How Can You Show Radical Hospitality as an Introvert?

How Introverts Fuel

Introverts tend to be people who just need alone time. We also tend to be very focused and we like to do one thing at a time. We don’t like lots of interruptions.

I get up very early. I do that, in part, because I really need my alone time. And that’s my productive time. If I’m writing a book, I’m up well before 4:00, but on normal days, I’m up around 4:45. I’m up for a couple of hours before anybody else is up and that just gives me my time to shore up.

I also don’t feel like I have to be a great conversationalist. I really don’t. I feel like I need to pray that people would tell me where it hurts. I have found that actually being quiet and leaving room for other people to talk can be very helpful.

We need to be willing to go where God sends us and do what he wants us to do.

I think that introverts can be extremely good at managing hospitality because we tend to not just talk to hear the sound of our voice. Those quiet times are fine. They can be reflective times.

You’re Not Excused

God’s going to use you in all of your differences. What is most lacking in this Christian world is not the need for more extroverts, but the need for more discernment. We need the people who are quietly listening and praying as other people are talking, discerning about things.

My husband is an introvert also. We both tend to have a pretty quiet home until about five o’clock and then all of our extroverted friends come over with some others who aren’t so extroverted. Just think about the differences of your personality and think about how you can serve best.

But, don’t make idols out of personalities. That’s what the world that says personhood is rooted in sexual identity does. It’s really a way of saying that personhood is rooted in some sort of psychological manifestation of you. That’s just not true.

The Gospel Comes with a House Key

Rosaria Butterfield

With engaging stories from her own life-changing encounter with radically ordinary hospitality, Butterfield equips Christians to use their homes as a means to showing a post-Christian world what authentic love and faith really look like.

God calls people to do things that hurt. He calls you to die to yourself. He calls you to ministries that you don’t feel equipped for. I remember hearing someone talk about Noah building the ark. At one point she said, “And we don’t even really know if he liked animals.” We really don’t. That was not a conversation.

So, I think that we need to be willing to go where God sends us and do what he wants us to do. But people who are quiet listeners, who are prayerful and reserved can draw people out and find out where it hurts. That’s great. We need more of that.

Rosaria Butterfield (PhD, Ohio State University) is an author, pastor’s wife, homeschool mom, and former professor of English and women’s studies at Syracuse University. She is the author of The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert; Openness Unhindered; and The Gospel Comes with a House Key.