One of the most important things we should do when we work in another culture is to spend a lot of time listening. It is not always easy to do, but it is worth it.
I want to share with you something one of my teammates in CH just wrote about their team's experience in listening over this last year -
“I already know what they need, and I’m gonna tell them!” was the gist of my words to Rich, our area director. We were planning our team’s 2009 strategy, and Rich had just suggested a survey to find out the needs of the church leaders in our city.
A survey sounded like a waste of time to me, especially because it fell under “research,” which wouldn’t impress the readers of our newsletters very much. But as our team was beginning a new chapter in our ministry, it became apparent that it was silly to assume we knew the needs of those we were trying to help. So we developed a batch of brief questions that we’d ask the church leaders of our city, and we began to see great results long before we’d finished our research…
1. Our learning posture and humble willingness to listen moved the leaders we interviewed. One of our values as a team is that we are to be learners as we minister, and nothing communicates that attitude quite like asking the leaders, “What do you think we should be doing here?” It was a stark contrast to the typical tactic of deafly inviting leaders to participate in this or that training or program. Instead, they felt honored that we valued their words!
2. All of a sudden we were some of the most connected people in our city. We surveyed as many leaders as we could by asking all of our existing contacts for help in meeting with new leaders. We prayed for divine appointments and saw God arrange them. In a few months, we went from having a handful of contacts to knowing more leaders than the leaders themselves. Now, we’re able to come alongside new contacts and bless them with a simple phone call: “Hey, last time we spoke, you mentioned that your church’s greatest need was to share the gospel. How has that been going? Would you like to get together to talk and pray about that?”
3. Several of our questions were new to the leaders. For example, they’d think for the first time about what their church’s greatest resource was. “What’s stopping you from accomplishing your goals as a church?” was another question that was helpful to the leaders. We asked if they had a vision, and if so, what is it? The interview sometimes became an eye-opening time for the leaders that hadn’t thought about anything more than the fires they were constantly putting out in their congregations.
4. The actual findings of the survey are important, too, of course. For us, the main question we wanted to know the answer to was, “What is your church’s greatest need?” And we got a good group of answers, most of which were needs that the leaders themselves should be meeting (like teaching and discipleship). But the final question of the survey, “What do you think that foreigners here for ministry should be doing?” was perhaps the most important. Over and over the responses communicated a need for support, encouragement, and accountability – all roles of a coach. The leaders were giving us our marching orders, and we were excited to see that they matched up with our gifts and desires.
Conducting a survey isn’t very “sexy,” but the benefits we’ve already reaped from this year’s survey have convinced me that it’s a step we shouldn’t skip. Not only at the outset of ministry, but years into it as well, preserving a learning posture bears fruit.
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