  It is an outflow of experiencing love, not conjuring up good religious behavior.

Though the author of Invitation to the Jesus Life doesn't necessarily frame the process in the following way, I would suggest that as we connect with God (through redemptive habits) we experience his affection, and the Spirit nourishes and releases the goodness he seeded within our new hearts at conversion.  The point is connecting with God, not trying to become a better Christian.

Sniffing out the gospel that will wear you out

About fifteen years ago, while I was  in grad school, I "attended a church" just off campus.  Without fail, I left that building each Sunday with the same sensation:  spiritual heaviness.  The unspoken message being delivered was, "You're simply not measuring up to expectations."  Without fail, that same experience has repeated itself in nearly every "church" experience, conference, retreat, or organized gathering of Christians since then.

 At the time, I had no words to articulate what was going on, but I now have a well-developed internal filter -- a warning flag, a nose for sniffing out false substitutes.  (After a while, your heart says, "No more!  This can't be all there is.")  At the center of what I experienced each Sunday was the effect of the partial gospel.  Sometimes it isn't the Gospel at all; and in any case, it is a "gospel" that will wear you out. 

This false substitute goes by several monikers:  "the religious spirit," "religious legalism," "the gospel of religious duty and shame," or "living under Law."  Whatever its name, it is not what Jesus came to offer.  All you have to do is look at its fruit:  defeated Christians, fleeting personal transformation, frenzied activity substituting for apprenticeship at Jesus' side, and a meager affect upon the culture we hope to transform.

So how does one develop this early warning system, that ability to sniff out false substitutes?  Well, how does your heart react in those situations?  Do you experience:

• Spiritual pressure to measure up to expectations.
• Spiritual heaviness.
• You suspect God, is in fact, not really pleased with you.
• You're constantly being asked by leadeship to be more committed.
• Every message is about getting you to do something, or to stop doing something.
• The leadeship is more concerned with managing people's sin, than releasing a new life that is now within them.
• No one ever talks about the heart, and when they do, it is with suspicion -- even in the case of the believer.

What have you experienced when you've encountered a substitute "gospel?"

Religious moralism

Certain things make the hair on the back of my neck bristle. 
Religious moralism is one of them.

The pastor of the church where I had previously led a men's event approached me and said, "Hey.  Just wanted to let you know we received a complaint in the office..."

This was a church where I had led an on-campus men's retreat.  As was my custom, I offered the guys cigars after the session was over.  It helps dispel the notion that Christian guys just don't do that kind of thing, and lets the men know this isn't a religious thing we're after. 

So the pastor of that church went on to say that someone found out we had smoked cigars (on church grounds) after the event.  He said he, "personally didn't have a problem with that kind of thing" but that it could cause some guys to "stumble."  (Now, I'm not personally aware of a 12-step group for cigar smokers.) I also told him I never make it an obligation, only an option, for those who want to stay afterwards and enjoy a cigar and some comraderie.

The pastor continued by telling me we could go off-campus or to someone's house if we wanted to enjoy cigars. Well, isn't that gracious and accomodating.

When I, with neck hairs bristling, said this religious moralism was exactly the kind of thing the world hates about the church, he said, "Well, I have to relate to various groups of people in the church..." -- meaning, "Even though my personal convictions tell me there's nothing wrong with this, I'm too timid to confront the Pharisee that made the complaint."

Ever been in a fellowship or church where this kind of religious moralism became obvious to you?  Would this kind of thing happen if the biblical notion of a believer's new heart had been taught?