"To be known as someone who simply wants to live with them."

Well, off I go. Saturday we leave on our trip to the other side of the world with much expectation that God is going to show Himself in some life-changing and surprising way.

I've agonized over my presentation on culture learning, trying to chose what content is appropriate for a one-hour presentation to this particular audience, wondering what might result... dismissal? disinterest? engagement? input? invitations to travel the world and teach? or just a "we'll take it from here"? I really don't know what to expect or what to hope for. And I have been quite anxious about this and other aspects of our journey.

If you are a person who prays, think of me at 4pm Jan 14. Or 12-15 hours before that, if you live in the US, to account for the time difference.  I could use your prayers for this presentation / discussion.

Here's a video I hope to use to open it up. Of course I can't be sure technology will cooperate. This video can't be downloaded, evidently, and I hate to rely too much on internet access in a conference setting, in a different country, and on someone else's laptop. So I may just read the quote.

Still, I can share it with you here:

“More and more, the desire grows in me simply to walk around, greet people, enter their homes, sit on their doorsteps, play ball, throw water, and be known as someone who wants to live with them. It is a privilege to have the time to practice this simple ministry of presence.

"Still, it is not as simple as it seems. My own desire to be useful, to do something significant, or to be part of some impressive project is so strong that soon my time is taken up by meetings, conferences, study groups, and workshops that prevent me from walking the streets. It is difficult not to have plans, not to organize people around an urgent cause, and not to feel that you are working directly for social progress.

"But I wonder more and more if the first thing shouldn’t be to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and to let them know with words, handshakes, and hugs that you do not simply like them, but truly love them.”  

Personal Update: Dusting off my Passport

I used to get overseas about once a year. Most of those trips involved training or coaching teams doing cross-cultural sociological research. Strangely enough, after joining a ministry that serves in 100+ countries, my international travel opportunities dried up. Marriage also caused me to limit the scope of my travel. So, although a couple times I have been "loaned out" to other ministries to help with something or other, I haven't been overseas on company business for a decade now. Even the two trips I made with other organizations put me in situations that reminded me of my weaknesses and vulnerability, causing me to wonder if I should just put my global travel days behind me.

Looks like that's going to change in 2019. I joined a new team about a year ago. The team strategy and budget allows for me to get overseas about once a year. And an invitation came for January that I couldn't say no to.

I'm not going off the beaten trail this time. It's just a conference in Southeast Asia, in a city popular with expats. I've been asked to participate in an international forum on equipping folks to thrive in cross-cultural service. The agency leader who is organizing the event is also putting finishing touches on his PhD dissertation, which evidently covers 10 areas related to "on-boarding" new team members, and the event will be structured around that. I'm eager to see his research and expect that it covers ground I was not able to get to when working on my own, more limited Master's thesis a few years ago. (I don't think this guy even knows I did that.)

They asked me to lead a session about enculturation. I wouldn't consider myself an expert, but I am a decent curator and have a pretty good collection of tools and strategies that relate. Ethnography, especially, is something I have never felt that I could lay down entirely... even when so many others I worked with on this have stepped back and moved on to other things. Now I've got an excuse to blow off the dust on the material I've collected, make inquiries across the organization to find out more who's doing what and what the felt needs are, and offer what I've found to people who may be able to use it more than I do.

Even so, I didn't want to travel to the other side of the world just to do a one-hour presentation. (And soak up a couple days of content from others.) Not without at least looking for another way to leverage the plane ticket. So I plan to go a week early and participate in another event, this one a retreat for folks who work in a number of different countries. Although they are there for a break, people like me are welcome to go just to meet people and do a bit of networking....

I've put in a proposal for a pilot project doing oral history interviews. The vision is along the lines of StoryCorps: inviting people to bring a family member, friend, or colleague to preserve something of their story for posterity. If it were just a matter of building rapport and doing interviews, I'd be fine on my own, but the recording aspect is one thing too much for me. I'm going to need some technical assistance. So I've proposed bringing along my husband to manage the equipment and focus on the recording aspect. He's good at that kind of thing where I am not. He never had the host country on his list of places to visit one day, but he's game. And although he will have to take leave without pay to come, he doesn't anticipate any trouble getting the time off. (Working two part-time jobs without benefits does have ONE benefit: bosses tend to give you latitude to set  your own schedule.)

I'm not sure the conference organizers are going to "buy" the project idea. I started with, "Can I come? Can I bring my husband?" and they said yes to that. They'd be glad to have us meet their people and hear their stories. But bringing in media equipment and trying to set up meetings with their people, with everything else going on, may be too much. I probably wouldn't have had the chutzpah to pursue this had not a friend, a leader in our organization, offered to cover the extra plane ticket, and my team in Florida approved my proposal. But once they did, I was emboldened to press ahead. I tweaked the proposal and sent it off to the field. Hoping to hear back shortly.

If they say no, I'll be left with an awkward decision. Do I just go over for the forum on equipping new members, and skip the retreat? Do I go for both and bring my husband along when I don't "need" his help? Or do I go for both events, leaving my husband alone for two weeks right after Christmas (and miss his milestone birthday!)? Guess I just have to lay all this down before God and others and wait for clarity.

Help! I Can't Communicate with My Mandarin-Speaking Grandpa

It's not only people who travel or move to other countries that have to be very intentional if they ever want to cross-cultural barriers enough to communicate. The same challenges face our ABC (American-born Chinese) friends and other children of immigrants. Language gaps are exacerbated by cultural ones and interpersonal discomfort... coming from the feeling that you OUGHT to be able to connect and already have lots of common ground.

I enjoyed a recent story on Global Voices, originally from PRI public radio, about one young woman who made a decision to find out what her grandfather had to say.

"...in all the years of spending time with my beloved grandpa, YeYe — him driving me to tennis lessons, teaching me how to make dumplings, and taking me to meals upon meals after school at McDonalds (his go-to spread is the Big Mac with Coke, mine the dollar menu chicken sandwich) — we’ve had never had a real conversation.

"YeYe is from Taiwan and only speaks Mandarin Chinese. My parents are from Taiwan too, but I was born and raised in the US. Though I understand a tiny bit of Chinese, I pretty much only speak English. To call our conversations simple would be a gross understatement. It’s basically: hello, how are you, are you hungry, on repeat.

"I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realize all this, but I decided to finally try to have my first in-depth conversation with YeYe.."

Listen to the story about Yowei's attempts to change this. 

A Culture of Learning

It’s been said that the average person suffers from three delusions. First, that he has a good sense of humor. Second, that he’s a good driver. And third, that he’s a good listener! *

On a mission trip, a sense of humor (good or otherwise) sure makes life sweeter. If you’re smart, you’ll let someone with local experience do the driving. But what about being a good listener, a good learner? Many a missionary has discovered he or she isn’t as good at this as first assumed. When you’re in another culture and get overwhelmed, it’s easier to withdraw, stick with your own ways of doing things, and tune out what you can’t make sense of.

What are some ways to avoid that trap, and instead learn as much as we can? Here are half a dozen of my favorite cultural engagement strategies for short-term teams.

» Read the article, Sustaining a Culture of Learning: Six Strategies for Short-Term Teams. I wrote it for a newsletter from Delta Ministries. 

* Told you I was going to find a way to use this illustration somewhere!

Three Delusions

"It's been said, sometimes seriously, and yet sometimes tongue in cheek, that the average person suffers from three delusions.

First, that he has a good sense of humor.
Second, that he's a good driver.
And third, that he's a good listener.

"Now I've always thought that it was pretty important to have a good sense of humor in life. I think that makes life go a little bit better. And in our civilization and in our culture, it's very very important that we're good driver.

"But of those three, the only one that's absolutely crucial to spiritual growth is that we be good listeners."

– Scott Wenig, speaking at South Fellowship, April 6, 2014

Love this anecdote and intend to steal it for use in my own teaching!

Taking your cultural "strengths" overseas

In the last two weeks I've visited seven Perspectives classes to teach lessons on mission history. Before my spring "tour" is done I will attend a mission conference in Portland, participate in a week of meetings around a forum for church leaders in Orlando, spend a few days in Southern California, and then, March 31 and April 10, teach two more Perspectives lessons. Those are a culture lesson. In pulling up my notes about crossing cultures I remember how much fun this material is to teach. It's more personal. And much less "sage on the stage." I'll step more fully into the mode of "guide on the side," raising questions and inviting the class to discuss their own experiences and concerns and come to their own conclusions.

I'm also reminded how easy it is to believe that working in a cross-cultural situation is hard because of problems with the other people's culture. But that's not a very helpful conclusion. It's no use going around expecting other people to change on our behalf. Far more effective to acknowledge and examine our expectations and look for ways to adjust them along with our thinking and behavior. Those are the only thing over which we have at least some control.

I like the way Kenyan pastor Oscar Muriu describes these tensions:

Americans have two great things going for them culturally. One is that Americans are problem-solvers. Every time I come to the U.S., I like to spend a couple hours in a Wal-Mart. I find solutions to problems that I never thought of!

The rest of the world, even Europe, isn't so intent on solving inconveniences. We tend to live with our problems… Americans don't easily live with a problem—they want to solve the problem and move on…

The second great thing for Americans is that your educational system teaches people to think and to express themselves. So a child who talks and asserts himself in conversation is actually awarded higher marks than the one who sits quietly.

Those two things that are such great gifts in the home context become a curse when you go into missions. Americans come to Africa, and they want to solve Africa. But you can't solve Africa. It's much too complex for that. And that really frustrates Americans.

And the assertiveness you are taught in school becomes a curse on the field. I often say to American missionaries, "When the American speaks, the conversation is over." The American is usually the most powerful voice at the table. And when the most powerful voice gives its opinion, the conversation is over.

I tell Americans: "We're going into this meeting. Don't say anything! Sit there and hold your tongue." When you sit around a table, the people speaking always glance at the person they believe is the most powerful figure at the table. They will do that with you when you're the only American. And at some point, they will ask you: "What do you think?"

Don't say anything. If you say anything, reflect back with something like "I have heard such wisdom at this table. I am very impressed." And leave it at that. Affirm them for the contribution they have made. Don't give your own opinion.

Americans find that almost impossible. They do not know how to hold their tongue. They sit there squirming, because they're conditioned to express their opinions. It's a strength at home, but it becomes a curse on the field.

(Source: Problem-Solving, Opinionated Americans from Leadership Journal, The African Planter: Nairobi Chapel pastor on mission trips, and working well across cultures. An interview with Oscar Muriu (quoted in Leading Across Cultures: Effective Ministry and Mission in the Global Church pgs 110-111)

Ministry of Listening - latest finds

Got a few more items for my public file of research and ideas about the ministry of listening:

1. First, from a blogging pastor/writer:

The Most Important Skill of a Disciple Maker

Few skills are more important in life and more underestimated than the skills of listening.

Most people don’t even recognize listening as a skill. It is; and it is a proficiency we can improve with practice. Listening skills can help us in our marriage and in our relationships with our children. Better listening skills can help us be a better boss or a more effective employee. Most of us could enhance our friendships with improved listening skills. And, listening is the most important skill a Christian can have who wishes to help others become better disciples of Jesus Christ.

...If an individual really wants to help another grow in Christ, active listening is the number one skill needed.

Read more > 

(I think this concept could easily be broadened to apply to any type of coaching. Only by really listening to the student or disciple can the coach or discipler give the most meaningful, appropriate input.)

 2. Something I heard about through Joel News (reporting on a similar initiative in Amsterdam).

Underheard in New York

Underheard in New York is an initiative in which four homeless men in New York were given mobile phones and Twitter accounts so they could share their daily lives with others. This led to amazing encounters and changes in their situation.

Watch a video about Underheard in New York >

3. A bit of Bible study I picked up from a workshop at Missions Fest Seattle:

Listening Like Jesus

There are so many strategies and models for communicating the gospel. But is there a missing ingredient in our presentations? Do we give enough consideration to the question, is anybody listening? And if so, do they understand anything we've had to say? After all, who gets to say whether we clearly presented anything - the presenter, or their supposed audience? Again, a principle that probably applies to much more communication than just evangelism. But let's listen in on Jesus and a take a look at a few of his notable encounters, especially in the book of John. 

Take a look at the verbs used to describe the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Some versions translate all of these more simply to "said," but the word used in the highlighted phrases is one doesn't mean just talking, but responding after listening based on perception and evaluation of what has been said:

• John 3:2 This man came to him by night and said to him...
• John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him...
• John 3:4 Nicodemus said...
• John 3:5 Jesus answered...
• John 3:9 Nicodemus answered and said to him...
• John 3:10 Jesus answered and said to him...

Could it be that really engaging in a listening conversation had to proceed the "sermon" of John 3:10-21? We see a similar pattern in how John describes the encounter Jesus has with the woman at the well:

• John 4:7 Jesus said to her...
• John 4:9 The Samaritan woman therefore said to him...
• John 4: 10 Jesus answered and said to her...
• John 4:11 She said to him...
• John 4:13 Jesus answered and said to her...
• John 4:15 The woman said to him...
• John 4:16 He said to her...
• John 4:17 The woman answered and said...

Such language is also used in John 9 as well as Luke 5:22 and 6:3.

Answering like Jesus, the workshop presenter proposed, requires listening like Jesus... not looking for a chance to say your piece, but being ready to give a response to a situation or what others are saying or thinking (1 Peter 3:15, Col. 4:5-6).

4. Finally, if you are a person who prays, you might lift up my friend Shane and some folks he'll be working with in Cologne, Germany, as they go out and listen to immigrants in the next week or so. Very much along the lines of what we did this summer, which I described in A Fresh Look at Exploring the Land.

Becoming an expert learner... by leveraging ignorance

Getting ready for another ethnography project - a week-long training session with a group of folks preparing to launch a new life and work in a European city. Heading over there at the end of July. The friend and colleague I'm working with came up with a clever acronym we may use to organize the training... and maybe his rewrite of a 1995 manual, Exploring the Land.

DELVE: A model to learn about the peoples of your city

D: Discover (background work)
E: Explore (go out and make observations)
L: Learn (get into conversations, ask questions, delve into deeper issues)
V: Verify (pool what you get, study it, and confirm it with others)
E: Express (share what you found with stakeholders and supporters)

Like it?

As we launch the first part of D: Discover, I'm a little impatient. I'm sure there's a lot of info out there and want to make sure we learn all we can before we dive into field work. And I'm a little insecure: I've never been to the new host city, except for hanging out in the airport in transit to Africa or Asia, and I know very little about it. On the other hand, I've done this kind of work in a lot of places and am at least as comfortable in the role of a learner as in the role of an expert. Guess I've been doing this long enough that I'm becoming an expert learner.

Maybe that's why, in building bridges with people, I find myself alternating between volunteering information to show I'm savvy, and asking big, open-ended questions as if the other person knows everything and I know nothing.

All things considered, I think leveraging my ignorance works better than leveraging my knowledge. Probably because there's much more of it!

Churches for People Who Don't Go to Church

From "Stuff Christians Like."
Read the whole text here.

All are welcome!

"I wish every church said what this church says in their bulletin," says Jon Acuff, referring to the "awesome welcome message" at a church a friend of his had visited. What do you think? How many churches really want to put out the welcome mat for everyone? Should they?

Here's something I think may be related.

Churches for those who don't go to church

I continue to think about a class I took at the beginning of this year, a course on church-planting issues. My teacher, a church planter and trainer in Germany, advocated planting churches deliberately and openly designed for their non-members, and yes, for people who don't yet know Jesus (but are interested).

Although it may not often occur to most evangelicals, missionaries and missiologists would suggest that the people who most "need" new churches are those who don't have any. It's pretty obvious if you think about it. So, if you're going to try to plant a church, you should consider starting a church for people who don't go to church.

So, what are the implications of that?

1. Watch out for those who DO go to church (at least some of them)

Planting a church to reach those outside the church can mean disappointing a lot of people, including the people who have rejected and/or been rejected by other churches and are pinning their hopes on your fresh, new, and as yet invisible thing. If it doesn't materialize they way they hoped, these are the kind of folks who could become hypercritical and really hurt you and the church.

So I guess there's a group you want to hold at arm's length. At least when all you have is a fragile, new church plant that could so easily be destroyed. People hurt by other churches and overly excited about your new, different church could be the death of it. So try not to court them.

2. What will the church be like? Whose "style" will prevail?

If you are trying to start a new church for people who don't go to church, stuff like the location, logo, name, music style, and the like should not be chosen based on looking within your own heart and asking yourself what you prefer. Nor even by looking around at your team of church-planting allies and asking them what they think would be good. Nope.

OK, disclaimers first: Study up on what the Bible has to say about what the church is and does and is all about, and make sure you know what your mission is, what your calling and best contribution and values and convictions are. For such things, yes, look within and study scripture, history, how other people do things. And be very clear on all that before you start. Communicate what you're about and what you're trying to do, repeatedly and consistently. Stay focused.

But... the Bible doesn't tell you what you should call your church or present it or where you "put it," do they? And how to draw people into prayer and worship, how to teach them in ways that reach them where they are, well, you have to know the people, don't you?

In all those areas, you should ask the kind of people you want to reach. Focus groups, man-on-the-street interviews, talking to community leaders, and a nearly endless series of "let me take you out to lunch and pick your brains," meetings with people you encounter, those will illuminate your path.

3. Finding a name

So, with all that said, you don't choose the name; you let your city choose the name.

My instructor gave the example of a process by which he got the folks he'd gathered for a church plant in inner-city Toronto to submit possible names, and told them, "we'll take these recommendations and see what the city says." He made a list of all the names they turned in and had the people vote, promising to take the top four names to the streets to see what people would say.

He had to swallow his pride when the name that he liked, the one that would link them to the church of his pastor-hero in New York, that was the name that nobody liked. Everyone liked the name with the word "grace" in it. They offered all kinds of reasons. Somebody said it's a very "Canadian" word. Also, there are "Grace" hospitals all across Canada and they have a very good reputation. Grace Toronto Church was born.

It's not about trying to be cool or something, but about trying to accomplish your mission. If the mission is about connecting with and influencing people, you need some cultural savvy to do it.

4. Flexibility

Grace Toronto Church and other churches my instructor helped plant used similar processes to come with a byline, logo, promotional materials, meeting times and locations, and more.

They got local people to help them understand things like the direction of traffic, the atmosphere of certain neighborhoods, the tacit assumptions and lifestyle patterns people might bring with them that could influence  how the church might connect and take shape.

In their early, experimental worship services - and even these delayed until the "listening" and networking process had gone on as long as they could afford - they tried out all kinds of things to see what would work, what would stick. They changed things up.

They didn't commit themselves in advance and try to present some kind of done deal. I like that.

What do you think? 

Some of what we studied doesn't jive so well with the simple church, cell-based, contextualized church-planting movement theories that form the bedrock of assumptions about church planting that I get from my work in the world missions community. Stuff like where to put your signs and fliers and how to design your church lobby or website seem a little silly when you're talking about house churches in a restricted-access country.

On the other hand, these conversations helped me see things a little more through the eyes of the US church-planters who use the same words as we do and yet don't seem to mean the same things by them. I think I see how American church planters and church-planting missionaries can be such separate camps.

I'm not sure how to harmonize all this or if that's even possible, but I'll keep chewing on these things and would be glad to talk to anyone who can help me with that.

See also: Aubrey Malphurs' book, Planting Growing Churches for the 21st Century.

Tearing up the One-way Streets

A few more things for my public file on the topic of listening as ministry:

1. Leaders Have a Lot to Learn

A few years back I posted an item illustrating how those who might usually be the leaders and the teachers can keep growing and learning as they invest in reverse internships.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal covers much the same ground, providing more background and some pithy quotes about reverse mentoring.

A common application seems to be that senior leaders look down the corporate ladder for someone to help them learn the latest paths in communication and technology. When a Gen Y reverse mentoring program took off at one company, it became cool; all the managers wanted to have their own "junior mentors."

2. Learning Builds Bridges

A couple of Christian leaders are asking how these ideas might apply in making disciples. Miguel suggests discovering discipleship opportunities by putting ourselves in reverse discipleship situations - finding someone who doesn't know Jesus to teach us how to do something we need to know.

It's not a new idea. Many missionaries, moving to a new culture and finding themselves in a place of incompetence, look to local folks for orientation. They humble themselves to engage in culture and language learning by immersion. This process is painful, but often more effective than other approaches, and so endearing it can yield deep and life-long friendships. (To short-circuit this process, just limit yourself to learning from other expats or local Christians, or skip learning and dive right into teaching and leading). 

3. Leaders Need to Listen and Learn

In what I see as a related note, Steve Moore's recent vlog talks about closing the feedback loop. He explores the vital importance, for leaders, of finding effective feedback. We need people in their lives and organizations who can help us see our blind spots and destructive behaviors.

Steve says that as an organization grows it tends to build one-way streets. Nobody wants to tell the leader that he's making a big mistake, that he's alienating people or basing his decisions on flawed information.

Good news - and affirmation - flows up. Bad news - and correction - flows down. Effective and growing leaders need to break up those one-way streets and set up structures to give them crucial feedback.  

Read or heard anything lately about listening, something you found helpful? Let me know.

Not Listening? Absurd!

I try not to take dictionary definitions and word origins as the last word on words. Where an idea comes from doesn't always tell you much about how people use it now. Nevertheless, here's a bit of linguistic detective work to chew on. I'm "filing" this here as part of my ongoing study of the art and ministry of listening:

"The word “listening” in Latin is obedire, and audire means 'listening with great attention.' That is where the word 'obedience' comes from. Jesus is called the obedient one, that means the listener. The Latin word for not listening, being deaf, 'surdus.' If you are absolutely not listening, that is where the word 'absurd' comes from. So it might be interesting to note that somebody who is not listening is leading an absurd life."

SOURCE: Henri J. M. Nouwen, "Discovering Our Gift Through Service to Others," Speech given to members of Fadica, 199, quoted in Advent and Christmas, Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen

See also: What Makes a Good Listener (April 30, 2010)

Why we like teaching more than learning

"Most of us are better at teaching than learning. I know that I am. It’s because we know what we know, and we feel comfortable teaching that to others (most times). Learning is different. We don’t like that feeling of not knowing."

>> Read more that Chris Brogan has to say about this in his recent post Lessons.

More on the topic of listening

1. John Maxwell's recent book sounds worth the read. Get the gist of Everyone Communicates, Few Connect: What the Most Effective People Do Differently in David Mays' Book Notes.

2. There's a new iPhone app to measure who does the most talking in a conversation. Sounds like it could use some tweaking, though, and I bet most of us have a pretty good idea of the communication dynamics around us. The Talk-o-Meter can prove what you may already suspect (source: GOOD). Though I don't think we need a 50/50 split to have a good conversation. Some people really seem to guard their right to remain silent. What do you think?

3. The ministry team I'm part of has what seems to me a good model for facilitating regular group sharing on our conference calls. Each person has two minutes to share a personal report and/or item for prayer. After each person talks, the leader appoints or asks for a volunteer to pray for that person, and then the pray-er shares his or her update. Things move pretty quickly; and all nine of us have a chance to hear from each other and be heard in 20-30 minutes.

4. One of our group's core values is listening. The Church Partnerships Team was formed to serve as a point of personal connection between Pioneers and the several thousand churches that send out and support missionaries through our agency. It's not fund-raising or recruitment, though there is a significant "PR" element. Typical conversations between church ministry leaders and church partnership facilitators focus on trying to understand the world of the church leaders and explore ways we can help them and collaborate.

I can't see myself working as a partnership facilitator full-time like most of my colleagues - I seem to do better a bit more behind the scenes. Calling and meeting with church leaders may be a job best left to the guys-with-ties. But it's an honor to be part of their work. Lots of shared values. Sometimes I miss the companionship of a face-to-face team, though.

Collaborative Community Ministry

(Continued from yesterday's post.)

While I was in Anchorage I had the chance to hear a presentation from what I think must be an unusual ministry.  Anchorage Faith & Action - Congregations Together (AFACT) is a network formed in 2003 by eight churches in order to mobilize their congregations to  address quality-of-life issues in the city of Anchorage. It now includes fifteen churches from six denominations with a combined attendance of about 10,000 people from various parts of the city.

A few things impressed me about AFACT. One is that they are not just trying to fix the problems they see, they are empowering ordinary people with the techniques they will need to go out and find out what others  in their communities really consider the problems to be. They discover and respond to gaps in health and safety, youth issues and education.

One pastor shared that when they did the grassroots neighborhood research, none of the things he had put on his top-ten list of issues made the top-ten lists of people in the neighborhood where his church was situated. Only when you go out and talk to people can you find out what the areas of greatest community concern really are. So if you want to build bridges and bring the changes that really matter to people, you have to put aside your pre-decided solutions; you have to listen and learn what people care about.

I believe that a listening ear is one of the greatest gifts anyone can give. Sounds like AFACT has discovered the same. Lots of churches plan community programs and service projects and go door to door to talk to people about Jesus or their church, but when you do that you're lucky to get a few positive, two-minute conversations out of a whole afternoon of trying. Whereas they have found that when the Christians introduce themselves as being part of AFACT and ask people what they are concerned about, they find much greater receptivity.

This ministry also empowers people to respond to the issues once they discover what they are. The 3.5-day leadership training helps those who attend understand how issue advocacy really works. They learn about power structures and community resources. They find ways that ordinary people can effectively work for the common good of the people in their communities.

Will I ever write that book about "the ministry of listening" that's been on my mind these last few years? If I do, I'll want to interview community organizers like the people from AFACT and see what they've learned along the way.

>> Learn more about AFACT. If you run into others doing this sort of thing, let me know, OK?

A Life with Room for Listening

Source: Urban Entry. HT MindSoulStory.

Two Ways of Knowing

"Between dependence and independence lies the overlooked land of interdependence. Interdependence is more than depending on each other to get a task done, like the spokes of a wheel depend on the hub. We're all interdependent in this way. The interdependence that colors our souls is when ... we see ourselves as 'me in relationship' rather than 'me as autonomous.'" Jonalyn Grace Fincher, Ruby Slippers, p. 117

Being independent can be a great source of strength. Independent people tend to be skeptical; they question, doubt, and look for inconsistencies and contradictions.They want to get at the truth of the matter. Most academic settings favor this form of knowing. Some may say it's the only, best, or most rational form of knowing.

But some of us have a greater desire for or tendency toward interdependence and this flows over into our ideas about "knowing." Encountering new ideas and information, we are more likely to listen for the sake of entering into what the other person is saying and relate to it, being able to understand and say, "I see what you mean."

Jonalyn calls it "connected" knowing as opposed to "separate" knowing, and says most us are more comfortable with one than the other. And often, women are more comfortable with connected knowing, with interdependence rather than independence. Do you agree? She would never call this exclusively a feminine trait, but describes it as one of a handful of traits that characterize many women and can help us understand ourselves. If she's right, it could help explain why more women than men take an interest in stories and literature: we suspend disbelief and fall under the writer's spell. "As one psychologist put it, 'Many women find it easier to believe than to doubt.'"

Here's how Jonalyn describes this trait in herself:

"Because I am interdependent, my beliefs are formed out of what others think about me. I desire to be needed by others. Relationships provide the means for me to understand my past, my goals, my character, my work, and my methods; and I emotionally want that. My thoughts regularly revolve around what they said or what she suggested, or what he noticed. I choose to have long conversations and drawn-out discussions to make sure everyone is content and understands me, and I, them. My will may need the buttressing of others' encouragement." (pp. 117-118)

Have you ever thought about this in gender terms? I've run across something similar in personality theories, e.g., MBTI (Myers-Briggs). "The ENTP loves a debate - the ENFJ loves a discussion," a close friend points out to me. He's the ENFJ; I'm the ENTP. Debate? For me, I think it really depends. While I love hashing out patterns and observations and hearing stories and case studies, when it comes to making diagnoses and drawing conclusions about the way things "are" in some objective sense, I start to squirm. I think it has to do with "connectedness." (And, bringing in another psychological theory, my #1 theme on the Gallup "StrengthFinder" assessment is "connectedness." They use a fairly similar definition.)

I've been feeling some of this tension at a church class I'm part of on Sunday mornings. I go, mostly, for the connectedness. I feel I can make a contribution; they miss me if I'm not there. But the actual content of the class can be troubling. We're looking at current events, often public policy issues, and discussing how we as Christians interpret and respond to them and why. The class is called "dealing with the difficult." But most everyone else in the class is part of the conservative Christian right, and only a few of them know that I'm more part of the, er, "Christian left" (Scott, if you're reading this, there you go).

Several of these friends tend to make sweeping generalizations about the way Christians "should" look at government issues - what the government should and shouldn't do. A few of them speak with both great passion and what seems to me great ignorance, as if they've been listening to talk radio call-in shows through too much static. Every time I hear them use the words "liberal" and "government," "Democrats" and "Obama" as if these were synonyms for evil and godlessness I want to speak up, to object, but I can't quite bring myself to do it. I don't want to try to risk offending them, being misunderstood, or making a fool of myself. I don't want to fight; don't think it's worth fighting over. The holes in their arguments may seem glaring, but in a minute or two the conversation will shift. So, except for the occasions when I burst out with something incoherent (or make a joke) I usually sit and squirm and wait for the conversation to shift into areas where we have more common ground. Several of these conservatives, though, are very wise, and I've appreciated their well-thought out perspectives.

I think I'll keep going. But I wonder if I'll ever be comfortable in groups that delight in challenge and controversy. I know many - both men and women - who would say the same.

"Most people use both connected and separate knowing, though we usually prefer one over the other. We feel most comfortable with one. I can act like a separate knower and play the devil's advocate - I learned the skill at home as a young teen. My father and I would go back and forth in sparring matches during dinnertime, questioning, doubting, cross-examining each other. It was exciting for me, but I know that even when I won the match, I felt separated from my dad. The knowledge was sweet, but I didn't like feeling separated. Separate knowing didn't build my emotional connection with my father. Though debating with him was exciting on one level, what I really wanted was to know and understand him. I didn't want to prove or disprove an abstract argument. I couldn't relax in the debate because I was all the while wondering if he or I was going to get our feelings hurt. To me it wasn't all fun and games. It wasn't really between our positions, it was between persons. So while I can perform as a separate knower, I prefer connected knowing. It comes more naturally to me." (p. 120)

> Which do you prefer, debate or discussion? Evaluating the issues or hearing people's experiences? Questioning or identifying? How do you maintain openness to and respect for those who differ from you on this?

Different by Design

Leading a team-building session
with one of my favorite research teams

Here in the U.S., individualism reigns, and families, teams, and other groups often consist of a people who are in the same place at the same time but each doing his or her own thing. Can we learn to shift our approach to team relationships from an "I" focus to a "we" focus, to work as a whole and healthy team? A team where each person fits, and each person counts?

That was the question for today's webinar from The Mission Exchange, featuring Paul Ford from Christian Resource Ministries. The place I chose to watch/listen to it had spotty internet access, so I missed the beginning of it and some other parts as well. But what I got made me want to dig in deeper.

One of Ford's key points was that both our gifts and our weaknesses are given to us by God for the sake of those with whom we serve - our partners and teammates. We each have powerful strengths that the group needs, as well as preferences, weaknesses, and unique needs which - if we're willing to face them and "own" them - can knit us together in relationship. We don't just steward gifts, we steward relationships - and we steward gifts FOR relationship.

Ford also said we shouldn't look to leaders to set vision and direction, but look around at one another's passions and calling, preferences and roles, and see what clues these provide to what God wants us to do and be.

"Let us look at whom God has brought together
so that we may more clearly discern what God intends."

When you work with a team, do you look at who "we" are as much as at who "I" am and who "you" are?

How I wish every group discussion of personalities and personal contribution took this next step.

Most of the teams I've trained and sent overseas quickly develop a team culture. I always encourage the leaders to lead according to the needs of those they lead - even if that means laying aside their own preferences (e.g., how they prefer to be led) and assumptions how leadership should operate. Often our team members are living together; almost always, they are sharing both down time and work time, worship and study and play. It's like being part of a family, really. You may start a family with all kinds of ideas about the type of husband or wife you want to be or what kind of kids you'll raise, but the reality is you don't control most or even many of the factors. So, you humble yourself and adjust to the interpersonal realities as you discover them.

I seldom see the same kind of flexible, facilitative leadership within longer-term, less-intense teams in the workplace. Most leaders lead out of who they are much more than they lead out of what their team needs. Does it have to be that way? Why or why not?

Here's one of the more interesting team-building exercises I use with a short-term team in formation. If at all possible, I facilitate and/or sit in on the discussion so as to see what the leaders are getting into and to help them process it, respond to it, and adjust.

How I Tick: Group Discussion

Take 10-15 minutes to jot some notes on this survey, then we’ll talk through each question with the group. I’d encourage you to take notes on your teammates’ preferences.

1. When I’m tired or stressed, I prefer to be
(a) with people, or
(b) alone.
Why?

2. If people find me withdrawn from the group, it usually means…

    How should they respond?

3. If you have offended me, my normal reaction is…

    The best way to seek reconciliation with me is…

4. If I have done something to offend you or just plain irritate you, this is how you should approach me about it…

5. It drives me nuts when I’m in a group that…

6. You can best encourage me by…

7. Some things about which I’m passionate are…

8. What I think of this kind of survey is…

Usually people have strong memories of things that come up in this discussion and bring them up again in the weeks and months to come. It helps them understand each other in the midst of - and advance of - personality clashes that may arise.

What do you think of this kind of process? What questions would you add?

Learning their language

A small section of my mom's massive collection
of yarn and thread. I'm not a weaver, like she is,
but I think I could pass the basic knowledge test.

Ever felt your forehead or the corners of your mouth tightening in frustration, or your eyelids drooping in fatigue as you listened to someone go on and on about their latest passion, a topic about which you knew nothing? Keep listening, even just a little, and in time you may start to pick it up. You may become like a second- or third-generation immigrant who knows what Grandma's saying when she speaks Spanish, Hindi, or Czech, even if you couldn't put together more than a few sentences of your own in that language. The wall between you starts to crumble. Life becomes more of a shared experience.

My friend K, his wife is one of those women who likes to quilt and sew and do craft projects. K's favorite craft may be beer-making. But he's given himself the husband's class in textiles; he knows the difference between teal and turquoise, and if she asks him to pass the scalpel (or the quilter's equivalent of it), he recognizes the word and is happy to oblige. He doesn't say, "Quilting is her thing. I don't know the first thing about it. Gotta go. The game's on." They have different skills and interests, but neither of them has written off the other's world.  

Have you discovered how much more fun the world can be when you take a little interest in other people's interests? It comes more naturally to me than most, and after spending enough time doing cross-cultural anthropology projects it's almost automatic. It's been my job "to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations" as they say on Star Trek. 

Someday I'm going to have to write that book, the one about how to learn another language - how to ask good questions about stuff you know nothing about and get people to open up their worlds to you.  Engaging ways to invite people to teach you the basics, to show them you want to learn; that would be an early chapter. How to pick up and use "native terms" to discover how other people tick, that would be another. I want to take those cross-cultural skills and put them in the hands of people who never go overseas but could use a few tools to better engage with the world around them. 

On the other hand, whether this book would sell, whether it would change things for people who read it, might still really depend on the question of motivation. Do you care? Do you want to know what's going on in that person's head or why they do what they do? If that motivation is there, maybe that's more important than all the learning skills I could give you. You may not need to take the class or read the book.  

• I have to admit, I don't know anything about that. I'd like to know more.
• Tell me about a project you're working on now.
• How did you get into this? How did you learn about it? 
• What are some of the things you've discovered along the way?
• What's that called? How do you use it? What's the difference between ____ and ____?
• So a ______ is for ______. Right? What else can you do with it?
• Can you show me how it works?

A Matter of Perspective: The Danger of a Single Story

“The single story creates stereotypes. And the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. … The consequence of the single story is this: it robs people of dignity. ... It emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar.”

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie

Two of the principles I live by are these: that we are all more ourselves than we are representatives of any category to which we belong, and that we all have many acres of common ground. Chimamanda Adichie’s TED talk, below, (HT a post on Eddie Arthur's Kouya Chronicle) deals with an issue I’ve been considering once again: How easy it is to oversimplify others and judge them based on how well they fit into the mold formed by our own expectations and stereotypes. 

Certainly I’ve fallen into these traps as a mission mobilizer. I’ve used the videos, brochures, and letterhead that try to enlist people in missions with images of locals in their native dress, the stuff they only put on once or twice a year (see Missions Conferences: A Waste of Time?) Of course, we had our standards: We would always use the happy, smiling pictures; no playing up squalor or poverty. No dirty kids with flies in their eyes! 

But surely you and I have also been on the other side, squirming at someone else’s false assumptions of us based on our cultures and backgrounds. I remember how hard it was to overcome the images my friends in Central Asia had that my country was a place where people lived exciting, sexy lives and carried guns everywhere. Or what about the man I dated who had "women" all figured out and was dismayed when I didn’t act according to his script? Surely if I wasn’t like other women I must be going against what God had designed me to be.

Around the same time some Western participants in the recent Lausanne conference were complaining that the African bits weren’t “African” enough, I read a book called Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post-Western World by long-time foreign correspondent Patrick Smith. It includes several rather complex, linked essays about how three Asian civilizations are responding to modernization – from China (where, he says, "Part of what it means to be Chinese today is to be confused about what it means to be Chinese. I know of no Chinese alive who does not, in some fashion, entertain this question”) to Japan, where it makes no sense to tell people that their material goods and technologies are “Western” and therefore foreign. Though of course we still go looking for the people in native dress, don’t we?

“Japan, the ‘real’ Japan one arrives from the West in search of, does not have extension cords running along its floors. Japan is made of… silk, translucent rice paper, and bamboo. It is not made of glass and steel and plastic… for if it is modern it must be Western.” (Somebody Else's Century, p. 9)

Learning from the Deaf How to Hear

Carolyn Stern is a doctor with a great gift for listening. So it may surprise you to read that Dr. Stern is deaf. More specifically, she is Deaf - a member of the Deaf community. Although several technologies help her to hear somewhat and to speak with clarity, she relies heavily on sight. She reads lips and body language.

People in the Deaf community would consider it "a slap in the face" to look away from someone trying to communicate, so Dr. Stern doesn't flip through her charts or look away when her patients talk. She sits, facing them, with an attitude of openness and availability. She has to if she's going to "hear" what they have to say. And she really listens. "Because it's hard, and even considered rude, to take notes while someone is signing, people who are Deaf often have more highly developed memory skills than hearing people do."

So says Nathaniel Reade in his article "See What I'm Saying," a profile of Dr. Stern in Southwest Airlines Spirit Magazine.

And, while studies suggest the average doctor will interrupt a patient after just 18 seconds, Dr. Stern listens without interruption, offers quiet encouragement, and lets her patient speak until she is completely done. She repeats back what she hears; she asks follow-up questions, she makes sure her patient feels heard.

"Good listening is active; it requires a back-and-forth between speaker and listener. The goal should be a maximum amount of overlapped understanding between the two," the article continues.

Because people who are Deaf use a visual language, says the author, they often see things the rest of us miss. "Deaf people are highly attuned to visual nonverbal behaviors, a quality which lends itself well to health-care-related interviews," says the AMA's Christopher Moreland, also Deaf. "While the words are important, equally important is observing how a person express those words, in particular picking up on hints that something has been left unspoken."

The ability to recognize and articulate nonverbal communication signs is one of the most important skills of active listening. Dr. Stern - who knows what it is to struggle for communication - has mastered it. 

What is there here for the rest of us?

"The value of good listening isn't just confined to medicine. We spend about a quarter of our day listening, more than any other communication activity. Our culture gives prizes and presidencies to great speakers, but most of us wouldn't know how to be good at the 'important and neglected art' of listening. Yet studies show that good listening leads to better performance in everything from marriage to business."

Listening well cuts company turnover, increases customer satisfaction, nurtures trust, saves relationships.

I don't have Dr. Stern's "handicap" and probably you don't either. But I see great room to improve in my listening: to let someone finish their thought; to "hear" both the words and the nonverbals, to clarify and repeat back and respond and remember what has been said: to make it my goal to have a "maximum overlap of shared understanding." By such standards, who of us is not - in the most negative sense - deaf?

Sorry, my original source for this story, the Southwest Airlines magazine, is no longer accessible online - January 2011 edition? Several other articles about Dr. Stern can be easily found in an internet search, however.