I am an introvert.  That means that I get my energy from solitude.  I mostly like people.  I just don’t like them in loud bunches.  I don’t like to make small talk.  I hate group activities (unless it is everyone sitting down and reading silently).  It occurred to me today that the reason (or one of them) that I dislike going to church so much is that I have to be around people and do all those extrovert things.  The best “church” experiences I have ever had were the times when I was part of a small close-knit group of like-minded people.  In the 70’s when I was in college, I was part of a couple of small groups that really impacted my spiritual life.  I probably told you I was a 70’s Charismatic.  We sang songs that were from the 60’s and 70’s.  Not the 1860’s or 1770’s.

We went way off into the loosey-goosey feely-weeley  way up in the clouds kind of experiential Christianity.  If you were there, you know what I mean.  It’s hard to explain otherwise.  We were free from the constraints of any kind of authority, at least until that whole “submission” thing went around.  But by and large, we were harmless.  But we were free and happy and so damn sure of ourselves.

Fast forward 35 years and now i am NOT so sure of myself.  I don’t know if we were right back then or just young and arrogant and so very alive.  As the saying goes:  we did’t know what we didn’t know.  And we were blissful for it.  After College, life began to intervene.  Kids and jobs and church experiences that left me wrung out.  I was too involved.  Meetings and classes and seminars and leadership retreats left this poor introvert mostly dead inside.

About that same time, the corporate world began to hail “teams” as the way to get things done.  So the church followed suit.  A team for this and a team for that and a team to lead and a team to lead the leaders.  Worship teams and prayer teams and prophecy teams.  And then all the teams had to appoint someone to represent their team on another team.  What happened to that “personal” relationship with Christ?  Sorry, no time for that, got a team meeting.  When you think about most of the great accomplishments in science and the arts, they were achieved by exactly 1 person.  Sometimes two, but seldom (with some notable exceptions) by a team.  You’ve heard the joke:  For God so loved the world that He didn’t send a committee (team).

The whole Trinitarian concept of God has devolved from a real effort to understand the Nature of God.  Instead Trinitarianism has come to make Him/Them seem like a team of Three and not a Wholeness of One.  We focus so much on the Threeness of God that we have forgotten the Oneness of God.   But, I digress.  All of a sudden, there is no room for genuine introspection.  We love the Doctrines of the Church, but most of them were either decided by a Committee or some lone man or woman who was inspired by their solitude with the One that they gained great insight.

Jesus seems like an introvert to me.  He was worn out by the crowds.  When He needed to re-charge, off to the solitude of the desert or wilderness or a mountain.  We try to emulate Him, but only if it can be done in a crowded “worship” service on Sunday morning.

Church leaders who kept pressing me to be more outgoing and participatory, without understanding how I was wired, drove me nearly mad.  I was never really “happy” in a church service.  Some days it felt like my skin was crawling.  I thought that there was something wrong with me and I was no quitter.  Yet, inevitably I quit.  There is something wrong, but it is with the “system”.  Church came to be something to endure.  I (We) decided to stop enduring the thing we had come to detest.  Instead, we found a different way to get “fed”.  We became members of a small group, three couples who had similar backgrounds and wanted the same kind of real connectedness.  That became Church for us.  No sermons, no offerings, just 6 people who grew to love each other and share life together.  Isn’t that the Church is supposed to be anyway?

Sorry for the lack of a post last week.  I seem to have just lost a week.  I thought for sure I posted something, but it isn’t there and maybe I’m just crazy.  Or deluded.  Or forgetful.  Or a gremlin hacked into my site and deleted my post.  So there.  Talk to you again next week.