Yesterday was my birthday. Thanks for all the love everyone! It was a fairly normal day overall…carrot cake for breakfast (thanks babe!), went to the eye doctor, ran some errands, did some work, tried to stay cool (the first day of summer came in with a vengeance: 97 degrees!), and then hung out with our student summer community (see pic). They sang me happy birthday and gave me some great cards. Love it!
Tag: Community
Weekly Reads
- I’m always a sucker for an article about pastor’s kids!
- Are the next waves of college students going to be more responsible and less entitled?
- Community and the importance of depending on other people
- Another winner from Sarah’s blog (aka I wish I knew more people as mature as this 4-year-old)
- Finally, since baseball is underway, go read BaseballMonk.com…good stuff!
ReadRetreatServe
We took students to Dorchester on Saturday for our Spring ReadRetreatServe (you can read more about RRS here and here). The pics are from all parts of the day: our morning in quiet reading and reflection…our middle of the day conversations…and our afternoon of serving alongside Quincy Street Missional Church. I love these days…the ongoing work that goes on there all through the year and these moments where bridges are built…bridges from campus in to the community. Beautiful…
Must Reads
Links of the Week:
- An interesting graphic on philanthropy (people will give money to colleges, will they give money to college ministry?)
- John Piper caused a stir with his “masculine feel to Christianity comment”…here’s an overview and some helpful responses
- Daniel Kirk with some great insight on what the Bible is for and the narrative approach
- Logan Gentry with some good thoughts on how missional communities can fail
- 2 posts from Scot McKnight’s blog on eschatology that is grounded in story versus escapism.
Community and the Extrovert Ideal
I started reading a fascinating book this week called, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Without further ado, here is the quote (or quotes) of the week:
Today we make room for a remarkably narrow range of personality styles. We’re told that to be great is to be bold, to be happy is to be sociable…[as a result] many people pretend to be extroverts. It makes sense that so many introverts hide from themselves. We live with a value system I call the Extrovert Ideal–the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfortable in the spotlight.
And then, here’s the kicker:
Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are. Extraversion is an enormously appealing personality style, but we’ve turned it into an oppressive standard to which most of us feel we must conform.
I have several reactions to this, but initially my thoughts turn towards community. I’ve had a number of conversations recently around the idea of community and when I pull them all together the picture (or working definition) of community that I get is of a large number of people who are together all the time and who do tons of fun things.
Is that true community though? Consider Jesus. He certainly interacted with a lot of people and at times had huge crowds around him.
That was not his community.
His community was 12 guys. These guys were a true community because:
- They were a manageable size.
- They had a mission (and a risky one at that).
- They spent a lot of “deep” time together.
Jesus also talked about the Kingdom of God as a party. He went to festivals and feasts. Again, he wasn’t afraid of the crowds.
But I wonder if the Extrovert Ideal hasn’t warped our idea of what authentic community really is. And that is pretty interesting to me.
More to come from this book, I am sure!
stephenboutrywords 