listening Archives - Rebekah Simon-Peter Coaching and Consulting Inc.

Mastering the Art of Listening

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Nov 21, 2023

Listening stands at the foundation of effective leadership in ministry. As a spiritual leader, your ability to listen strengthens your connections. It opens the door to spiritual growth and understanding. Through an intentional listening practice, you can discern your people’s needs, and respond to them with compassion and wisdom. Mastering the art of listening can strengthen your ministry and make a positive difference in the lives of those you serve.

In this blog, I will explore the impact of active listening, and provide practical insights to enhance this skill in your spiritual and communal journey. Join me as we uncover the transformative power of mastering the art of listening, and its ability to enrich our spiritual lives.

Listening in Ministry

Listening is an indispensable part of effective leadership. It enables you to comprehend your community’s needs. If you listen with an open mind, you will better understand the struggles, needs, and spiritual journeys of your community. This understanding allows you to tailor your ministry accordingly, creating a safe and inclusive space. Through this deep listening, you can build empathy and meaningful relationships within your ministry.

Mastering the Art of Listening: Make a conscious effort to actively listen during meetings, services, and interactions with the members of your spiritual community. Take note of how this practice enhances your understanding and connection within the community. Don’t simply wait for your turn to speak. Focus on hearing and understanding the perspectives of others.

Listening as a Spiritual Practice

Listening as a spiritual practice transcends mere skill. It is an action that connects you to divine guidance. Attentive listening opens you to the subtle whispers of spiritual wisdom in your interactions, revealing deep insights and understanding. By cultivating the art of listening to God, you establish a sacred connection with the world around you. The practice allows you to be present to the needs and experiences of others. You honor their inherent worth and value, and find connection within yourself to how God is speaking through them. Incorporating listening as a spiritual practice into your daily life invites you to slow down and be fully present.

Mastering the Art of Listening: Incorporate daily reflective practices and mindful listening into your spiritual routine. Set aside regular time for quiet reflection. Pay attention to the powerful insights and connections that emerge from these moments of stillness. Ask yourself what emotional or spiritual filters you bring. Even better, what are you hearing from God? These questions can help guide your listening as a spiritual practice.

Listening and Conflict Resolution

As a leader, you are the spiritual guide to conflict resolution. Conflict is never resolved without listening. It requires being fully present and attentive. In order to truly understand the perspectives of others involved in the conflict, you must listen carefully. Conflict is a part of life, and if you fear it, you won’t be open to actively listen. Without active listening, there will be disconnect and further separation. Active listening demonstrates respect and validation for the other person’s feelings and opinions. By actively listening, we create a safe space for open dialogue and encourage a collaborative approach to conflict resolution.

Mastering the Art of Listening: Next time you encounter a conflict, practice active listening by fully engaging with the other person’s perspective. Pay attention to nonverbal cues and ask questions to clarify and deepen your understanding. Notice how this approach can help diffuse tension and lead to productive resolution. Don’t be afraid of the conflict. See it as an opportunity to engage in active listening and to learn about the needs of your spiritual community.

Mastering the transformative art of listening profoundly impacts your ministry, relationships, and spiritual growth. By cultivating this skill, you become more attuned to the needs and experiences of your spiritual community. Active listening invites you to immerse yourself in the stories of others, enriching your perspective and strengthening your bond to your community. It may not always be easy, but it is crucial to set aside our need to talk and acknowledge that we can improve as listeners.

That is why I invite you to join my upcoming Readiness 4 Renewal seminar. Through six 90-minute online sessions, you will use four specific leadership skills that promote renewal: Group Culture Awareness, Powerful Reframing, Clarifying your Call, and Gaining Alignment. These skills will help you explore the impact of group dynamics, expand your emotional intelligence and empathy, equip and empower others for community engagement, and envision your next steps toward creating a culture of renewal. All of this will lead to better listening and a stronger connection to your community. Join me and learn the power of listening in promoting renewal in our churches!

Is it Possible to Love One Another as Jesus Loves Us?

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Jan 26, 2022

Lenten Practices

During Lent, we remember Jesus’ command: “Love one another as I have loved you.” My question is: is it still possible to love one another as Jesus loved us? We live in a world of us versus them, a culture of contempt. We are broken into camps around politics, theology, and understandings of race. Don’t forget human sexuality, biblical authority, and denominational structures. Did I mention the pandemic? Frankly, some of us are too tired to even be patient, let alone loving. Even with all that said, I promise you we don’t have to give up on love. In this article, I want to share the top four ways to practice love this Lent.

Does Love Equal Approval?

First, I want to share one common concern. That’s the concern that love means approval. If I am called to love you, but we disagree about fundamental understandings of the world, am I compromising my faith? Am I sending the signal that I approve of what I believe is sinful or unjust behavior?

Here’s what I have found. Loving as Jesus loved does not mean acceptance of behaviors or beliefs. It does however equal acceptance of the other person’s humanity, and their inner divinity. No matter how misguided you think their beliefs and behaviors are. In the end, judgement is God’s domain, not ours.

Now, on to the problem and the solutions: the four ways to practice love this Lent.

Why Loving as Christ Loved is Hard

Polarization tends to beget polarization and it takes us farther and farther from Jesus’ command. Polarization is built on fear and judgement. “I am right, and you are wrong. In fact, you are so wrong that I can’t trust you, talk with you, or even be me when you are here.”

These victim stances have no place in the consciousness of Christ. He ate with sinners. He interacted with Pilate. He did not try to winnow out the “other.” He allowed Judas to remain. He set personal differences aside and, in their place, created community amongst his people.

Four Ways to Practice Love This Lent

1) Practice Looking for Common Value Polarizing constructs are only given life when we act on them. By letting go of “us versus them,” you take the first steps toward loving as Jesus loved, and to creating community. Instead, let polarization dissolve by embracing the opposites, or by finding, identifying, and focusing on common underlying values.

2) Practice Listening When you are with someone you don’t love, listen for their humanity. Put yourself in their shoes. Ask: how has your personal journey brought you to this place? How has it shaped your perspectives?

3) Practice Extending Grace The person you can’t stand to love may look at you the same way you look at them. Surprise them by extending grace. Give them grace to make a mistake, to be on a different journey, to grow in their own timeline, and to be recipients of God’s love, and yours.

4) Practice Praying If you can’t find love within you, ask God to show you how, to teach you how to love them. If that doesn’t work, keep praying.

It’s Possible to Love One Another as Jesus Loves Us

The pandemic has shown us that there is no us versus them. There is only us. People from every walk of life and every country on earth have been impacted by the pandemic. If we hope to come through it with any sense of unity, we have to practice loving one another as Jesus loved us. It’s not automatic; it takes intention. I invite you to take on these four practices this Lent: looking for common values, listening, extending grace, and praying.

We don’t know everything the post-pandemic future holds, but the more we trust God in our approach, the more that we can live by Jesus’ command. Then, the more confident we’ll be knowing that we can survive and even thrive once again.

Excerpted and adapted from Rebekah Simon-Peter’s upcoming book(Market Square Publishers, 2022)

How to Listen When No One Else Is

by Rebekah Simon-Peter | Apr 3, 2019

There’s a lot of talking past each other right now. Listening, true listening, seems harder than ever. Add to that the polarizing results of General Conference 2019 and it’s a wonder United Methodists can hear each other at all.
At a recent district event, six of us sat around a table to process our feelings after General Conference 2019. Like a microcosm of both church and the world we live in, our table had a sprinkling of theologies, life experience, and deeply held convictions. How would this go, I wondered? My expectations weren’t very high.
Equipped with a timer, a list of questions, ground rules, and 25 minutes, a retired DS, three lay folks, a pastor and I sat at the round table, looked at each other warily, and began the vulnerable experience of listening, truly listening, to each other.
I needn’t have worried.
The questions helped us tap into our own inner resilience, faith, and trust in God. Click To Tweet
The first set of questions, “How has General Conference 2019 and responses around it both within and beyond the church impacted you?” followed by “How do you feel about it?” went pretty well. Haltingly at first, we began to reveal our convictions and reactions. Then as we came around to the end of the circle, the retired DS began to speak. His reflection turned into a complaint about what “they believe.” Sheila, a lay person, with opposite views as it turned out, firmly reined him in by reminding him of one of our ground rules to use “I” statements, not “you” statements. He stopped, trailing off, somewhat surprised. But he was gracious.
The second set of questions, “How do you deal with challenging circumstances in your life? What practices of faith do you rely on?” caught me off guard. We shifted rather abruptly, it seemed, from the topic at hand to our own coping resources. Only in retrospect could I see the genius of the move. We had neatly moved from problems we had no control over to remembering our inner resilience.
The first person to share confessed that when faced with challenging circumstances, she first gets grumpy, and then tries to get others to do as she wishes before she eventually remembers to pray. Several us laughed in recognition and the table relaxed. We shared about the power of nature to calm us, the enduring wisdom of the scriptures, and the grace of friends.
The third and final set of questions moved us deeper into resilience as we began to envision a new future. “What is your hope for the future, healing and well-being for yourself and the church? How can you contribute to that happening?” One by one we shared our hopes and dreams and considered ways we could be part of the various solutions we envisioned.
At the end of 25 minutes, a mini-miracle had unfolded. We had interrupted the reflexive process of speaking past each other. Instead, we had listened quietly and respectfully, shared vulnerably, and reconnected with our own resilience. The future shifted around our table.
Do you need resources to reconnect with your own resilience and to envision a new future? Creating a Culture of Renewal equips you with the capacity to do both.