The Impact of Pluralism On Professional Ministry: “Can you hear me now? Good!”

In January 2002, order during fierce price wars among cell phone companies, the largest mobile phone service provider in America launched its “Can You Hear Me Now?” campaign.  I’m sure you remember the television spots that followed the Verizon field tester – aka “Testman” – as he traveled across the country dropping in on locations ranging from the outlandish to the mundane.

In each spot he asked, “Can you hear me now?” into a mobile phone. After hearing affirmation, Testman replied, “Good!” and continued on his quest to validate the reliability of Verizon’s infrastructure into which $2-4 billion was invested annually.

The question: Can you hear me now?

Testman’s question highlighted Verizon’s core marketing message: you have many options available but Verizon provides the best infrastructure for you to consistently connect with, hear, and be heard by others in any context.

Now, let’s replace Testman with a pastor in active ministry, a recent seminary graduate, or a first year student in our classes who is passionate about connecting with and communicating a message to the world around him/her and will be genuinely asking the question “Can you hear me now?”

Do you think the ratio of “yes, I can:no, not really” answers would be 1:9, 4:6, or 8:2?  What ratio would represent a church context and what ratio would represent a spiritual conversation with a neighbor?  Could you speculate what the ratio would be if students rated their training at your institution with this question in mind?

The desired answer: “Yes, I can hear you. Good!”

I have no doubt that all of us want our students to leave our classrooms and institutions with the skills to consistently connect with, hear, and be heard by others in any context.  Of course we want the ratio to be 8:2 and we would be very disheartened to discover that it was 1:9.

With this as our goal, how can we take steps to ensure that we train and prepare men and women to communicate a personal spiritual message within our particular pluralistic context?

• First, to communicate in any context we need to broaden our understanding of “religious” pluralism to include the category of “individual” spirituality.
• Second, to hear others we need to offer training that highlights the role each individual plays in the formation of their personal beliefs so that students understand why people are persuaded to believe.
• Third, to be heard by others we need to challenge our students to recognize their preferred interpretive method and how it influences the spiritual story they tell. 

Communicating in ANY context.

While it is true that our pluralistic context shares many similarities with the context of the early Christian Church – a world permeated with various philosophical and religious ideas within a vast melting pot of religions and cultures – we face rapidly declining loyalty to “religious” ideas and “religious” institutions.  “Individual” spirituality and private, personal faith positions dominate our pluralist society.

The simplicity and complexity of individual spirituality is our pluralist context and is focused on the individual and his/her unique relationship with or connection to the divine. When beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices rise from within the self through intuition, personal motivations, and ones’ direct experiences, the context for communicating is as unique as each individual.

Hearing others with clarity.

When beliefs are as unique as each individual, can we really prepare students to hear with clarity the convictions, hopes, passions, and faith positions of others?  The truth is that we are not mind readers and there is no way we can ever know the depths of someone else’s spirituality.

Remember Verizon’s message: we have the best infrastructure to enable you to hear and be heard.  We can provide that kind of infrastructure to our students by training them to listen for the why of belief that is foundational to what someone believes.  In other words, there is a method to our madness. This training has commonly been known as hermeneutics or interpretive theory

Human beings are processors of information and our beliefs are the products of the evidence we choose to accept.  We are all persuaded to believe something.  We can begin to teach our students to recognize the many forms of evidence that persuade people and influence the spiritual story they tell themselves about what they read, hear, see, and experience.

Being heard by others with clarity in ANY context.

But that is just the first step. The same infrastructure that allows us to hear others also allows us to recognize the spiritual message we are trying to communicate by understanding why we are persuaded that our story is true and why someone else might not be persuaded.

Most of us have experienced moments when we lose connection with someone as we are sharing our spiritual story.  We get either verbal confirmation (e.g. “that may be true for you but not for me”) or a non-verbal clue (e.g. avoiding eye contact or sighing) that we aren’t being heard.

Training in the why of belief provides the reliable infrastructure that results in more consistent communication. Instead of only providing evidence that persuades us, we can begin connect with the individual beliefs of those we meet because we know that other evidence is working for them.

Can you hear me now? Good!

Equipping those we train to understand the many ways people are persuaded to believe – the available evidence – then, helping them recognize what evidence persuades, is the crucial infrastructure we need as we prepare leaders to hear and be heard in our pluralistic context.

Verizon’s ad campaign was a success because it attracted new customers while renewing the confidence of its existing customers.  People who are “spiritual, but not religious” are attracted to others who can/will hear what they are saying and they are generally willing to listen to another point of view.  A personalized approach to interpretive theory will enable us to hear and be heard.

Add to favorites