#2: Growing Capacity for Conversation and Discernment
The second sign of a thriving congregation
Today, we’re continuing with our exploration of seven signs of thriving congregations by turning our attention to the second sign: a growing capacity for ongoing conversation and discernment.
If you haven’t already done so, catch up on the series by reading the introduction and Chris’s take on the first sign:
Jesus Matters! Church Matters! Returning to the Basics in a Time of Upheaval
Today we begin taking a deeper dive into each of our Seven Signs of a Thriving Congregation. If you missed it, I encourage you to go back and read our introductory post that lists all seven signs along with a bit of the history of how they came together.
Not as Simple as it Seems
The idea of conversation is deceptively simple. At first pass, it may seem like something we’re doing all day, every day. We quickly think, “Well, of course. We’re talking to one another all the time.” Talking with and to other people is quotidian, an assumed reality…something a little less fundamental than gravity or breathing, but fundamental nonetheless.
But I’d like to gently publish back on those assumptions. True conversation is increasingly scarce, and unfortunately, I believe that to be the case within our churches as much as anywhere else in society. But like a keystone species whose species is essential to a healthy ecosystem, conversation is a practice we must reclaim and amplify in our congregations. In a culture of increasing fragmentation, isolation and individualism, conversation becomes one of the ways Christ followers can demonstrate an alternative way of being.
Opportunities abound for sharing our thoughts and words with others: texts, comments, Instagram stories, Facebook posts, etc. We also have plenty of opportunities to listen to or receive the thoughts and words of others: podcasts, audiobooks, social media, etc. But do not be deceived: Content and communication are not synonymous with conversation.
As the amount of content available to us continues to increase, we have increasingly fewer opportunities for true dialogue and the back-and-forth, give-and-take, one-anothering it requires. These moments are, no doubt, messy and often uncomfortable. There is no option to edit your typos or awkward phrasing, no option to fast-forward through the boring parts, no ability to delete your hurtful words or block the person you disagree with. This is just some of what complicates this seemingly simple concept of conversation.
A growing capacity for conversation and discernment will require a growing capacity for many things we would rather avoid: slowness, messiness, discomfort, inconvenience, inefficiency, misunderstanding, offense, and even hurt.
Unfortunately, many of the traditional ways we approach congregational life leave little room for this messiness.
Sermons: one way, no response, no dialogue; create an ethos of deferring to experts rather than negotiating meaning together
Small groups: may function as affinity groups or cliques; often not accessible to or experienced by a majority of the congregation; little flexibility in content or structure
The “greet your neighbor” moment: brief, transactional, shallow
Elder boards: decisions made by only a few powerful actors; conversation happens behind closed doors; hierarchical
Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not arguing that any of those structures are wrong or need to be done away with. They all have their place. But I do want to point out how little room exists for broad, inclusive conversation. At the very least, conversation is not scheduled or accounted for in church programming. More concernedly, it becomes another means of exclusion and feature of a hierarchical system that reflect little of Jesus’s upside-down kingdom.
Jesus’s Example
On the other hand, the life of Christ we read about in the Gospels is full of exactly the kind of messiness true conversation allows. Over and over again, Jesus models a life of conversation. He asks a lot of questions. “What do you want me to do for you?” He graciously listens to frustration. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” He calls out bad intentions and misunderstandings. “You do not know what you are asking.” Recall Jesus’s tense interactions with the religious leaders in John 8, when they bring a woman caught in adultery before him and he creatively (and perhaps awkwardly!) diffuses the tension by scribbling in the sand, while letting no one off the hook for their behavior. Think of Jesus’s conversation with Peter during their breakfast at the beach in John 21. The two of them repeat themselves, circling back around, asking the same questions, until together they come to a place of understanding. I don’t think this was merely Jesus’s teaching method; I think this reveals genuine and messy conversation among friends.
Obviously, Jesus preached sermons. Jesus and the twelve disciples spent a great deal of time together as just a small group of friends. There were plenty of people with whom his interactions were limited due to time, energy, or other constraints. But much of the time, we see him in dialogue with others, and the outcome is discernment: In the process of conversation, people learn who Jesus is and what is required of them.
Conversation can not be incidental to our worship, because it is an essential part of the life of Christ. It is is deeply intertwined with our spiritual formation; we better reflect the image of Jesus when we are people who can converse and discern well.
Congregational Practices:
What might this look like in practice? Well, it depends!
At Englewood Christian Church in Indianapolis, Sunday evening conversations began more than a decade ago. As C. Christopher Smith writes in The Virtue of Dialogue1, “[Conversation] is not just a niche where like-minded folks gather to discuss their work on this project or that one, or to study a portion of scripture or an important theological work (although we have plenty of these kinds of conversations at Englewood). Rather, it is a space all members—and visitors too—are invited into, one in which we struggle together to make sense of who we are as a body knit together by God.” In just the past few months, ECC has changed the format of the Sunday evening conversations, as a means of reinvigorating energy around the practice and including more members of the community.
Amanda Held Opelt recently wrote about her church’s conversational practices for Women of Welcome. In particular, they have prioritized conversation around difficult and potentially divisive issues. She writes about how, in the aftermath of a the COVID pandemic, “…we decided that if we were going to represent Jesus well in this increasingly divided nation, we needed to learn to talk to each other, to demonstrate gracious discourse and healthy disagreement to a watching world.” They utilize discussion prompts to guide their Table Talks. Read more about their conversation practice here.
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship has created “conversation guides” for a variety of topics, from empathy to AI to immigration to affordable housing. These might provide a valuable starting point for a congregation looking for a way to structure this practice.
In our work with congregations, we often use Appreciative Inquiry, which “…encourages a church community to see itself as a collaborative entity, co-creating and evolving together.”
Ultimately, we practice conversation because we want to be further transformed into the image of Jesus. We practice conversation because we want the church to be a foretaste of God’s shalom. We practice conversation because it allows us to discern together what our individual and communal next steps are.
Ultimately, we practice conversation as yet another way to become embodied believers, loving neighbors, and thriving congregations.
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose.” — 1 Corinthians 12:12-18
Does your congregation regularly practice conversation? Please share about in the comments and add to our collective imagination about how this looks in the life of the church!
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We’ll be back next week with the next post in our series about Charles Taylor’s book, A Secular Age (The latest post in this series can be read here).
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