Nearly 40 years ago, when we went off to seminary, I met a remarkable man. Rick was one of our classmates and I was immediately drawn to his thoughtful manner and his keen intellect. I, however, was challenged in our early conversations. Rick had, from a young age had a problem with stammering and stuttering. I had never spent very much time with such a person. As I got to know Rick and wanted to talk to him more and more, I also discovered that we thought a lot alike and often I knew what Rick was trying to say before the words came out of his mouth. Wanting to help him and wanting to keep the conversation flowing, I would occasionally complete his sentences for him, saying the word that he was struggling to say.

I had to learn that this was not helpful. It turned out that all Rick needed to completely express his thoughts was a little patience from me. When he struggled with a word, the right thing was to allow him to struggle and to wait for a moment to hear the end of the idea. The communication problem wasn’t caused by Rick’s speech. It was caused by my listening. Once I learned to listen, our conversation became the foundation of a life-long friendship.

A decade or so ago, when I was serving on the Corporate Board of Local Church Ministries and Rick was serving on the Executive Council, we used to request each other as roommates when we had meetings at the same time. Rick would fly in from his home and I from mine. During the days we’d attend our separate meetings and in the evenings, we would talk and catch up on our churches and ministries, our families and other topics.

Rick is a very effective preacher and his stammering shows up only very rarely when he preaches. He has a beautiful tenor voice and sings without any problems. Our friendship has endured long enough for me to apologize for my earlier impatience and for me to thank him for teaching me how to listen. I’m sure I’m not the only classmate of ours whose ministry has been more effective because of some of the lessons learned from Rick. His patience as a teacher definitely has made a world of difference for a lot of people.

There are many things in our culture that work to increase the challenge of truly listening. I don’t know much about television, but in my limited experience it seems to be filled with loud voices demanding our attention, nearly shouting the things that the television producers want us to think or believe. It is not a medium that is in the business of teaching people to listen carefully and discern nuances of emotion and complexity of concepts.

While our culture seems to reward snap judgments and quick decisions, it does little to encourage quiet contemplation, careful listening and measured thought. In this, I believe that we in the church are called to become counter-cultural, practicing our faith in spite of the cultural trends. Our faith lends itself to very careful listening.

One of the illustrations of this reality comes when I encounter people who don’t know me. They might ask what I do for a living and when I answer, they make all kinds of assumptions about what it means to be a minister. They might even make assumptions about specific beliefs that I hold. I often find myself to be misunderstood by people who think that I am the same as a television preacher or a fundamentalist big box minister.

Is isn’t much fun to be misunderstood and I often find the assumptions that others make about me to be unfair. That sense of not being understood reminds me of the times when I don’t take time to really listen to another person - to receive their thoughts and words into myself in such a way that they can become truly known. I, too, have found myself making assumptions that may or may not be accurate when I meet a new person.

It is at moments of awareness like that that I am so grateful for the lessons my friend Rick taught me when I was a young adult: slow down, don’t be impatient, listen carefully, allow the person to tell you what they want to say, don’t assume that you know.

Some lessons have to be learned over and over again. Some lessons take a lifetime to master.

When we take the time to truly listen we are authenticating the other and giving that person a safe place in the midst of a violent world. When we take time to truly listen we validate another’s existence. We participate in the meaning that they are discovering.

All of that would be acceptable, but there is more. These days I encounter more and more people who aren’t only not practiced as really listening to others. I encounter folks who don’t even know how to truly listen to themselves. When given the opportunity to wrestle with some of the big questions of life they discover that they don’t know themselves all that well.

Among the questions that seem to encourage such listening are: How would you like to be remembered? What is your most deeply-held belief? What would you like me to know about you that I may not know? And also, Is there something that you want to make sure that I remember about you?

Not every conversation that I have with others takes the form of an interview. Often when I ask a single question the following conversation is sufficient for the time that is available. Too many questions might even imply that I’m not taking the answers seriously. But an occasional genuinely-felt question can move the conversation to a deeper and more meaningful level.

Perhaps, like Rick, I will learn not only to be a good listener, but also how to encourage such behavior in others.

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