The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations
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Here are fresh and practical insights into how to engage people in spiritual discussions that are authentic and compelling. It’s a must-have guide to becoming stronger salt and brighter light in the twenty-first century!
LEE STROBEL
Bestselling author of The Case for Christ and professor of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University
“Go and make disciples.” That was one of the commands Jesus gave to his followers, but it often ranks low among American Christians’ priorities. That’s why churches, small groups, and those who consider themselves to be disciples of Jesus should read this book. The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations is an essential resource for accomplishing the mission Christ gave his church.
RICH STEARNS
President of World Vision US and author of The Hole in Our Gospel and Unfinished
The nine arts are a culmination of years of real-life stories. If you want tried-and-true concepts that will become reality for you and your friends, I highly recommend this unique resource.
HUGH HALTER
Author of Flesh, Brimstone, and The Tangible Kingdom
John and Mary present a compelling case for how to maximize moments for Kingdom good. This book will profoundly alter the way you engage with humanity. It’s a must-read for anyone who is serious about having spiritual conversations!
STEVE CARTER
Teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church
When you can’t put a book down, you know that you are on to something important. As I read The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations, I found myself simultaneously instructed, challenged, inspired, and equipped. I was given hope that I could actually engage people in a way that could lovingly bring them to Jesus over time. The ministry of Young Life has popularized the phrase that we need to “earn the right to be heard.” This book puts flesh on that phrase like nothing else I have ever read.
GREG OGDEN
Writer, speaker, teacher on discipleship, and author of Discipleship Essentials
Fear of rejection and a lack of understanding on how to communicate the gospel has shut the mouths of many sincere Christians for too long. The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations is a shot of encouragement for all of us who want to live and proclaim a gospel that is truly good news!
CAESAR KALINOWSKI
Author of Transformed and Small Is Big, Slow Is Fast
For introverts like me, the first four arts (Noticing, Praying, Listening, and Asking Questions) are especially helpful. Gifted extroverts can help us with the other five! I am impressed with the vitality and deep faith of the authors: They really want to help us reach out for Christ, and they do so winsomely.
FREDERICK DALE BRUNER
Author of commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew (2004) and the Gospel of John (2012)
In The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations, John and Mary make the art of connecting with the people whom Jesus misses most doable, human, and fun. Put these arts to work in your church today and watch evangelism move from being a gift shared by only a few to a practice shared by everyone.
JIM HENDERSON
Author of Jim and Casper Go to Church, executive producer at Jim Henderson Presents
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The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations: Walking Alongside People Who Believe Differently
Copyright © 2016 by Q Place, Mary Schaller, and John Crilly. All rights reserved.
Cover photograph copyright © Nemanja Glumac/Stocksy.com. All rights reserved.
The poem titled “Love and Praise the Lord” is copyright © by H. H. Used by permission of H. H. All rights reserved.
The poem titled “Loaves and Fishes” is taken from David Whyte, The House of Belonging (Langley, WA: Many Rivers Press, 1996). “Loaves and Fishes” is copyright © 1996 Many Rivers Press, Langley, WA, USA. Printed with permission from Many Rivers Press, www.davidwhyte.com.
Lyrics from the song titled “Changed” are copyright © 2003 by AARONieq Music. Used by permission of Aaron Niequist. All rights reserved.
Some of the material in this book previously appeared in The Arts of Spiritual Conversations: Beyond the Basics, copyright © 2013 by Q Place. Used by permission.
Edited by Karin Stock Buursma
Designed by Daniel Farrell
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version,® NIV.® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked MSG are taken from THE MESSAGE by Eugene H. Peterson, copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible,® copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015. (Some quotations may be from the 2004 version of the NLT.) Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Schaller, Mary.
Title: The 9 arts of spiritual conversations : walking alongside people who
believe differently / Mary Schaller and John Crilly.
Other titles: Nine arts of spiritual conversations
Description: Carol Stream, IL : Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015038074 | ISBN 9781496405760 (sc)
Subjects: LCSH: Interpersonal relations—Religious aspects—Christianity. |
Oral communication—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Christianity and
other religions. | Witness bearing (Christianity) | Apologetics.
Classification: LCC BV4597.52 .C75 2016 | DDC 248/.5—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038074
ISBN 978-1-4964-1236-2 (ePub); ISBN 978-1-4964-0577-7 (Kindle); ISBN 978-1-4964-1237-9 (Apple)
Build: 2016-01-22 15:45:19
Contents
Preface
Chapter 1: The Heart and Habits of Jesus
Chapter 2: Rediscovering Nine Relational Practices of Jesus
Part I: Getting Ready Chapter 3: The Art of Noticing
Chapter 4: The Art of Praying
Chapter 5: The Art of Listening
Part II: Getting Started Chapter 6: The Art of Asking Questions
Chapter 7: The Art of Loving
Chapter 8: The Art of Welcoming
Part III: Keeping It Going Chapter 9: The Art of Facilitating
Chapter 10: The Art of Serving Together
Chapter 11: The Art of Sharing
Part IV: Ongoing Spiritual Conversations Chapter 12: Starting a Q Place
Chapter 13: From Cups of Cold Water to Rivers of Living Water
Acknowledgments
Notes
About the Authors
Preface
NOW THAT YOU’VE PICKED UP THIS B
OOK, you may have a burning question about the cover: Why the dinosaurs? Are we saying spiritual conversations are extinct?
When I (Crilly) think of dinosaurs, I immediately am taken back to a childhood memory of my grandma’s home. My Grandmother Crilly was a child of the Depression. She grew up a fatherless immigrant and married very young, only to divorce her abusive first husband and marry my grandfather, a quiet and gentle man. My grandma was a neat freak, probably with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that manifested itself in cleanliness. She put paper towels between every plate in the cabinet. She was constantly concerned about bugs getting into her home. She had clear plastic covering her nice sofa and chairs.
Into this squeaky-clean environment entered my brother and I. We did not look forward to visiting her home because we had to be clean and quiet there—two very difficult tasks for young boys. In addition, Grandma did not keep many toys on hand, though she was thoughtful enough to store a few simple children’s toys in a walnut-laminate cabinet in the living room. As I grabbed both handles and opened wide the cabinet doors, I could smell the waxy, plastic odor of the Mold-A-Rama models, remnants of a field trip to the Museum of Natural History. There they were: Tyrannosaurus rex and Triceratops. From the museum’s odd, bubble-topped molding machine, they had made their way to my grandma’s toy cabinet and were about to be engaged in epic prehistoric battles of my imagination: T-rex vs. Triceratops. A fight to the death.
For many of us, that’s how we view spiritual conversations as well. Somehow, we assume that any attempt to love and understand each other is bound to end in a battle: herbivores versus carnivores. When it comes to topics such as faith, religion, or God, we’re afraid it’s impossible to have a conversation with someone who believes differently without ending up in a standoff that would damage the relationship. We’re convinced that followers of Jesus and people who believe differently will end up on opposite sides of any discussion, finding little common ground. And if we have the courage to broach the topic at all, we feel confined to a formula or series of steps. Then the flood of obstacles, fears, and expectations constrains us from winsomely living in the love of Christ and sharing that love with others.
Mary and I are here to say that it doesn’t have to be this way. Meaningful, noncombative spiritual conversations are not extinct—they’re possible for all of us.
When I was a boy, the dinosaurs invited me to a place of playfulness, free from the rigid expectations and rules of my grandma’s sterile home. Mary and I hope this book will help you find joy, freedom, and pleasure in talking about God with people who believe differently. We also hope this book will provide simple tools for amateurs and experts alike to engage naturally in the Great Commission. So we, like Jesus, can be winsome and unashamed when we speak of the Kingdom.
Mary Schaller
John Crilly
CHAPTER 1
THE HEART AND HABITS OF JESUS
Whoever claims to live in [God] must live as Jesus did.
1 JOHN 2:6
Our most serious failure today is the inability to provide effective practical guidance as to how to live the life of Jesus.
DALLAS WILLARD
MY (MARY’S) SISTER TERRY had a window seat in the second-to-last row of a full plane. A young man in his early twenties occupied the coach seat next to her. He was nicely dressed and had gotten out a Bible to read when he sat down. Curious, she asked if he was attending a Bible or divinity school. No, he said, he worked in a sawmill, but he was very involved in his church and loved the Bible. He said he read it a lot.
“Do you believe in Jesus?” he asked boldly in return. Terry said yes, but felt a little uncomfortable disclosing such personal information within the first minute of conversation with a stranger. He immediately followed up with an even more intrusive question: “When you pray, do you pray ‘with tears’ and ‘great anguish’?”
Shocked by the question, but trying to assume this discussion was headed in a normal direction, she said she did pray, but typically not with that kind of passion. “If you are not praying right like that, God doesn’t hear,” the man exclaimed, raising his voice and spitting out the words with a mixture of excitement and judgment. If she didn’t “pray right,” he said, she wasn’t saved and would go to hell when she died.
The young man started leafing through his Bible, referencing passages that reinforced his claims. The plane was just taking off, and he was shouting all of this above the engine noise.
What have I unleashed? Terry thought, feeling trapped in the far back of the plane. For the next twenty minutes, she couldn’t get a word in edgewise as her seatmate zealously justified his position on prayer.
Finally, when Terry could no longer stand the lecture, she held up her hand and said, “STOP! Don’t tell me what to believe, and don’t judge me! He’s my God, too. I believe only God can judge people.” To her astonishment, the man immediately stopped his discourse, closed his book, bent over the tray table, and started to weep.
After about an hour, he finally sat up. Terry didn’t want to look at him; she was afraid he might start yelling again or even pull out a weapon. She thought it best not to make eye contact and pretended to ignore him for the rest of the trip, silently praying for him and for God’s protection. It seemed like the flight would last forever.
When they were finally exiting the plane, the young man helped her get her bag down and said he was sorry that she didn’t see things the same way he did. It didn’t feel like an authentic apology to Terry, but rather a halfhearted effort to make peace. She was just happy to be free of him.
When Terry called me later that day, she said, “The first thing that came to mind when I got off that plane was, ‘I can’t wait to tell my sister what happened.’ You’re in the spiritual conversation business, Mary, but I can tell you that I will think twice before I start another conversation with someone holding a Bible! Before that incident, I would think, ‘Oh, they are Christians. So am I. It will be great to get to know them.’ Not anymore!”
With exasperation, Terry asked me, “When you talk to someone about God, shouldn’t it be give-and-take? It was completely one-sided, and his approach was totally wrong. He made me feel like I didn’t want to know the same God that he knows. Why couldn’t he portray God as loving rather than making it sound like he is condemning or hate filled? The whole time he was talking I was asking myself, ‘How can I end this conversation?’”
Beyond the misguided theology about prayer, this poor young man somehow thought that his aggressive approach of intimidation and Scripture quotations would persuade my sister to believe as he did. I am not sure who should be pitied more in this situation—my sister or him. Both were a little spiritually disoriented by the experience. Both walked away wounded from the encounter. Both would classify the interaction as anything but good news.
Sadly, we all know this is not an isolated incident. We’ve all heard or read stories like this from unsuspecting “victims” of Christ followers who wanted to share the Good News but lacked the sensitivity or timing to effectively represent Jesus.
Midlife Crisis
I must confess that I have occasionally been one of those well-intentioned Christians whose attempts to share the good news about Jesus ended with experiences that were simply bad news—though not nearly as extreme as the situation my sister encountered! Because Jesus had made such a huge difference in my life, I wanted to share about him with others. But I lacked the spiritual maturity, as well as the social skills, to talk about God in a way that was grace giving, winsome, and attractive with people who believed differently than I did. When I reached the age of fifty, this became part of an unusual midlife crisis.
This crisis didn’t make any sense on a worldly level. I had been a successful entrepreneur, having started three high-tech companies, two of which had done well. I was still married to the same guy, Paul, with twenty-eight years of marriage behind us and the future looking good for continued marital bliss. We had three nearly grown children
who had somehow survived our parenting. I had also recently decided to go into full-time ministry and had already served for three years in a large evangelical church in California before entering seminary to work toward a master’s of divinity.
So what was the big crisis? It had to do with a short passage in the Bible that made me feel that I was missing something really important. The verses in question were Matthew 28:18-20, summarized briefly as “Go make disciples.” In other words, Jesus told his followers, “You followed me for three years; now find others who are spiritually open and ready to commit to exploring who I am and following me. Pass on what I taught you so that they, too, can pass it on.” Jesus said that he would be with all of us as we did this important work and that all authority in heaven and on earth was at his disposal to help us. I knew these verses well, as do most Christians. But did I really understand and obey them? Like many followers of Jesus, I knew in my heart that I didn’t.
Even having been involved in many Christian ministries over the years, and having nurtured a lot of believers along in their faith, I had never made one single new disciple of Jesus. Not one! The prospects of doing so in the future seemed pretty grim given my track record, even though I was in seminary at the time and was now “in the business” of ministry as a paid professional. But in reality, I didn’t know how.
Adequate knowledge of God and the Bible wasn’t my biggest problem, though I was clearly no biblical scholar. My understanding of Jesus and how he lovingly related with those who believed differently seemed to be my leading challenge. I knew if I didn’t figure out how to relate well to people with different views about God and to walk alongside those who were being drawn toward Jesus, I’d go to my grave as a failure at the Great Commission. This was too important to disregard.
Over the years I had been taught two main ways to make new followers of Jesus. The first recommendation from church leaders was to invite people I knew to church so that the expert who was giving the sermon that day could tell them about Jesus and his life-giving promise of redemption. If they, drawn by the Spirit of God, found this attractive and compelling, they could keep coming to church and learning what it means to become a follower of Jesus. It was assumed that if they learned about Jesus, they would want to follow him too.