I went to the bi-weekly evangelistic prayer meeting group last week. I must admit while I am very excited to see how God has been working in people’s life from the stories told by the group members, I feel quite bad because I don’t have any news regarding any evangelism effort on my part.
As part of this prayer group, we are meant to pray for our workmates as well as get to know them better in the hope that there will be opportunities for gospel talk down the track. I am a failure in praying for my workmates, to care for them or even trying to get to know them better.
While there’s no excuse for the lack of prayer, but on the “getting to know them better” part I felt my personality might be a hindrance on this (and obviously my sins as well).
Firstly, being an introvert, I love to be by myself. So I don’t socialize during lunch, usually because I do my SCJP study and bible study prep during lunch hour (for someone with kids, trust me 1 solid uninterrupted hour by yourself is PRECIOUS). But even before I decided to SCJP, I usually spend lunch reading books by myself.
Secondly, being an introvert, if I do want to go out with people, I prefer to go out with people that I already know well, for instance every Friday I go out to lunch with Pelita people (FL and HT). While there’s nothing wrong going out for lunch with them, I feel that I’m taking the easy way out.
The question is : is introvertness the enemy of evangelism / pre-evangelism? If it is should an introvert seek to be more out there? Can introvertness becomes a sin – the sin of omitting and avoidance?
I don’t know that answer, but at least I want to have lunch with my workmate on Fridays now. It might lead to gospel conversation, it might not (a bit skeptical as the workmates who do want to go out for lunch with me are usually the Aussies – oh who am I to judge, my God is the God of all nations and all races) but yeah hopefully God allows me to plant something, doesn’t matter if it’s harvested by other people.