re christians that are not church members in article gchin ssf eng sun com writes over the years i have met christians who are not associated with any local church and are not members of any local church this is an issue that may be very personal but is important what does the bible say about this and how can we encourage our friends with regard to this issue this brings up an interesting subject that has not been discussed much and probably has not been studied much as some of you may be aware i ve posted a lot of articles lately on personality typing of which the mbti is a test vehicle to come up to speed just read alt psychology personality and or ask for by personality type summary file one observation is that people have significantly different personalities no question on this which seem to be essentially in born with respect to church attendance and participation some people thrive on this while other people have real difficulty with this because they prefer a more solitary and contemplative lifestyle that is they are de energized if confronted with excessive closeness to outside activities and lots of people of course this is measured by extroversion introversion my impression is that many churches are totally blind to this fact and create environments that scare away many who are naturally introverted there are many introverted characters in the bible btw i know i am quite introverted in preference and find the pressure by many churches to participate to meet together in large groups etc to be very uncomfortable knowing what i know now these churches have been overly influenced by highly extroverted people who thrive on this sort of thing btw there s nothing wrong with either extroversion or introversion both preferences have their place in the body maybe i should define extrovert introvert more carefully since these words are usually not used correctly in our culture the extrovert introvert scale is a measure of how a person is energized the following is excerpted from my summary energizing how a person is energized extroversion e preference for drawing energy from the outside world of people activities or things introversion i preference for drawing energy from one s internal world of ideas emotions or impressions hopefully this will elicit further discussion as to how churches can structure themselves to meet the real needs of the people who comprise the body of christ instead of trying to change people s personalities to fit them into a particular framework i m sure there are other aspects of how churches have not properly understood personality variances among their members to the detriment of all jon noring charter member infj club if you re dying to know what infj means be brave e mail me i ll send info jon noring noring netcom com jkn international ip fred s gourmet chocolate carlton place phone chips world s best livermore ca v mail who are you read alt psychology personality that s where the action is
