Evangelism Tip #4: Listen

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking a pause to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, as a result, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord on your own as well. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment or question, as long as it is offered in respect and humility.

Today's devotional is taken from Chan, S. How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being THAT Guy): Personal Evangelism In A Skeptical World, Zondervan Reflective, 2020. Evangelism Tip 4

What The Text Brought To Mind: If you were to have asked my parents which of their three children is the chattiest, without hesitation they will both point their fingers at me. It’s okay, I’m not self-conscious about it, I know who I am. Having a good chat is great and sharing thoughts and feelings is one of the best parts of the human experience. I think I learned this 'chatty' trait from my father, as we both share a similar specification about our chattiness; we both love to explain things we have learned about; we love to share knowledge. It is not hard to understand why both my father and I are in the ministry; we love sharing explanations about things we are passionate about. This actually seems to be a common theme with ministers, we are all a bunch of Chatty-Cathys. I discovered this when I went to seminary. As an introverted Cathy myself, my impulse to talk is somewhat muted until I get to know a person better. Walking into seminary on day one, I was blown away by how many Cathys there were. It was almost hard to endure if I’m honest. Every extroverted Cathy was jousting for airtime, it took the introverts like myself a few weeks before we started chiming in.  Seminary is one of the few academic streams when a professor asks a question in class each responder gives a portion of their life story. By the end of our first month, our professor’s ears must have been bleeding. This overflooding of voices was how the first semester proceeded, we all became desensitized to it eventually, but something was clear, the next generation of pastors did not know how to listen. Not until we all did our first pastoral care course.

During our pastoral care course, the professor tried to instill in us how to focus more on listening than speaking. This was a challenging task for any Cathy, to say the least, however, the words that brought clarity on how to hone the skill of listening were, “tell me more.” Our professor explained to us that every time we had the impulse to speak that we should consider offering a variation of “tell me more” instead. For example, if someone is talking to you about the burden of being ill, and if you have the impulse to tell them about a time you were ill, stop and redirect yourself to a “tell me more” which might sound like, “wow, sounds like you’ve been pretty sick, and how have you been coping with everything?” The response shows that you are interested in their topic of choice, and it offers an open-ended question to invite the person to speak more. An open-ended question is a question that cannot be answered with either a yes or no. Often people who are timid or shy will answer with short responses, allowing them to keep their emotional defenses up. The nuance of the open-ended question is important to understand because many Chatty-Cathys will push right through a question that could be ended with a 'yes or no' with a fully detailed response, and not realize others might not. After some ongoing reminders to lean into the “tell me more", our seminary class began to get the hang of it, and before too long, we were better listeners and our time together was more enjoyable. Our seminary class began to become closer to one another, teaching each other world views and perspectives.

Opening Prayer: Lord, to many people it may feel like You are silent to them, but as many Christians have learned in the time since Jesus, it is not that You are silent, rather it is that we do not spend enough time listening for You. Help to silence our voices long enough that we may welcome your word, which will help to shape us to be the Christians that you call us to be. Amen.

Scripture: Proverbs 17:28 Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed intelligent

Reflection: My father used to say a variation of this proverb, it is better to be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. I remember hearing my father use this fraise the odd time when I was little, and so I asked him what it meant. He explained it in a two-fold response, the first being, that people will often jump to speak with limited, false, or misguided information, and when they do they look foolish, so it is better to not speak unless you're confident that what you're saying is honest, accurate and meaningful. Second, he said that people exchange words like currency, your words contain power or worth, and that the more you needlessly give away the more power you give away or the more you devalue your word's worth. I didn’t know what that meant until I was a number of years older, maybe about 12 or 13, and my older sister started dating. The first boy she ever brought home to meet our parents demonstrated to me exactly what my father had meant. This 15- or 16-year-old kid was so nervous he habitually talked to a painful level. He bumbled and fumbled his words, he misspoke a lot, and had many incorrect assumptions in his perceptions, he let slip his vulnerabilities and weaknesses and showed that he was either desperate for approval or incompatible with silence. Within a 30-minute conversation, he gave up all his power. I remember my parents did not like the young man, and I made the connection in my head to what my father had said many years ago. His inability for silence was like a barrel full of holes, everything he had poured out, making him appear to be less than he was.

When I got older and started to date, I remembered that train wreck moment when that young man met my parents, so I did not want to make the same mistake. When I met my first girlfriend’s parents, after the initial introduction and small talk, I went quiet and waited for them to ask me a question. When they asked me a generic ‘get to know you’ question, I paused, thought about it, gave a clear and concise answer, and then asked them in return something about themselves. I simply and politely returned the parental interrogation around on them, I would ask them about their lives and took interest in them as people, mostly because I didn’t want to speak, but it served my purpose well. By the end of the first meeting, I knew more about the parent than they did about me, but I was the boyfriend all the parents wanted their daughters to date.

Now, why do I bring up my slick high school dating skills? Because both skill and incompetency are transferable. If you are trying to evangelize, and your incompetency is pouring out your barrel in a verbal word salad all over the person you are trying to make a connection with, they will feel about as much enthusiasm as that young teenager got from my parents all those years ago. So, we need to become competent at listening. Chan offers some amazing insight into why listening is such an important element of evangelism. In short, it helps us to instill feelings of comfort and safety into the people we are engaging with, and people won’t entertain worldview-like conversations from people they don’t feel comfortable and safe with. Listening cultivates comfort and safety for a number of reasons:

1.      Listening humanizes people. When you exchange with another person meaningfully it reminds both parties that we are all human. Often, we can put people in categories of preconceptions. Preconceptions are detrimental to evangelism, if you assume you know where someone is coming from, you are likely to miss important information which will help you make sense of their story and worldview.

2.      Listening also shows people you have a genuine interest in them. It is hard to not feel like someone cares about you if they have just spent 2 hours listening to how you feel about life. Feeling heard by someone makes a person feel like the listener is in their camp, even if that person may not agree with what was said. The positive feeling people get when they feel heard is so powerful, psychologists, counselors, therapists, and clergy are often warned that people they listen to may develop a romantic feeling for them because being actively listened to is sadly so rare in our society that the good feeling they get is misconstrued for love.  

3.      Being quick to listen and slow to speak also makes people feel like they're in a less judgemental atmosphere. People often want to share, but fear being judged for their shortcomings. If your listening ear feels more like they are writing into a journal or diary instead of reporting to the CRA (IRS for our American friends) they will be more willing to express themselves organically.

4.      Actively listening demonstrates an active ministry of Jesus, which contains active care and interest in others. If your conversations lean heavily towards yourself then it tells people that Christians are self-centered, and that following Jesus must not do much for the Christian's personality. However, if you by faith, you have a vested interest in the well-being of others, then listening is an active tool to show people you are available and welcoming to them as Jesus is.

5.      Next, Chan notes, people balance conversation with an unspoken rule of reciprocity. We cannot share the Gospel without speaking to some degree, so we need to build stores of goodwill from listening. If we have been willing to sit and listen for 2 hours about someone's life story, they will be more willing to listen to our life story too, and since our life story contains faith in Jesus, we can share that with them, and because they have been heard, not felt judged, and they feel we genuinely care for them, they will be more open to doing that for us. And, because they feel safe, comfortable, and cared for when we mention Jesus it won't feel like an outside attack from a foreign party, it will feel like someone who cares for them, bringing them something care worthy.

6.      Finally, because being able to listen and be silent displays confidence, people will instinctively trust you more when you speak. They will unknowingly feel more confident in what you have to offer because you yourself are confident. If the trustworthy, safe, comfortable confident listener, after they have demonstrated their good character and genuine caring self to you, says they are the way they are because they trust in God and have dedicated themselves to the discipleship of following Jesus, everything you have displayed prior to those words affirms the statement of faith.  

There are many fine details in Chan’s chapter, and I would love to run through all of them and then some, but actively listening is such a major component, this chapter could have its own book dedicated to it. With that said, if you haven’t gotten yourself a copy of this book yet, this chapter alone is worth the cost. The chapter’s content isn’t rocket science, but considering how many people in the world do not feel heard, it is clearly something that needs to be reviewed.

 Challenge for the Month: Partner up with a church friend and practice active listening. Sit down across from each other, and select one person to be the listener and one to be the sharer. Choose a topic that has room to reach a depth of meaning, i.e., struggles, life goals, political or religious views, or family dynamics. Let the sharing person offer what they feel they have, and then the listener should use open-ended questions or suggestions, like tell me more, to pull more out of the other. When the conversation has thoroughly exhausted itself, the switch rolls.  

Prayer for your Month: Lord, You have given us ears to hear, help us listen. You have given us a mind to wonder, help us to wonder about the people around us, those who share with us Your image, and which you call us to take the Gospel to, in both explanation and action. By Your love, Amen.

Final Thought and Picture:

Chan mentions three stages of evangelism, coffee, dinner, and gospel earlier in this book. Listening will be an important skill for all three, the more meaningful the conversation the more your will need to exercise those listening skills, but never discount intentionally listening to even the most casual coffee conversations because it displays to the other person, you are always ready to speak about something meaningful, it might be the invitation they are looking for. 

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