Relating Empathetically – Part 9: Readings – 1

Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make, and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don’t know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual. What might be a deposit for you—going for a walk to talk things over, going out for ice cream together, working on a common project—might not be perceived by someone else as a deposit at all. It might even be perceived as a withdrawal, if it doesn’t touch the person’s deep interests or needs.

One person’s mission is another person’s minutia. To make a deposit, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you. You may be working on a high priority project when your six-year-old child interrupts with something that seems trivial to you, but it may be very important from his point of view… By accepting the value he places on what he has to say, you show an understanding of him that makes a great deposit.

I have a friend whose son developed and avid interest in baseball. My friend wasn’t interested in baseball at all. But one summer, he took his son to see every major league team play one game. The trip took over six weeks and cost a great deal of money, but it became a powerful bonding experience in their relationship.

My friend was asked on his return, “Do you like baseball that much?”

“No,” he replied, “but I like my son that much.”

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The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey, Fireside/Simon & Schuster, pages 190-191.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Relating Empathetically – Part 8: For Discussion and Reflection

1. Do you agree that our society is becoming increasingly polarized? Give reasons for your answer.
2. How good are you at relating empathetically with people whose views on basic issues differ from your own?
3. What kind of person is hardest for you to get along with?
4. How skilled are you at asking people perceptive questions?
5. “Survival skill” is a strong term. Is it an overstatement to call relating empathetically a survival skill? Why or why not?
6. The church seems to focus on lecture as its primary means of communication. What other communication tools do you think the church should develop?

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Relating Empathetically – Part 7: Variety of Communication Forms (continued…)

 Children of a Lesser God is a powerful play. It has two leading characters. One is James Leeds, who is thirtyish and a speech teacher at a State School for the Deaf. Sarah Norman is in her mid-twenties. She has been deaf from birth. When James talks to Sarah, he signs because she can’t read lips. So that the audience can understand, he speaks over what he says with his hands.

When Sarah signs in response, James tells us what she is saying. It’s amazing how interesting the play is, and how beautiful her hand movements are. It’s a rare treat to “watch” her talk. By the end of Act One, these two have fallen in love and are married.

Reading from the jacket of the book:

 “What sets this action apart is the circumstance of Sarah’s total deafness and her refusal to voice words. At 26, although of college caliber, she works as a maid in the school for the deaf where James has become a teacher. Here she hides in silence her scars of early rejection and fears of being thought retarded because of the odd sounds she would make.

“With great good humor and intelligence, James, hiding his own psychic wounds, faces the difficulties of his marriage and his determination to bring Sarah, who only ‘signs’ into the hearing world.”

I saw this play some years• ago, but I still remember the pressure James puts on Sarah all through the play. He’s insistent that he knows what’s best for her. As the tension peaks, he says in exasperation:

 “You can cook, but you can’t speak. … You always have to be dependent on someone, and you always will for the rest of your life until you learn to speak. Now come on! I want you to speak to me. Let me hear it. Speak! Speak! Speak!”

Finally Sarah succumbs and an awful sound erupts. It hardly seems like words, only passion. We barely pick up snatches of phrases like, “How do you like my voice? … Am I what you want me to be? What about me? What I want?” Shocked at how badly Sarah speaks, James reaches to touch her, but she bolts away.

Too often we are like James Leeds. We make our demands. We say, in effect, “This is what you have to do—right now—and my way.” And we have no idea how deeply the other person may be feeling wounded or shamed. We just want done what we want done—and NOW!

 Lord Jesus,

I praise You that when You walked this earth You ministered to people where they hurt. You were sensitive to the deaf, the blind, the leprous, the demon-possessed.

Help us to offer your healing touch to others, in ways that go beyond mere words. Teach us to relate empathetically. Amen.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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In her new book Preaching That Matters, Dr. Lori Carrell challenges ministers who hesitate to make clear their desired response because of not wanting to manipulate people.

Informative preachers who make this declaration often have childhood memories of coercive altar calls. Their commitment to avoid pressuring people with emotional, guilt-ridden pleas is an appropriate ethical standard. But if preachers avoid even asking for change based on an aversion to all things “persuasive,” their sermons will be less transformative than possible.

When I teach public speaking to students or business professionals and we talk about general goal or purpose, the word “persuasion” is used without issue. In those settings, the word is not problematic. With many clergy, however, there seems to be an immediate association of “manipulation” with “persuasion.” Did that happen to you? If so, might you be able to replace that term with the concept “ethical spiritual influence” or “spiritual leadership”? The roots of your aversion may be deep and worthy of your close consideration. One pastor wrote:

“I endured endless verses of ‘Just As I Am’—a spiritual arm-twisting that made me and other people in my youth group repent and recommit endlessly. I felt badgered and pushed—and I don’t think I’ve ever quite recovered. It’s just so wrong. I never want to ‘persuade’—just quietly live and talk about my faith.”

In your role as a person called by God to lead through the spoken Word, are you able to respectfully and ethically challenge others to change on the authority of the scripture, on your conviction that change is needed, and through the power of the Holy Spirit? It is possible to maintain these same commitments—to be a teacher, to be biblical, to be ethical—and to engage in sermon communication for the purpose of spiritual transformation.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy