Quick to Listen

The Adventures in Prayer series is done–so now the real work begins, praying! It’s been an awesome journey already. Now I’d like to share with you other insights from some of the books I’m reading for seminary. Hopefully these things can connect with your minds and hearts even if you haven’t read the material.  I’ll admit I’m strapped for “extra” time now that I’m in seminary and have a busy little boy, so I’m “cheating” by sharing with you things from my classes.  I hope you enjoy! 

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The title of Quick-to-Listen Leaders intrigued me from the start because this term God is repeatedly impressing upon my heart that listening is the key character trait that he wants to develop in me.  From my counseling class to my prayer class to this class, I sense that this theme is surfacing time and again, and I believe this is something that most leaders are weak at, to say the least.

 When I first began thinking about listening, I thought through the qualities of those people I knew who were good listeners, and those I knew who were poor listeners.  In my mind I “interviewed” those people, as Ping & Clippard encourage us to do.  What was sad that that I realized that the pastors and spiritual leaders in my life are among the poorest listeners I have ever met. (My husband, upon reading this, reminded me that our current pastor is an excellent listener, so he doesn’t count!  I haven’t spent enough time with him to know.)  The connection I discovered was that the “higher up” the person was in spiritual leadership the worse that person was at authentic listening skills, generally speaking.  The people I know who are the best listeners are lay people who genuinely love others and who have a miraculous ability to “enter in” to another’s world, pushing aside all other distractions and zeroing in on the speaker, even asking engaging questions, as active and not passive listeners.  Karen Zyp (my mom), Mindy Haidle, and Tom Jones top my list as listening heroes.  

There were also several key things that highlighted my own listening weaknesses.  The line, “Keep the conversation spotlight on the other person’s agenda without pushing for your own” (90) really struck me.  I can easily feel that the conversation is out of control unless I have some input or some way to relate to what the person is saying, especially if the person is relating something that I feel is not an accurate representation of reality.  But I need to be careful not to try to correct their thinking before the time. If a person just needs to share how they feel it is not my job to correct their feelings. 

 The two parts of the book that I found most helpful were the list of helpful and unhelpful questions and the discussion of personality types.  The connecting questions, clarifying questions, and wondering questions were all excellent. When I think of my friend Mindy, I am always amazed at how she asks such perfectly crafted questions to really get at the heart of what I’m talking about.  My questions always seem shallow or contrived. 

 The timing of this book was perfect.  The night that I finished the book we were hosting a casual dinner get together for 8 young couples from our church, all with young children.  Since we are relatively new there, but actively involved in leadership, we saw it as an opportunity to both connect and meet people in our same stage of life, and promote a young-marrieds ministry, of which there is none.  The Search to Belong provided an excellent guide for us as we prayed through what the group should look like.  Then Quick-to-Listen Leaders provided the guide to help us prepare to be listeners throughout the whole evening.  We both agreed that the goal of the evening was to listen to these people, to get to know them without seeking to be understood or known ourselves (as our primary objective).  Rather than telling them our ideas of for a ministry, we committed to listening to their ideas.  We committed to being slow to speak and quick to listen.
 So the questions and ideas from this book were invaluable!  We sat down and discussed what kind of “connecting” questions we could ask each couple. We knew several people as mere acquaintances, but had never had a very significant conversation with any of them, and are very dissimilar from many in terms of life experience and vocation.  So, discussing connecting questions was fabulous.  My husband was blessed when he initiated conversation with one guy whom he had always had trouble connecting with.  He always sensed the guy was disinterested and we were amazed that they even showed up to our event.  But Jeff began asking connecting questions about his job, and they discovered that the guy was working on a project with the company that Jeff just left (in a town over an hour away!).  It was an amazing “small world” situation, which opened a door to talk about construction and utilities that created a bridge between these two seemingly dissimilar men. 

 When it came time to come together and all share, Jeff asked the connecting question, “How did you and your spouse meet and marry?”  It was the perfect way for all of us to connect.  The stories were infinitely varied and had us laughing and even crying.  Everyone had their own chance to share and be heard, and we sought to model good listening skills by focusing on the person speaking, asking clarifying and wondering questions, and giving listening cues. 

 When the time came to listen to their ideas and needs for a ministry we were amazed.  Our gifting and passion is to teach the Bible, but we’d been very careful not to push people toward needing to study the Bible more, since we thought most everyone was interested only at a social level.  So, we determined not to give any ideas or even suggestions to start but just to listen.  What we heard was amazing!  We figured many couples wouldn’t want to commit to meeting regularly.  Some couples there are not even regular attenders of church so we didn’t have high hopes. But each couple, every single couple, articulated that what they really want is to meet regularly to study the Bible in depth, and to have occasional times (like that) of dinner and fellowship with our kids.  Our eyes were like saucers—they were basically articulating our exact  same desire for the ministry, but they’d said it, not us!  We couldn’t have orchestrated the thing any better if we’d tried, but what was remarkable was that by listening instead of telling them, we let go of control and were able to not only let God move, but let the people in the group have a sense of leadership and ownership and value because listened to them. 
 By the time people left, every single couple said, “please call us and let us know when we can do this again!”  We thought we wouldn’t get any sort of commitment, but they all committed!  Again, we were amazed at the results when, like the two books said, we allowed people to be free and when we let go of control and listened.  Talk about two well-timed books!  Thank you, Lord.