My Exact Guide to Moving Forward amidst Uncertainty and Change

When change is everywhere and uncertainty abounds, there’s a temptation to find a quick fix that will help you land on two feet and start moving forward again as soon as possible. Often, we seek this in a new program or ministry, or a slight tweak of how things have always been done, or simply trying harder at what we’ve always done before.

Can I invite you to consider another way? It provides clarity but is a little more ambiguous at the beginning. Rather than put a band-aid on what can feel like a bleeding situation, it goes deeper and gets to some of the root causes. It seems simplistic, but I can promise you that it’s anything but. It’s listening.

I know what you’re thinking. “Listening? How does that help me right now when I’m overwhelmed, exhausted, and at a loss for where to go from here?!”

When we take time to genuinely listen to God, each other, and our community it actually takes the pressure off of us to come up with the “right answer” or the “quick fix”. Because at the end of the day, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be partnering with what God is already up to than going after a quick win on my own (that may not actually get the results I’m after anyway!).

The Consequences of Not Listening

When we don’t listen, or don’t listen well, we can actually cause people more harm than good. Anybody started a ministry or program or launched a new initiative believing that it was meeting a clear need only to have 2 people engage because you forgot to listen to the whole story?  Oh, just me?

When we don’t listen well, we often set our own agendas above the people we’re seeking to serve and may end up actually exasperating their needs.

And here’s the honest truth about what it means when we don’t start with listening well:  our working assumption is that I already know what’s best so I don’t need to bother with listening to others.

So, how about we avoid this and commit to listening well.

How we Listen Well

The underlying assumptions to active listening are that we believe that God is still speaking and has something to say to us today, what each person in our community has to say matters, and what our neighbors have to say is valuable.

So, how do you know if you’re a good listener? When we’re truly actively listening to others, then as Paul Friga says, we can summarize what was said, paraphrase it, and especially demonstrate that we actually understand what was said.

It’s the demonstration part that is ultimately the key. The demonstration is the real evidence that we actually listened to what was said and allowed it to inform our decisions.

So, as you seek to find out where God might be active in the midst of the uncertainty, ambiguity, and change, and as you start to consider where to join in with that work, one of the core practices you can engage in is Dwelling in the Word. When we Dwell in the Word together, we listen to Scripture together and we allow God to speak to us through it. If you’ve never done this, click here for a short video on how to do it.

Listening to each other starts with creating space for meaningful conversations to really take place. It begins with asking the right questions and then listening to what people actually say. When we listen well, then we can find out people’s real needs, as well as the underlying issues, which are their real pain points.

If you’ve ever read the Apostle Paul’s letters in the Bible, they demonstrate what it means to be an active listener. Each letter to a particular community or person demonstrated that he had been listening to their specific issues, concerns, and requests. And he wrote each one of them specific recommendations for their specific issue and context.

The Energizing Path Forward Emerges

When we listen well and then ask questions like “what might we…,” in response to what we hear from God, each other, and our neighborhoods, the path forward not only becomes clearer, but exciting and energizing as well.

I’ll be honest, it takes much care and humility on our part to be good listeners. But if we genuinely want to move forward in meaningful ways that make a lasting impact, isn’t it worth it?