Peacemaking in the Church and Beyond - Lesson 12

Well, let's look at some practical tools, then. We've talked about three areas, passion for the gospel, unified leadership, peacemaking theology. Now let's just look at some helpful peacemaking tools. 

The key tool that I want to spend some time on is communication. Communication is a core competency in peacemaking. Communication is the thread that ties people together, is the oil that smoothes. It's the force that pervades, is the glue that cements relationships. It's about communication. As important as it is, though, there are some “laws” of communication that may sound counterintuitive. These “laws” are in quotes. It's sort of tongue in cheek that this guy named Wiio, who's Scandinavian, gave these, and I enjoy these because I think they cut through and really help us to see some things. But here they are real quickly: If communication can fail, it will. That's the first principle. I think you can feel these as we go through. If it's given a half a chance to fail, it will. According to studies, if I'm careless or if I'm indifferent or if I'm unskilled at communication, it will fail 95% of the time.

One of the greatest effects of original sin in Genesis chapter 3 was the breakdown of communication. It's interesting, in 1952, a guy named Roethlisberger wrote, “When we think about many barriers to personal communication, particularly those due to differences in background, experience and motivation, it seems extraordinary that any two people can ever understand each other.” That was in 1952. More recently, a guy named John Gabarro made this comment on Roethlisberger's statement in 1952; he wrote, “If in 1952, Roethlisberger thought it extraordinary that any two people could communicate, given their differences in background, experience and motivation, he would surely have thought it a miracle today.” And that's true. So, if communication can fail, it will, so that's why we've got to really work on this. 

Secondly, nature is against us. “If a message can be understood in different ways, it will be understood in just that way which does the most harm.” Misprints, misunderstandings, noise all have multiplier effects rather than canceling each other out; they just build one upon another, the filters that we use to listen. How many of you have had an email that you've sent that has been misinterpreted in the last six months? Anybody not had an email that you sent in the last six months has been misinterpreted by someone? So it's either sending or receiving that we deal with this. 

So, the third, then, “law” is “There is always somebody who knows better than you what you meant by your message.” You know, oftentimes as a leader, I find myself wrongly interpreted. People wrongly interpret what I say, and my response often is, you know, I wish I was just smart enough to have been thinking what you thought I was thinking when I said what I said. But the truth is, I'm just not that smart, and so the reality, though, is that people attach meaning to your messages that simply often are not there. 

The fourth is “The more communication there is, the more difficult it is for communication to succeed.” Now, that would seem to be the opposite of what is true, nut our information processing capacity is limited, and the amount of information is increasing so rapidly that it's impossible to keep up with. The result is overload, often not systematically; it’s just stuff, random, that's coming at you, and so we have to select the information to retain, and we're going to get into retention in a moment. But what information do we retain? We're making judgments about that hundreds, if not thousands of times every day. So furthermore, it's naive to think that increased communication is always better, that people will automatically trust each other more when they communicate more. The fact of the matter is, if that were all true, then all wars could be avoided if we just communicated a little bit more. Too much information may be just as bad or worse than too little information. Sometimes to avoid conflict, it's better for you not to know what I'm thinking and for me not know everything you're thinking; that's just a fact of life. 

Then finally -- I love this one. This follows a mathematical law of causal relationships. It simply says, “The importance of an event is inversely correlated with the square of distance.” What does that mean? It simply means that a fistfight between the colleagues in the cubicle next to me is more important than a flood in Northern India that kills 3000 people. So that which is close to me is more important, in terms of communication, than that which is distant from me, and that's a principle of communication that we keep in mind as we work with others in this process of conflict. 

So, the reason communication is difficult in the church is the same reason it's difficult in the family. Marriage counselors tell us, of course, that the leading cause of the high rate of divorce today is due to the failure of husbands and wives to communicate effectively. A recent youth poll indicated that at least half of all young people think that communication between themselves and their parents is very poor. Now, we could discuss a lot of issues related to enhancing communication, but as we focus on conflict, I'd like to focus on two essential skills for all responsible communication. If all of us could learn and consistently apply these two skills, I believe many, if not most, of our conflict would be minimized, if not avoided altogether. These skills have had a major impact on my life. Let me tell you how. 

Back in 1992, I was pastoring a church in New York just outside the city, and a man, who I think at the time was about 60 years old, began attending our church. He was not a believer, had not been churched his whole adult life, had been an Episcopal when he was a child, but began coming to our church because his wife was singing in the choir. He was a communications expert, in fact, an executive coach in New York City working for some of the big corporations, and they were paying him massive dollars to help their CEOs to overcome their communication problems, because they figured if they paid him $700 an hour, it was a cheap compared to what it would take to replace their CEO. So, I would go from time to time with events from him for 2 hours in a night, you know, with the $7,000 fee that he would be paid. So, it was this enormous communications thing that he was doing. He came and he began attending our church, and he sat there for two years and was not a Christian, would stand up on our Sunday evening services and say, “I'm not a Christian, but I'm on my way.” I mean, that's the kind of communicator he was. 

Pete and I became friends. We began to meet every other week just for breakfast, and having just relationship together, he began to invite me to play golf, and so we began to play golf on a regular basis, became friends. Finally, one Monday morning after the Sunday that he was in church and I was speaking, he invited me over to his home on Thursday evening; he said, “I want you to come over on Thursday evening.” And I said, “What time?” He said, “About 7:30.” I said, “So is there some reason?” He said, “Yeah, I want to accept Christ.” And so I came to his home that evening and he accepted Christ. It was about a 15-minute deal. He's been following Christ ever since. He's written a book that was on the New York Times bestseller list in the business section called Be Your Own Coach, in which he cites Philip Yancey and these because of the impact that Christ has had upon his life since then. 

Two weeks after he became a Christian, Pete invited me out to breakfast again, and we were sitting there and he said, “Rick,” he said, “I really appreciate the investment that you've made in my life,” he said, “and I just want to tell you, you're a pretty decent speaker.” Then he said, “It's time for me to tell you are a lousy listener.” You know, I was kind of taken back and said, “What do you mean, I'm a lousy listener?” That was the first clue that I'm a lousy listener, by the way. But I said that, and he said, well, he began to explain a few things, but then he said, “Look,” he said, “I said that because I'm a new believer; it’s been just two or three weeks,” and he said, “I'll tell you what.” He said, “If you will disciple me in the ways of following Jesus,” he said, “I'll disciple you in communication, in learning to listen, specifically.” And I can say, you know, I've been through a lot of education over the years. I've had a lot of workshops and seminars, but what Pete gave to me over the next couple of years is one of the most profound gifts in terms of my own leadership that I've ever had, and so what I want to share with you over these next few minutes is some of the gift that he gave to me during those years to help me to understand what this is about. Have I mastered it? Absolutely not; this is an ongoing, lifelong journey, but I'm better than I was, thank the Lord, and my wife thanks the Lord, too, for that. 

Peacemaking communication requires a couple of things. It requires two major skills, in fact. It requires what we refer to as responsible listening and responsible speaking. That may seem real simple, but it's not simple at all. Let me define responsible listening for you. It goes like this: I accept responsibility for understanding what other people say, no matter how poorly they communicate. I accept responsibility, and Pete would say I accept 100% responsibility. I just kind of balk at that, but he's a specialist, and so maybe I should put that as well. But I accept responsibility for understanding what other people say, no matter how poorly they communicate. What that really means is that when I take responsibility to hear what other people are saying, it's not just hearing them -- but here's the key -- it's about proving to them what I've heard them say; I prove to the other person that I understand their total message. 

An example. You know, I'm sitting with my wife sometimes in the evening after work, and we're sitting there and the TV's on, and she begins telling me about her day, and her favorite chair is sort of to my right. I'm over here on the left, and we're sort of facing the TV, kind of toward each other, but toward the TV too, you know how it goes, and so we're sitting there and she begins telling me about something that's happening in her day, and I've got my eye on Diane Sawyer, you know, I'm watching this thing that's going on the television, and finally, I notice -- maybe I don't notice immediately -- but I notice she just stops talking, and I noticed that after about 10 seconds that it's quiet, and I said, ‘So what's the rest of it?’ And she said, ‘You weren't listening to me.’ I said, ‘I was listening to you.’ And she sometimes comes back and says, ‘Okay, you weren't listening to me. If you were listening to me, what did I say?’ And so, you know, I try to give it back as best I can. The problem there, whether or not I get it right, the reality is I wasn't proving to her that I was hearing what she was saying. That's the key point. 

Trust is built when we prove to the other person that we hear their total message, and when we move into that process, when we think about conflict, that begins to build a level of trust that was before that time nonexistent, because trust is built when the other person is certain that we've heard what they're really saying, and that's how you get to the big part of the crocodile under the water, oftentimes.