The 9 Arts of Spiritual Conversations Page 5

  ___ Loving others authentically because I personally know God’s love and see them with his eyes.

  ___ Welcoming people by valuing their presence so they feel that they belong.

  ___ Facilitating good discussions in a group setting so that every person feels honored and respected, even when they believe differently than I do.

  ___ Serving together, gathering people to serve and know God and each other better through service.

  ___ Sharing my own story, learning others’ stories, and expressing God’s story of forgiveness through Jesus in a way that is respectful and meaningful.

  Discuss your assessment with someone. In which practices would you like to improve? (Examples: Notice people more, ask better open-ended questions, listen more empathetically.)

  THE 9 ARTS OF SPIRITUAL CONVERSATIONS are divided into groups of three. The first three Arts do not require you to say or know much at all. We call this grouping Getting Ready for spiritual conversations. Whether you are a quiet introvert or a garrulous extrovert, gifted in evangelism or not, you can put these Arts into practice. They include the Arts of Noticing, Praying, and Listening. If you do not know how to begin engaging in spiritual conversations with people in your life who may believe differently, these practices will launch your journey.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE ART OF NOTICING

  When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”

  MATTHEW 9:36-38

  If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors. With our imagination as well as our eyes, that is to say like artists, we must see not just their faces but the life behind and within their faces. Here it is love that is the frame we see them in.

  FREDERICK BUECHNER

  FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS in my commute to work, I (Crilly) entered the highway at the same toll ramp almost every day. I would wait in the line of cars, along with all the other impatient commuters, wanting to get through the tollbooth as quickly as possible and be on my way. Paying the toll was irritating enough, but sitting in line made it doubly frustrating. As I waited to pay, I would see an anonymous hand reach out of the booth and go back in, then repeat this mechanical motion over and over for each vehicle. Toll attendants have a thankless job. Most drivers do not even acknowledge their existence. My guess is that most people see them as part of the machinery—a means to an end. But for some reason, probably prompted by God, I decided to pay attention to this particular toll attendant. The first time I noticed her, I slow-rolled up to the booth and greeted her with a pleasant smile and cheerful, “Hello!” handing her my toll money and making eye contact. As I pulled away, I shouted, “Have a great day!”

  She was there every day. So in future interactions, I noticed her nameplate and greeted her by name. We engaged in pleasant small talk each time I pulled up to her booth. Over time, our conversation added a personal dimension. I eventually learned the names of her children, details of her family life, and her weekend plans. In fact, we even exchanged Christmas gifts! This relationship was built in a matter of a few seconds over time—how long each day depended on the honking of the cars behind me. Noticing her did not add much time or activity to my day, but it did add the rewarding feeling of being on an adventure with God. It was the simple, intentional turning of my attention that made the difference.

  It All Starts with Noticing

  A precursor of knowing someone is noticing them. As Doug Pollock writes in his book God Space, “noticing is a prerequisite to caring about others and serving them in tangible ways that smuggle the gospel into their hearts.”[11] Relational interaction has the same starting point for all of us—simply in noticing another person. Noticing is not only a first step in becoming aware of another person but also in paying attention to God’s activity in your world. Pastor John Ortberg writes of noticing as the spiritual discipline of seeing God at work all around you. Exercising this discipline challenges us to broaden our focus, slow down our pace of life, and witness God’s grace in ordinary people, things, and events. In the study on grace in the Pursuing Spiritual Transformation series, Ortberg shares what it means to live in grace and how it relates to noticing:

  If we want to live in grace, we must develop eyes that see. We must learn what might be called the discipline of noticing. To notice something—to truly pay attention—is a powerful thing. . . . The practice of noticing is a skill. It involves learning to pay attention to gifts that we otherwise take for granted. . . . They are gracious gifts. And what’s even more amazing is that their Giver is lovingly present with you even as you are experiencing them.[12]

  Jesus was a noticer. “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field’” (Matthew 9:36-38). Jesus was moved with compassion for the crowds when he saw them. He noticed the crowds first and consequently expressed his desire for workers who could shepherd them. The disciples might have missed the tremendous needs of the crowd if Jesus had not pointed out their harassed and helpless condition.

  Jesus Is Our Model of Noticing

  Jesus was masterful at noticing people. In Luke 19, we read that Jesus was walking through the big city of Jericho. Crowds of people lined the street to catch a glimpse of him. Yet amid the activity, Jesus was attentive enough to notice one guy up in a tree, and because of that, the man’s life was transformed.

  Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

  When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

  All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

  But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

  Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

  LUKE 19:1-10

  It’s amazing in this account that Jesus even noticed Zacchaeus. While Zacchaeus had a desire to see Jesus, it was Jesus who took the first step to personally initiate contact with him. It makes me wonder if I would have noticed Zacchaeus in the crowd. I might have seen him in the tree and wondered what he was doing there, but would I really have seen him as a person who needed Jesus? Would you have?

  Jesus came to seek and save the lost. The action verb to seek means “to go in search of, to try to find or discover by searching or questioning.” This was a pattern and practice of Jesus. He noticed people personally and collectively, and it moved him to compassion and action. Consider what happened later in the same chapter: “As [Jesus] approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it” (Luke 19:41).

  Or in an earlier chapter:

  Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain, and a large crowd followed him. A funeral procession was coming out as he approached the village gate. The young man who had died was a widow’s only son, and a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart overflowed with compassion.

  LUKE 7:11-13, NLT

  Do we want to live like Jesus, to notice people and have compassion toward them? Noticing people can move us to compassion and action as it humanizes
the nameless faces around us. People become real to us, with real lives and real problems in need of a real Savior. As Frederick Buechner said, “If we are to love our neighbors, before doing anything else we must see our neighbors.” While Jesus is our model for this important practice, ordinary people can do this too. You probably already do it, but now you can practice it more intentionally. Remember—as in tee ball, success is in the intention and the attempt, not in the results.

  Noticing is such a simple activity that we can miss how powerful it can be. How many of us, for example, long to see people we care for reconciled to God? Noticing can be a critical step toward that result. John Paul Lederach, professor of international peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame and widely known for his pioneering work in conflict transformation, identifies “noticing mutual humanity” as the first of three “Reconciliation Arts.” Lederach explains:

  When we approach the challenge of reconciliation, we tend to ask for the steps, the model, the process, the toolkit, and the techniques. . . . When we approach the life of Jesus, however, questions of method or technique may not be the best starting point. His ministry did not rise from recipes or in the words of the environment around him or from the law. Jesus’ ministry had roots in grace expressed primarily through the quality of presence: the way he chose to be present, in relationship and in the company of others, even those who wished him harm. . . . The key to this presence was his capacity to notice the humanity of others. . . . [For Jesus], compassion starts with a quality of attentiveness that requires the simple act of noticing the other as a person. So simple is the idea that we far too often take it for granted. In truth, I believe this simple act forms a spiritual discipline.[13]

  We don’t notice just for the sake of noticing. Seeing another person through God’s eyes has a purpose: It’s the first step in the ministry of reconciliation. In 2 Corinthians 5:16, Paul calls us to see people through the eyes of Christ: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view.” In our busy, self-absorbed culture, noticing is the equivalent of a cup of water—a small, rebellious act against the idolatry of self.

  When Jesus noticed people, it was good news for them! When we notice people, it should be good news for them, too. Because people matter to God, they should matter to us. Giving people the gift of our time and attention demonstrates their value to us as a treasure of God. The evil one accuses, devalues, blames, shames, and slanders people so that they think they are not worthy to be truly seen by others or God. When we notice people, we assign worth to them as image bearers of the Most High God. Our noticing says, “You are worthy of attention from me and from God.” This simple practice begins to break down the accusations of the enemy and to call out the image of God in each person. But because we all are also “image breakers,” as Andy Crouch puts it, we need to be reconciled to God through Jesus. As Christ’s followers, we are assigned to be representatives of Christ’s life-giving message of reconciliation, partnering with him to bring people to God. Noticing another person opens the door to relationship and to this life-changing message.

  The apostle Paul writes about the ministry of reconciliation:

  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

  2 CORINTHIANS 5:18-21

  In his book My Name Is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok’s main character is an awakening artist, beginning to see the world with a different perspective. The author captures a simple moment at a family dinner from the emerging artist’s point of view:

  That was the night I began to realize that something was happening to my eyes. I looked at my father and saw lines and planes I had never seen before. I could feel with my eyes. I could feel my eyes moving across the lines around his eyes and into and over the deep furrows on his forehead. He was thirty-five years old, and there were lines on his face and forehead. I could feel the lines with my eyes and feel, too, the long straight flat bridge of his nose and the clear darkness of his eyes and the strong thick curves of the red eyebrows and the thick red hair of his beard graying a little—I saw the stray gray strands in the tangle of hair below his lips. I could feel lines and points and planes. I could feel texture and color. . . . I felt myself flooded with the shapes and textures of the world around me. I closed my eyes. But I could still see that way inside my head. I was seeing with another pair of eyes that had suddenly come awake.[14]

  What if we changed the way we looked at people? What if we paid attention to people with a new set of eyes that “suddenly came awake”? Might we see the helpless and hopeless condition of people with whom we come into contact every day?

  While noticing may be the first step in bringing someone the good news about Jesus and the Kingdom of God, the single most significant benefit is that it transforms you and me. We begin to see others, ourselves, and even God differently. People we never noticed before (not because they weren’t there, but because we never paid attention to them) quite suddenly matter to us in ways we can’t explain. We find that the more we pay attention to others, the less we are absorbed with our own agenda and life. Jerry Root and Stan Guthrie, authors of The Sacrament of Evangelism, explain: “Evangelism doesn’t ‘do anything’ to God—it does something to us. It opens our eyes to His work and grace.” It provides us with “the opportunity to experience participating with this omnipotent, omnipresent God as He woos others to Himself.”[15]

  Common Barriers

  Noticing is the spiritual discipline of intentionally paying attention to someone who is in your view at the moment, wherever you are. But our everyday lives are filled with obstacles that keep us from noticing others and that need to be overcome. Four potential barriers can prevent us from practicing the Art of Noticing—the busyness of our lives, focusing on ourselves, living in a Christian bubble, and having an unloving attitude.

  1. PACE OF LIFE

  Everybody is busy these days, and being rushed usually keeps our focus sharply on ourselves, our agendas, and our needs. This makes it almost impossible to focus on anyone else, even if they’re right in front of us. With so much coming at us, we need to develop a greater capacity for noticing. When we are preoccupied with ourselves and our own busy lives, we have a low capacity for noticing others. We cannot easily see the image of God in another person. Our eyes are affected; we have spiritual myopia. Noticing people opens our eyes and awakens us to God’s continuous activity in our world. Our vision begins to align with God’s vision.

  Author Melody Allred said it this way:

  My new perspective of understanding and loving God like never before gave me a new set of eyes through which to view people. With these new God goggles, I didn’t just see people. I saw lost people. People with a name. People with a story. Good people. Good parents. Good neighbors. Yet they are lost people, and I barely even knew their names.[16]

  Noticing is not another thing to put on your already full to-do list. It’s a way of living that causes regular intersection with God’s activity in the routines of your ordinary life. Look for what God is up to in people of all kinds, wherever you normally go. This practice transforms you into a spiritual archaeologist, discovering God’s activity in people all around you and becoming more and more fascinated by what you find.

  One way to overcome the barrier of busyness is to break up your schedule with thirty-second noticing sessions. Go where you normally go and do what you normally do, but plan on spending at least thirty seconds paying attention to someone who is there with you. You may find yourself slowing down a little because you enjoy the experience.

  2. SELF-FOCUS

  To notice so
meone, you have to take your eyes off yourself and be willing to be interrupted. What if we welcomed the possibility that an interruption might be a divine appointment? Too often we respond to interruptions as impediments to our own agendas.

  One way to overcome this barrier of self-focus is to intentionally direct your full attention toward whoever is in your peripheral view. Consider the possibility that God is inviting you to engage in what he is doing at the moment.

  Several years ago when my (Mary’s) son was a sophomore in college, I received a frantic call from him one day explaining that he had just been kicked out of class because I hadn’t paid his tuition. My first reaction was, What? Impossible! Of course I paid his tuition! But the school was right. With my busy work and travel schedule, I had forgotten. The only way to rectify it quickly was to wire funds to the school.

  Distraught and feeling like I was the worst mother in the world, I rushed to my local bank and asked for a wire transfer. As I waited for a banker to help me, I was having the biggest pity party. How could I have done something so stupid! I thought. I want my son to get his college education, not be forced to drop out.

  Then it occurred to me that God might have allowed this to happen for a purpose. What could it be? He whispered, “Pay attention. I am doing something here.” I became increasingly curious, temporarily taking focus off of my own problem. As I sat in the banker’s cubicle while she took the information for the wire transfer, I noticed that her name card said “Rebekah,” spelled like the wife of Jacob in the Bible.

  When she finished the wire transaction, I said to her, “Your name is spelled exactly like the Rebekah in the Bible. Is there any biblical connection to your name?” She turned red in the face and said that her mother, a strong Christian, had given her that name. However, she was estranged from her mom because she had made some bad decisions in recent years, including using drugs and having a child out of wedlock. Rebekah didn’t think God wanted anything to do with her now.