LIFEdevelopment.info - Audience
SIX - STRATEGY FOR ONE-ON ONE OUTREACH
Creative Listening
The preceding chapter concludes by putting a finger on what is, perhaps, the greatest Adventist shortcoming in dealing with secular people, our failure to learn and use language that is meaningful to their experience. How do you learn their language? The same way children learn language, by listening and talking. When we interact regularly with secular post-moderns we will learn how to communicate effectively with them.
How do you do this in practice? I know of no better way than a process I call "creative listening." I define creative listening as the art of asking leading questions, questions that gently and kindly zero in on what really matters in another person's life. The goal of creative listening is to sensitively encourage a person to reveal those things that are of greatest concern in their lives at that time.
Creative listening means learning to ask the right question at the right time. At times you will say the wrong thing and offend somebody in this process. But failure is one of the best ways to learn anything. Most people are naturally reluctant to overstep the comfort zone of others, but the good news is that secular people appreciate someone who's honest and open, someone who can say, "Oh, I think that was the wrong thing to say." As long as we do not wear our feelings on our sleeve, communicating with secular post-moderns will be a great adventure.
Some may object that the only valid way to witness to others is through direct confrontation. They may point to Jesus' directness with the Rich Young Ruler as an example. The difference between Jesus and me, however, is that Jesus could read the heart, I can't yet. While I don't want to minimize the role of the Spirit in outreach, God does not normally choose to bypass the human process of learning. God meets people where they are. And the only way I can know where people are is through careful, creative listening.
The Point of Contact
The goal of creative listening is to discover the felt needs of a person or a community. It is at the point of felt needs that people are open to input from others. Felt needs motivate a person's search for truth and self-betterment. Felt needs are the point where a person has a desire for something better than what they are currently experiencing.
Approaching people at a point of felt need is in harmony with a very basic human characteristic. James Engel points out in the book Contemporary Christian Communication that every human being has a built-in barrier against persuasion. And that is a good thing. If we didn't have this barrier, we would all change religions every day. We would all believe the last thing we were told. The average person, however, has a strong barrier against persuasion. They do not lightly change their minds on any topic. When somebody else comes along with an idea that is radically different than what they believe, a psychological brick wall goes up. And the more you pound against that wall, the more it is reinforced.
But there is a way around those "brick walls," it is to approach people in the area of their felt needs. A felt need is a point in that person's life where they are open to instruction. Students of world mission call this felt need the point of contact, that point in a person or a group's experience where an aspect of the gospel intersects with conscious needs and interests.
Let me illustrate. Back in the 1970s New Yorkers coming onto a van to get their blood pressure checked were invited to indicate if they were interested in studying the Bible. One out of every 25 or 30 would do so. When people were asked in a soft-sell way if they would like to receive Bible studies, the ratio jumped immediately to one out of three! Even higher percentages of people seemed interested in material on how to manage stress. Stress appeared to be the number one felt need of people in New York City (and in many other parts of North America these days).
Bible lessons were developed on how to manage stress, called Power to Cope. The percentage of people accepting Bible Studies skyrocketed as soon as the lessons were available. The acceptance rate increased to 85-87%, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, it did not seem to matter. People were just grabbing the lessons, sometimes grabbing extra ones for all their friends. One day on Wall Street stress must have been a major felt need. On that day 242 people came on the van in front of the New York Stock Exchange and every single one accepted Bible studies. 242 out of 242. It must have been a very bad day on Wall Street. But that is what happens when you meet felt needs, the barrier against persuasion is gone. And that is the key to opening up secular post-moderns to the gospel, finding a felt need and speaking directly to that felt need.
Frankly, however, the felt need principle makes a Christian's life more complex because secular post-moderns are as diverse as snowflakes. Talk to twenty of them and you will discover twenty different felt needs that you have never met in quite that form before. Without a fresh and creative approach, the situation may appear hopeless. But although the attempt will have its ups and downs, it is a great adventure that will enrich the life of everyone who thrives on adventure.
Patience
Patience is necessary when working with secular people. To move from a totally secular environment into a traditional Adventist environment is not going to happen in two or three weeks. In my experience it averages at least two years. What we are talking about here is long-term commitment to such an outreach. The key people who develop relationships with secular post-moderns need to be around when they decide to go all the way with Christ.
I remember one couple that I baptized. I officiated at their wedding and then baptized them a year later. On the day of their baptism the members were shocked, they thought that they were already members of the church. They had been out Ingathering, they came to all the work-bees, they went to all the prayer meetings--they were at everything. They were as active and involved in the church as anyone could be. But it was two years before they were comfortable in making a total commitment to Christ in the context of the Adventist Church. They insisted, "We want to know what we're getting into first. We plan to become Seventh-day Adventists but we are going to become Seventh-day Adventists when we understand all of what that means."
Mass media advertising has led to a situation where educated secular people have difficulty believing anything that is offered in the public square. Propaganda is not interested in truth, only in persuasion. In the secular post-modern environment, therefore, when an individual makes a strong statement about the certainty of his or her belief that statement is automatically suspect. A public setting of frank and open discussion is much more persuasive for them than an assertive lecture. Through listening and dialoguing, we show respect for the viewpoint of others and encourage a similar respect in return. Such an approach will require patience, however, as secular people do not normally experience rapid conversions to Christian faith.
The Engel Scale
In the book Contemporary Christian Communications James F. Engel outlines a sliding scale he calls the Spiritual Decision Process. He sees each person fitting somewhere on a scale that runs from "Awareness of Supreme Being" at one end to a well-educated, fully committed, church-participating follower of Jesus at the other end. One of the goals of creative listening would be to determine just where each person is on the scale so that an appropriate approach can be attempted.
It is obviously inappropriate, for example, to press a person in the area of repentance, when they haven't ever heard the gospel.
The goal of Christian outreach is to help people move down the scale to a decision for Christ, followed by full commitment.
Decisions for Christ usually involve a lifetime process with many influences. Such decisions do not normally take place without some prior understanding of the gospel and its relevance for life. This is a major reason why patience is so necessary in working with secular post-moderns who do not have such a prior understanding. People are open to an overt evangelistic approach when they have enough knowledge of the gospel to perceive that it is relevant to their basic needs.
Most secular post-moderns, however, will be found somewhere from 8 to 7 on this scale. They will have some awareness about God but probably have very little knowledge of the gospel. So the primary goal of witness to such a person is helping them build a basic knowledge of the gospel. Given the barriers against persuasion, this is a lengthy process beginning with relationship-building followed by much attention to felt needs. Over time and after much experimentation, a secular postmodern may be ready to hear the basics of the gospel. A call for decision in the early stages of this process is inappropriate. Once the basics of the gospel have been established, moving from 5 to 2 usually happens much more rapidly. These are the stages reaping type events can play a role, provided they are designed with postmodern sensibilities in mind.
Although most people in the mainstream culture of Europe are at levels 8 to 6, there is little in the way of literature or packaged approaches for people at these stages. Not only that, most Christians are personally unprepared to cope with the majority of people they meet. I wrote the book The Day That Changed the World specifically to meet this need. It covers topics of burning interest in today's world, leading gradually in a postmodern way toward a basic appreciation that the gospel may be worth investigation and experimentation. I have yet to meet a secular postmodern that was not willing to read the book once they learn a little about it. The book is an example of the kinds of tools that the Life Development Network is attempting to provide for people at the top of Engel's scale.
A powerful implication of Engel's scale is that evangelistic success must no longer be evaluated only in terms of decisions. Many evangelists for secular post-moderns will never see large numbers of decisions because they are dealing with people who are at the upper levels of the chart.
Outreach should be considered successful if people move down the chart, whether or not a decision has yet been made.
People with a positive attitude toward the gospel (4) are the people who are nearing approachability for decision. They are ready for some kind of encouragement at the level of problem recognition (3), which means perceiving a difference between one's own life and the ideal life defined by Scripture.
The Secular Post-Modern Path Toward Decision
How will the process of moving people down the Engel scale work in practice? When we encounter a person at the upper end of Engel's scale we can use creative listening to help him or her become aware of felt needs (not necessarily a need for the gospel). Spiritual progress is not likely to happen until a person feels a need for change. Awareness of felt needs opens the way for an initial decision that life change will benefit them in some tangible way. Once people become open to change in an area of their lives they are open to information on how and why to make that change.
Openness to Change
Many secular post-moderns have little sense of felt need, however, until confronted by some catastrophic event such as a financial reverse, a major illness in the immediate family, divorce, or the death of a loved one. Various stages in the life cycle are also times when people are open to change. The two stages of life that are most open to change are the "Pulling Up" stage, between ages 18 and 25 in most cases, and the Mid-Life Crisis phase, somewhere between 35 and 50.
During the first of the two open points in a person's life, young people are moving from a reliance on their parent's beliefs to the establishment of new, strictly personal beliefs. This phase is often characterized by an identity crisis. The mid-life transition, on the other hand, is a time when people reassess the dreams and the values which they have internalized. At this point there is a final casting aside of inappropriate role models. They will either seek personal renewal at this point (including changes in religious beliefs and practices) or resign themselves to the realities of their lives.
During the other phases of the life cycle people are relatively closed to change unless faced with a crisis. From ages 21 to 35 or so, people are building on and trying to live out their youthful dreams (occupational and marital choices, putting down roots). To the extent they succeed, contentment may preclude the examination of alternative dreams. In middle adulthood (45-60) people tend to reduce their ambitions for change and put more emphasis on living consistently within the code of values they clarified in mid-life, and placing more importance on personal relationships and individual fulfillment. During late adulthood (60 and beyond) focus moves to retirement, which sometimes leads to a new search for life renewal, but more often leads to resignation.
Gaining Knowledge
When people discover unmet needs in their lives they begin a search process. They actively seek information that will help them to meet those needs. The search process will cover as many sources as are available to the individual, including the electronic media, books, magazines, the advice of friends and, if the need is pressing, even strangers. The greatest opportunity to reach secular post-moderns comes in providing needed information at the right time. An appropriate use of magazine ads, radio spots, and creative self-help books, therefore, can arouse interest in people whose search for information has been activated by a felt need. Tract distribution, on the other hand, is largely a waste of time and money unless the tracts are specifically aimed at a felt need of the person receiving the tract. Even then, a tract is most likely to be read when it was received from a trusted personal friend rather than from a stranger on the street or in a passing car. Christian television must also be combined with face-to-face witness in order to be evangelistically effective.
Changing Beliefs and Attitudes
At the point of information search it becomes possible for a person's attitudes and beliefs to progress in the spiritual decision process toward a decision for Christ. Here is where a sensitive two-horizon Christian comes in handy. The probability that a person will change his or her beliefs is directly proportional to the credibility of the sender. This credibility is determined less by words than by the character of the sender's life. Generally people change in very small amounts at a given time.
Encouraging a Decision
While psychology is helpful at many points in the decision process, conversion is a divine work. The Christian's part in the secular person's decision process is gentle, friendly encouragement. Persuasion is up to God alone (2 Tim 2:24,26). We are encouraged in 2 Timothy not to be argumentative, but rather to be gentle and teachable, knowing how long and hard our own journey to faith has been. Through loving humility we can partner with the Holy Spirit and secular post-moderns in the process of decision.
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