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If you follow this blog at all, you will know that I have been very enthusiastic about Adam McHugh’s book “Introverts In The Church”. My interview with Adam still ranks as one of my most highly read posts months after going live. It remains one of the mostly highly and easily recommended books I promote to people when they ask what I suggest they should read. I stand by that.
No book is without its flaws and weaknesses. Having come to know Adam over the last few months, I am confident that he could point out, better than most, those very weaknesses in his book. Therefore, it is expected that reviews will point out these weaknesses, as well they should. However, when I came across Christine A. Scheller’s review for Christianity Today, I was surprised by what I read. While she makes some important points, I fear that she frequently- and significantly- misses the mark.
What first caught my attention was this sentence:
“I suspect that for a young pastor like McHugh, introversion presents a more profound challenge than it does for congregants and empty nesters who aren’t trying to juggle the demands of church leadership and a growing family.”
While perhaps not intentional, this sentence comes off as quite condescending, as though, with a little time and maturity, McHugh would learn to “suck it up” like the rest of us. Aside from the patronizing tone, Scheller at once challenges McHugh’s representation of the masses, then makes a sweeping generalization of her own. Having spent more than 15 years exploring the topic of temperaments, which an emphasis on the introversion/extroversion dynamic, Scheller’s implicit assertion is unconvincing and unsubstantiated. Though not all introverts experience the dynamics that McHugh points out (at least to the same degree), it is far, far more prevalent than the reviewer suggests.
She goes on to say:
“In fact, McHugh himself very nearly withdrew from the ordination process because of doubts about the compatibility of his temperament and his calling. This dilemma presents both the book’s raison d’etre as well as a weakness of it. Introverts in the Church is strongest when it is descriptive, and weakest when it offers solutions, precisely because the author’s solutions are too pastor-centric and, by his own admission, theoretical. However, in this case a little bit of knowledge yields significant rewards.”
First, it is true that the book focuses more on church leadership than the average Christians daily context. Being a pastor himself, thus drawing from his own experience, it is not surprising that much of the content focuses on the pastoral context of leadership. That being said, the book is clearly titled “Introverts in the Church”, making this emphasis both obvious and expected. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to the book in the first place.
Second, and more significantly, the assertion that McHugh’s solutions were admittedly theoretical (and that said solutions are weak) is misplaced. A careful reading of the book makes it clear that the author was not suggesting that his solutions were theoretical, but rather that he was admitting his own place on the journey in them. In other words, he acknowledges that he is still walking out these solutions daily, not putting himself forward as having “achieved” them. His solutions are very practical and helpful. Though limited in scope, that limitation is easily understood when you’ve seen the volumes that have been written about the topic.
Scheller goes on to critique McHugh’s engagement of introversion as overly clinical, as though it were a pathology. As evidence of this claim, she point his referencing of introversion and depression, saying, “Depression is an illness, not a function of temperament.” The odd thing about this assertion is that introversion was, indeed, once (wrongly) considered pathological. That the author rejects this is incredibly clear throughout the book. Further, McHugh never suggests that depression was a function of temperament, only that the dynamics of the latter are impacted by the former. While depression can be used as a clinical term for an illness, it is more widely defined as a state of low mood. When speaking of depression pathologically, it is expected that it would be referred to as “clinical depression” or other similar descriptive terms. His use of “depression” in this context was not only acceptable, but reflected a dynamic proven by the study of temperament through many disciplines.
Finally, Scheller suggests that McHugh goes too far in his critique of evangelicalism, as though the author had laid at the feet of all extroverts all the woes of this tradition. Far from it! McHugh praises the “doer” nature of extroverts, always affirming the need for the tension between temperaments for healthy expressions of faith. Rather than blaming extroverts for inherent failings, he is reprimanding the exclusionary trend of over emphasis on one expression, as well as the implicit and explicitly critique, over the other. While this book will be hard for many extroverts to read, he is equally- no, significantly more demanding on his fellow introverts.
Beyond these significant (and often glaring) misrepresentation, the review gives a basic overview of the book that will be helpful to those wanting to know what they should expect. What could have been a helpful review and critique, however, lost credibility with me. However, Scheller continues to be a CT writer I appreciate and read regularly.
