101 Great Ideas for Growing Healthy Churches. John Nelson

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      Great Idea 5: Be a Listening Church

      PATRICK GOH

      You are worried about many things, but only one thing is needed

      Luke 10.41–42

      Top Tip: Be ready to lay down your own agenda and really listen.

      Business Perspective: A successful organization understands that profitability rests in the full and active participation of its members. Consequently active leaders develop an active listening organization.

      During a retreat at a Franciscan friary where the theme was leadership and diversity the Abbot was asked whether he had any tips on how to honour diversity at a practical level. He replied:

      If you believe that God works through all of us, you need to somehow enact this belief. One way of doing this is to enter into any conversation with a spirit of anticipation, expecting to hear how God is working through people and what God is saying to them.

      On the whole, we don’t do this well. Instead, our conversations are more often about telling others what we feel God is saying to us. In a leadership context, this can lead to an overly top down approach to decision making.

      To address this, my colleagues and I have developed a tool called the ‘keynote listener’. This is based on the concept of honouring the voices of the community and the importance of listening in agreeing a common vision. This is a conversational tool that reverses the normal communication process by asking people in authority not to present what they know and think, but to listen for the wisdom of others. It is an attempt to gather the collective wisdom of the whole community (church).

      We have used this methodology for church events such as visioning meetings, annual church meetings and youth conferences. It works best when it is possible to bring the whole system, or as many as possible, into one place. Rather than having the usual sermons from ‘keynote speakers’, we reframe them as ‘keynote listeners’, whose role is to listen carefully to the ideas of participants throughout the day.

      The idea is to structure enquiry sessions on the main issue we are addressing in creative ways, for example, using talk, posters, drama, music, dance, etc. The role of keynote listeners is to attend these sessions, listen carefully to the contributions, feedback and questions.

      The keynote listeners are asked to listen out for:

      There are a number of important principles for the keynote listener:

      Keynote listeners are then given the opportunity to reflect on what they have heard and to share their insights in a structured feedback session. This often works well as a conversation rather than someone simply talking from the front. The following are useful questions for this session: