The Art of Spiritual Listening

Listening is a lost art. It's also an art we must rediscover as a missional faith community. The challenges to listening are myriad, not the least of which is slowing down our rate of thought (upwards of 3000 wpm) to the rate of our hearing (between 150-300 wpm). The challenge for this week is to intentionally seek out an opportunity to simply listen to someone as they share their story. Notice what happens when you make the choice to listen. Note also the distractions and challenges inherent in spiritual listening. Then, post your experience here or send me and email (david@crosspointe.com).

Moved From the Center

As a result of Christianity being moved from the center of American society, we must now work harder than ever to build relational bridges in order to connect with the people we hope to reach. Part of that bridge-building is being willing to leave. By leave I mean getting out amongst the people with whom we wish to connect as opposed to expecting them to come to us.

To leave is the first step in the missional and incarnational process. We must be willing to leave our personal, relational and religious comfort zones in order to build bridges of hearing. It requires us to resist the temptation we all have to return or retreat to what is comfortable for us. It also means we must leave behind our own preconceived ideas, personal biases and programmed responses to what church is all about.

Of the things listed below that I spoke about Sunday, which of these will be the hardest to leave behind and why?

• Viewing church as a place we go instead of a people we are
• Thoughts of “growing” a church in favor of fully-engaging our mission
• The dated pathways created for people’s entrance into church
• Pastor/Staff as the spiritual vending machine spitting out all the goodies.
• Seeing ministry as a program that happens at the church instead of the natural outflow of our lives

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