Monthly Archives: February 2024

Preaching and Teaching: Thoughts of an Extroverted Thinker

Anthropology, Personal, Thoughts, , , , , ,

Following up on this post on the how personality affects our view of the purpose of conversation, I thought I should add some thoughts on less obviously collaborative speech acts, such as teaching and preaching.

That is, preaching is typically a one to many act, with only one way interaction between the speaker and hearers (in my subculture, anyway). Teaching can be through lecture, in which case it is at least very similar, or other pedagogies can be used, from slightly collaborative methods like lecture and small group work combined, to something which is mostly collaborative, where students present their work, and the teacher gives some feedback.

So how does this impact people who think of logic, reason, and the implication of facts extrovertedly? That is, I’ve come to realize that I like to learn in a negotiated social environment, rather than one where I’m simply given facts to be able to repeat later. If I need to just pick up facts, I can typically do that on the internet much faster. I noticed that I think a preacher or teacher can say nine things in a row, each of which are undisputed and obvious, but then if the next thing is questionable, it can throw off my train of thought. Especially if that becomes a point that the teacher or preacher builds other argumentation blocks on. I would MUCH rather stop the process, haggle out that one issue, then continue.

I hope I don’t mean any disrespect in saying the above; I think this is just how my mind works. Before coming to terms with my ADHD, I spent hours in lectures and sermons trying to stay awake. I tried caffeine, which worked to some extent. I tried sitting in the front row, which didn’t. the one thing that worked (I noted over time) was that I could stay awake when my brain was active. If a lecture or sermon was a series of basically straightforward and easy to digest ideas, I would get bored and eventually check out. Similarly, if ideas are presented that make me want to debate/discuss before moving on (and there is no such opportunity), then my brain would also check out, unable to follow the train of logic after the disputable point.

I’m sure I might be an extreme case here; maybe past abuse (or ADHD, or whatever) makes me more intolerant of disputed points in a lecture, but I think the basic orientation comes from extroverted thinking. I want to discuss/debate logic, reasoning, and the relationship between facts. I want to discover the truth together with others, with iron sharpening iron, rather than wholesale swallowing the fruit of others’ work.

Having said this, good preaching is not just a download of information. I think it should include new information, or at least old information with new implications or application. But the application is critical, or else it just isn’t really preaching. Preaching should use the mind to move the heart, overflowing in new life, repentance, and a greater love for God in Christ. So maybe extroverted feeling is as important as thinking for preaching, since the goal is to call people to a better/higher set of values, feelings, and even emotions —leading, of course, to life change.

So I think this is my issue with a large majority of preachers: whether by nature or not, they approach the process of preaching as extroverted feelers and introverted thinkers, the half of the dichotomy I presented in this post, that doesn’t include me. So I want to negotiate rational truth, and let that flow into emotional/life change, whereas I think most people are using a non-negotiated (introverted) rational truth to negotiate emotion, value, and feeling change.

But I don’t think this makes half of us stuck, or obligated to go to another church. Anna and I have been wrestling with the corners of personality theory where things don’t seem to work out as expected, such as how the DISC (or LiFo, or Treasure Tree) model interacts with MBTI. Or, in this case, how personal, emotional, and spiritual growth interacts with personality.

I think it’s obvious that maturity doesn’t look the same on each person. But can we draw generalizations about how maturity looks in MBTI? On thing I though interesting was that they say the first cognitive function is the first one you use, both in every day, and in life —like maybe in your first five to ten years. Then you develop your second cognitive function, which balances it. Then some time around 40 or 50 you develop your third cognitive function. Well, it seems like this might work in many cases, but I wonder how well time and maturity correlate across people. And how well cognitive maturity (growing in diversity of cognitive functions) correlates with spiritual, emotional, or other personal maturity.

So it could be that one way to think about maturity is how well you are able to think using cognitive functions which are not your most natural/basic. For instance, in the conversation dichotomy I posted earlier, the more you say “this one is sane, that one is crazy”, the less mature you may be. The more you say “this one is me, but I could see someone thinking like that, too” the more mature, culiminating in the most mature position being something like “This one is me, but can do the other when I need to.”

The end result being, that just because I want conversations to be about negotiating facts and their meanings, doesn’t leave me off the hook for relating to people in conversation, too. Teachers who dump information on their students without any indication of care, concern, or relationship (even where lectures are appropriate), are not well respected generally. In the same way, if a preacher doesn’t want to negotiate the logical points he’s trying to use to move the church (emotionally, personally, and spiritually), then I can be OK with that. His goal there isn’t to teach new doctrines (typically), but rather to make people fall in love with Jesus again.

The Point of Conversation, by Personality

Family, Personal, Thoughts, , , , , , ,

Anna and I have been messing around with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality inventories (a short, free online survey to find your type can be found here). I’ve been surprised not only to find this a point of bonding between us, but also that the theoretical basis and applications are much more complex than I’d thought. I’ve done this personality inventory many times over the last several decades, but it is only this year that I’m learning how cognitive functions fit, both in terms of understanding the relationships between different types, and in terms of understanding (and thus predicting) behavior.

Anyway, this morning I was thinking through some interactions, and thought of a new way of splitting up the personalities. I thought it was helpful, so I decided to share. It has to do with the relationship between extroversion and introversion in cognitive functions, so I’ll back up a bit to that.

< If the following intro/background drags, skip to “SKIP TO HERE” >

First of all, most people think of extroverts as people who talk a lot, and introverts as shy. But the description used by phsychologists has more to do with which kind of interaction costs you less energy: inside of you, or outside of you? That is, if you spend time relating to others, are you more likely tired afterwards (introvert) or energized (extrovert)? Alternatively, if you spend time alone, are you more likely tired afterwards (extrovert) or energized (introvert)?

The third letter in an MBTI personality code is T or F, for thinking or feeling. But it isn’t about whether you think or feel more, but whether you make decisions more on the basis of logic, reason, and facts (thinking), or whether you make decisions more on the basis of feelings, values, and emotions (feeling). To put it another way, would you rather be morally right, or logically right?

Each of these codes has an introverted cognitive function, and an extroverted one. That is, if your first decision-making function is thinking, that may be either introverted thinking, or extroverted thinking. The logic, reason, and facts you use in your decision-making may come from within you, or from outside of you. Similarly, someone with a feeling type may make decisions on the basis of the their own feelings, values, and emotions (introverted feeling), or else those of others (extroverted feeling). Note that this is different from the above description, where a person is generally introverted or extroverted —here it is the decision-making function that is introverted or extroverted.

One implication that has become clear as I think about these things is that extroverted functions are great at interacting with other people; introverted functions are not. So changing the feelings of an extroverted feeler or the reasoning of an extroverted thinker is way easier than for their introverted counterparts. In fact, introverted cognitive functions seem to like being taken at face value, rather than being able to negotiate with others, or even defend or explain themselves. So while an extroverted feeler may enjoy very much coming to terms with others’ feelings and values (resulting in emotional/interpersonal harmony), an introverted feeler will seem more along the lines of “I know what I feel, and I shouldn’t have to explain or change it for you.” Similarly, an extroverted thinker may be good at negotiating logical constructs or the consequence of certain facts with others, whereas an introverted thinker will seem to be logically consistent with regards to their own internal logic, rather than doing much harmonizing with the logic found in those around them.

One more piece to know is that if someone has a top decision-making function aimed in one direction, their next decision-making cognitive function is of the opposite value, and aimed in the other direction. So as an ISTJ, my first decision-making function is extroverted thinking, and my next one is introverted feeling. For my ISFJ son, his first decision-making function is extroverted feeling, and his next one is introverted thinking. The consequence of this is that, for each personality type, one is either better at negotiating feelings (and values and emotions), or negotiating thinking (and logic and facts). The other will likely something they don’t want or like to defend or explain, as it is much more intensely personal.

< SKIP TO HERE >

So, the observation I made is that, regardless of whether you are an introvert or extrovert generally, and regardless of whether you are more of a thinker or feeler, each of us will be better at negotiating with either the feelings, values, and emotions of others, or else the logic, reason, and facts of others. Furthermore, the other set will be guarded carefully away from others, not willingly defended nor explained, nor readily negotiated or modified in the public sphere.

Because of this, I recognized that there are two widely distinct answers to the question “What is the point of conversation?” That is, either you think the point of conversation (generally speaking, of course) is to negotiate/discuss facts, reason, and logic, or else it is to negotiate feelings, values, and emotions.

This was affirmed in the very next conversation. I explained the above insight to my daughter (also an extroverted thinker), who rejoined with a modification of my wording, which I accepted. At which point, I realized we had just done this, and said so. We basically did this:

Me: “Here’s some data.”

Her: “Here’s an improvement on that data.”

Me: “Thanks. Here’s an insight on what we just did.”

Her: “Yes, I agree; that insight is correct.”

A couple hours later, my (extroverted feeling) son walked by a friend, dropped a peppermint patty in front of him, and said “This is candy.” At which point my daughter and I made a face at each other, until I recognized that we just witnessed an example on the other side. That is, while I might say “no duh, that’s candy; do you really think he doesn’t know that?”, because I think of conversation as for sharing/negotiating information, logic, etc. But that wasn’t the point at all for him. The purpose of his words was to negotiate and maintain relationship, not to share information.

One of the blessings for me in thinking about personality is to better value the diversity of ways people think and act, without needing to rely on morality/ethics to explain observed differences (e.g., “these are different because this one is good/better and that one is bad/worse”). For instance, when an extroverted feeler comes to talk with me, there may be nothing informational to say, but rather a desire to negotiate and maintain the relationship (or feelings, or values), my instinct is to say one or both of the following:

  1. This is a waste of time; if you have something to say, please say it.
  2. My feelings and values are my own; I shouldn’t have to share, explain or negotiate them with you, unless I want to.

You can easily imagine, I hope, how damaging actually saying either of these would be, in most relationships.

An extroverted feeler, on the other hand, may see me coming to lay my facts and reasoning before them, and think

  1. This is a waste of time; if I don’t know that you care about me personally, why should I care what you think?
  2. My logic and reasoning are my own; I shouldn’t have to share, explain or negotiate them with you, unless I want to.

So whichever perspective you’re coming from, I should think it would be helpful to get where the other side is coming from, because our instinctive, first response can be pretty damaging, if we give it free rein —especially if we explain the difference to ourselves as a moral or ethical one (with ourselves being the good/better, of course!). On the other hand, if we are able to say “Wow, this is certainly not what I’m looking for in conversation, but I get that maybe it is what the other person wants, and that can be OK”, then I think we have a lot more hope of getting along.

Tired

Family, Personal, Travels, , ,
Me and a Knock-off Squishmallow Lion at ALDI

We’ve been back in the states over six months now, so this update is long overdue; sorry.

A couple months after our return, and we were having trouble thinking through how to communicate, and someone saw us in church and said Wow, you look tired. This turned out to be a great summary of where we’re at. It wasn’t until we left Cameroon that I realized just how stressful and wearying it had been. Since then, we’ve had one emergency after another; I feel like I’ve been mostly putting out fires. I won’t bore you with the (very boring) details here, but feel free to ask if you like.

Transition has been hard this time around. How are you all handling inflation? Without even considering the obvious financial implications, the emotional implications of paying 150% of what we expect we should for just about everything, has been hard. And anyone who has bought a car in the last couple years knows that particular corner of insanity. Anyway, these are things you all may have been getting used to over time (at least to some extent), but it’s been hard for us trying to catch up with the changes of the last few years.

Kim mentioned in an earlier blog post that we are in Tolkein’s Houses of Healing. I was thinking about that, and the fact that Éowyn stayed in the houses some time after Aragorn healed her, saying “Shadow lies on me still.” Still, I look for the turning point, “these two of his charges prospered and grew daily in strength.” So for the moment, it isn’t clear where we’re headed.

But we have seen several encouraging signs.

Anna is doing much better, attending classes at school all day every day, and doing very well in most of them. And wrestling with teenage girl things, like how to bring Jesus to the lunch table, and how to deal with her friends’ various sexualities. It isn’t all easy, but way, way better than where she was at a year ago.

Joel is now in his second term at Le Tourneau, and doing well. He has had his share of bumps along the way, but he’s enjoying what he’s learning, and we’re able to help him with some things he finds more challenging, which gives us hope.

James looks to be on track to graduate in May! The last year we’ve been spending a LOT of time and energy working with him, trying to help him get through problems academic, personal and spiritual. I trust that we will look back on this period of investment, and praise God for his work through us and the many others supporting James.

We’ve had some financial difficulties this year, between a few people stopping giving, general inflation, and the craziness of the used car market. But we were given a 2006 Ford Explorer, which has treated us very well since, and for which we thank God daily. Several people have filled in some of the gaps with substantial one time gifts, for which we are also very grateful.

Thanks to each of you that are still reading this; I know I can be longwinded. I’ll close by asking for your prayers for the rest of this transition. For our complete healing. For wise decisions about future work, given our various family issues. That our lives would contribute strategically to the whole church glorifying God and enjoying Him forever.