Thanks for Listening

On Monday, April 14 my mother-in-law passed away.  On Thursday, April 17 we received a cold call from a real estate company.  They asked for Anina.  When Sharon said she had passed away just a few days before the sales person didn’t skip a beat when asking, “Are you a Walberg?  We have people interested in buying in your area.”  Sharon was so taken aback she didn’t know quite how to respond.  I think she finally blurted out something to the effect, “I just told you my mother died.  Thank you for your concern. (This last sentence dripped with sarcasm that I am sure was lost on the caller.)

After I recovered from hearing the story I phoned the number back and got a salesman named Mike.  I asked for whoever was supervising the cold calls.  Mike held his hand lightly over the phone and yelled to someone that a caller wanted to talk to the supervisor.  The supervisor was busy telling the crew to close up for the night and told Mike to tell me he would call me back.

Mike came back on the line and said the supervisor was in a meeting (Lie 1) and that he would call me back (Lie 2).  (As of today I have still not received a call back.)  Mike asked what my call was about so I related the story.  His first response was, “Maybe the salesperson wasn’t listening when your wife told him her mom had died.”  I literally held the phone away from my ear and looked at it.  I asked Mike if that is how the salespeople are trained.  To not listen.  He assured me that was not the case.  I assured Mike the salesperson had listened to the words my wife spoke because of his response asking if she was a Walberg.  In other words, he heard enough to want to pursue whether Sharon had the ability to sell the house.

I tell this story so that I can vent my frustration.  It is clear that my emotions are raw at this season and I feel protective of my wife and her emotions.  Thanks for listening.  You are a true friend.

But I also tell it because we pastor-types, we ministry leaders, can often have the same laser focus on what we want to communicate or what we want to get done and although we hear the words people speak we do not hear the backstory.  We fail to listen long enough and close enough to pick up the context of their answer and its implications for their life and ministry with us as a Body.  We have a goal in mind and we don’t want to be confused with a storyline that doesn’t fit our scenario.  We, in pure point of fact, use people instead of shepherding them.  We size them up to fit into our ministry scheme.  We see new people who attend in terms of their potential contribution to the mission.  Gifts, money, time.  These are the commodities we trade in.  It ought not to be so. 

These are the people God has sent to both receive and to give to the local church. But our role is not, primarily, about recruiting.  It is not, primarily, about finding them a place in our strategy.  It is, primarily, about making disciples.  Followers of Jesus.  As Larry Osborne is quick to say, disciple is not a fancy term. It means follower or learner.  It says nothing about the quality of their following or learning.  It says nothing about their willingness to fit into our program.  It says everything about the direction they are going. 

My take-away from the phone call last Thursday is a desire that God deliver me from ever relating to people the way the salesperson related to Sharon.  I don’t want to be the guy that is so fixated on the goal that I miss the person.