{"id":8160,"date":"2019-07-11T06:00:07","date_gmt":"2019-07-11T10:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ben-sternke-live.prev17.rmkr.net\/?p=8160"},"modified":"2025-03-07T18:54:57","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T22:54:57","slug":"leadership-starts-with-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gravitycommons.com\/es\/leadership-starts-with-listening\/","title":{"rendered":"Why All Good Leadership Starts With Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, when I was the lead pastor of a church I had planted, I found myself in the middle of a minor conflict with some of the people who had planted the church with me.\u00a0They were expressing\u00a0concern and questions about the direction the church was moving.<\/p>\n

One of them (we’ll call him Steve) had just sent me a long email detailing some of the concerns he had, and I remember feeling agitated by the email. In my view, it was obvious where we needed to go as a church and I was annoyed by all the questions he was asking.<\/p>\n

Listening when I’d rather argue<\/h2>\n

I scheduled a meeting with Steve, and started to “load up my guns,” comprehensively listing the reasons for my position, anticipating counter-arguments, and creating a watertight case to convince him once and for all!<\/p>\n

It was a minor miracle that I also thought to\u00a0pray<\/em> before this meeting, but I did. And it was in those few minutes of quiet, waiting on God to give me some additional ammo, that I got a surprising nudge instead.<\/p>\n

I felt God nudge me to throw away my arguments and go in to the meeting with only one goal:\u00a0to really\u00a0listen<\/em><\/strong> to Steve. Just seek to understand his perspective and why he’s concerned. That’s it.<\/p>\n

The results of listening<\/h2>\n

I have to admit I was a little disappointed I wasn’t going to get to present my brilliant arguments, but I followed the nudge and just listened.<\/p>\n

As I did so, I noticed a couple\u00a0things:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. My compassion for Steve expanded.<\/strong> Instead of seeing him as an adversary, I realized he was a friend, and that it wasn’t easy for him to voice his concerns. I became deeply grateful for his friendship and partnership in the church.<\/li>\n
  2. My perspective changed.<\/strong> Most surprisingly to me, I realized that the way I was seeing the issue wasn’t “objective” or “true.” Listening to Steve’s concerns changed my perspective on what we were doing, and allowed me to see him and our church more clearly.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"listening\"<\/p>\n

    Good preaching starts with listening<\/h2>\n

    Pope Francis recently said some fascinating and helpful words about preaching<\/a>. Part of his advice for pastors is that they learn that good preaching always involves\u00a0listening<\/em> to your people:<\/p>\n

    Listen to the lives of people. If you do not listen to people, how can you preach? The closer you are to people, the better you will preach or bring the word of God nearer their lives. In this way, you link the word of God to a human experience that has need of this word.<\/em><\/p>\n

    The more distant you are from people and their problems, the more you will take refuge in a theology that is framed as “You must,” and “You must not,” which communicates nothing, which is empty, abstract, lost in nothing, in thoughts. At such times we respond with our words to questions that nobody is asking.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Good preaching is essentially an act of leadership, and Francis’ advice to listen<\/em>\u00a0extends into everything we do as leaders. If we’re going to lead like Jesus,\u00a0listening<\/em>\u00a0must become as important to us as it was to Jesus.<\/p>\n

    Learning from Jesus’ questions<\/h2>\n

    We can learn a lot from Jesus’ discourses in the Gospels, but I think we can learn even more from his\u00a0questions.<\/em>\u00a0Jesus wasn’t asking rhetorical or “leading” questions. Instead, he was expressing genuine curiosity about people, and trying to help them get in touch with what was\u00a0really<\/em> going on.<\/p>\n