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The Try Tank Podcast is about innovation and the church
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: From the Try Tank Research Institute,
this is the Try Tank Podcast.
And welcome to the Try Tank Podcast. I'm
Father Lorenzo Brija. I do like that entrance music. I
guess there's something about it that's really cool. Welcome.
This is episode
29029 on
sacred listening. And this
is something that, uh, it's all about a new study.
You'll hear about the study that just came out that
on the sort of surface you could look at this and be
like, well, duh, yeah. But it
actually is an incredible. For those of us particularly
who are interested in faith formation,
today's episode is a really, really good
one. And our guest today is
Dr. Josh Packard, who is the research director,
director of research for the Try Tank Research Institute right here
with me. But he is also one of the co
founders of Future of Faith, which
is the organization that we actually teamed up with, uh,
formally to get him to be our
research director for Try Tank, to make us allow
us to do the research that we do. But actually Josh
is, he's one of the foremost experts in
the spiritual lives of modern American youth and
an accomplished researcher in the sociology of
religion and new forms of religious expressions.
He has authored numerous books and articles in both
popular and academic outlets. His most
recent publication is Faithful
Sacred Tools for Engaging Emerging
Generations, which is forthcoming.
And uh, it's also available on their website. You
can find more information about resources that he has and he has written. He's also
just a really, really cool guy. That doesn't make
me feel like I have no idea what I'm talking about when I am
talking about research and sociology. So
today we're talking, like I mentioned, on sacred
listening and we're going to be talking about
what this study actually says, what sort of the headlines
are. Why it is important that.
Why what, what it means for us in the church today
in this day and age, uh, for people to feel
hurt. So there is just so much
rich stuff. We will also get to what are the barriers?
There are three traits
of, of doing the sacred listening. We'll talk
about those. We'll talk a little bit about what are some of the barriers to
listening even if you can't do the three traits of
good, uh, sacred listening.
And finally we'll also be talking about in
the very practical way, what this means, how it is that the
church of today could bring about
some more sacred listening in our work so that we can
reach the world for the message of Jesus Christ.
So without any more from me, let's go on to the
podcast
and Josh Backard, welcome back to the Tri Tech
Podcast.
>> Josh Packard: It's like I never left Lorenzo. We talk all the time. I'm glad to be
doing it on an actual podcast now.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I keep telling people we should just record our actual
conversations as we're doing work, because I don't think anybody wants
that interesting. Especially when my mind wanders about
something else and like, oh, what's going on over there, shiny thing. Actually,
no, we're, uh. So for those of you who are not
familiar, Josh is one of the co founders of Future Faith,
as you heard in the intro. But what's
really interesting and best for us was that we teamed
up with Future of Faith to do the research
part, the legit research part of Try Tank
doing, like, rigorous research
and his PhD and all of that. I
won't say how many decades, but just many years of
experience that Josh has, and it brings it
up. So all that to say is that Future Faith is also
its own entity that does things. And
recently we also participated. We were one of many. There
were many participants helping you make this happen. But you did, uh,
an amazing study. And our program today is on
Sacred Listening. And I guess before we
get to the study itself, what was the
hypothesis when you went out there, you said to yourself,
I think. Because actually few people know this. This is
how Josh and I work.
>> Josh Packard: He's m. One trick and you're going
to give it away.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Sorry, sorry, sorry. I will not give it away. But if you
ever see me out and about people, you can ask me. No,
no. Which is I want to know blank.
So that blank, which really
works with me because I'm an action person. And
so when you began this, what did you want to know
and why did you want to know it before we get to.
>> Josh Packard: I've never had anybody turn that back around. So we love
that little, um, we love the little heuristic or that
little tool. A trick, as some people, ah, in my field
might call it. Um, a nod to my favorite sociologist,
Howard Becker there, because it does keep us
in this firmly planted in this side of action.
I want to know blank so I can do blank.
And to us, that keeps
us from falling into this sort of overly
academic or intellectual trap of just like doing research because it's
interesting. We always say we want to do research that's useful. Well, if we
can't fill in that second blank, then maybe
we've got something that keeps us up late at night down a rabbit
hole on the Internet. But maybe it's not all that. It's not something
to build business around or, or to try and get into
the hands.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: But it's more of a curiosity than it is an actual.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
>> Josh Packard: So for the. In this case, we had done, Megan,
my co founder and I, and I had done a lot of research over the years
that I had had the opportunity to get on stage and talk about. And
that's really where this comes from, is that we were learning lots of
things from various points of research that,
you know, where people were telling us, I just want to be heard. I just want to
be heard. And when I would go and present that information to
pastors and youth ministers and, you know, adult
ministry coordinat dres and other
things, what they would say is, well, okay, but like,
my job is to bring people closer to God. My job is not to
listen to people. And I would say, fair
enough, fair enough. Because what we were
presenting to them was not an airtight
case that listening was in fact bringing them closer to
God. All we were saying is people want to be listened to. Their mental health
is better. They experience, you know, a greater sense
of closeness to you. You know, you have more influence.
Like everything that we were talking about as an
outcome or what we call in the research world the dependent
variable, that was not their dependent variable. Right? Their
dependent variable is bringing people closer to God.
And so we, when we thought, like, how do we want to
start a future of faith? What we wanted to do was be
able to fill in that second blank with the thing that people,
you know, who we were talking to cared most about. And as we
looked around, we realized there really wasn't anything that was
trying to establish whether or not listening to somebody
was in and of itself an act of faith formation. We didn't,
it was a. It was. We didn't actually know the answer to that. We couldn't say yes or
no. And so this is, I think,
um, the first attempt to begin
unpacking that. I don't think it's the last word on it. Maybe
it's the first or one of the first, because I think it's a very complex issue.
But that was our goal. We wanted to begin
understanding. Like, could you credibly
really just build a ministry around listening
and know that that is impacting somebody's faith? So that's
the question that got us here.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And that is deeply theological on
so many levels. That is the reason, uh,
many would say for the Incarnate was the relationship the, uh,
the Sam Wells and his being with Theology
is all about just, you just have to be with
people. You don't and hearing their story
changes them. And I guess that's kind of what you, you're proving here.
So let's get now to the study. Tell us a little bit about
like the methodology that you used before there. How
big of a study was it, how long did it take? Like margin of errors, can
people trust the results? Uh, that kind of thing.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, well, we didn't collect any data. This is
all just made up. No, I'm kidding. Great.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: What'd you do with all the money?
>> Josh Packard: We had wonderful support, as you mentioned, from a good, I
mean the people who came around us from national and local
organizations to affirm that this was useful was tremendous.
And so we were able to do quite a bit. Um, so it's a nationally
representative study, uh, 884
adults. So uh, in this case we're calling adults 22 to
55 year olds. And then we were able to over sample
teenagers. Um, so we have 1138
teenagers in the whole sample. Um,
uh, as well as, and then obviously there are some people
who are in that 20, 21 range. So we end up with a total
sample of close to 2,000 people. The margin of error then is plus or
minus 3%.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Okay.
>> Josh Packard: Um,
we coupled that with interviews. So we also did 20 in
depth interviews with people over the age of 18
trying to understand, okay, so they told, we heard
this in the survey, but really, what does that look like? So on the
survey, when people, what 80% of people tell us that
listening was important in the moments that
mattered most for their faith formation, what
does that mean? And obviously these aren't the only
20 people who are ever going to get to say what that means. But it's a good start to begin
unpacking what that means. So it's a pretty classical
research design, quantitative, qualitative, um,
and of course it's the beginning for us, not the end. So we're hoping
this sort of lays the baseline for future stuff.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So is the headline then, would you say?
Especially to those that told you, I'm sorry, I
appreciate what you're talking about, but my goal is to get people closer to
God. The big headline here is just
hearing people, just listening to people.
And we can talk a little bit about what we mean by listening. Right?
It's not just me listening. To answer your question, it's probably more
like listening to understand. But just hearing people
does lead people closer to God,
I think.
>> Josh Packard: Yes, that is the headline. To be short and sweet. About it,
uh, that the act of listening,
I, I would say especially today in our
current political and social climate in the United States,
the act of listening and being genuinely curious about
somebody else's story just for the sake of hearing it is so
radical that it in fact does put them in touch with something
deeply spiritual. And that's what the data confirm
over and over again is, you know, they're in
a, we can unpack the variety of ways, but the top level
headlines, you know, it helps them to process spiritual
challenges that brings them closer to God. It was really critical to the moments
that mattered most to them, um, et cetera, et cetera.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And, and so now let's look at the question of listening. When
we say listening, when you particularly, did you
have to define listening in your study that you were able to give them, here's
um, a definition that we can give you what we mean by
listening. So that everybody was thinking the same thing or was it
just what is listening as defined by the study?
>> Josh Packard: That. So that's a really good question. We debated this, went back
and forth about this exact thing. Should we give people
a clinical or sort of a taken for, you
know, for granted research based definition of what
counts as listening as opposed to hearing or
communication or any of the. As you can imagine, like
researchers make all these distinctions.
Um, we've really been
trying to, instead of,
instead of taking an approach that would make the most sense to
researchers, we've really been at uh, future faith trying
to honor what would make the most sense to the people on the action
side of that and to let them define this in the
process of articulating it. So that meant that we had to spend
some of our research time. You only get so many questions on a survey before
people just like check out. Right. So we had to spend some
questions then, um, like getting them to sort of
define what they meant. But so ah, the
short of it is like, no, we didn't define it for them. We
asked a bunch of questions about, you know, when you feel heard,
what does that do for your religion, spirituality, faith, encounter with
God, et cetera, if anything. And then we asked a series of follow
up questions about, okay, what does it mean for you
to feel heard? What are the practices that tell you that
somebody's actually listening, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know
that that um, like radically changes any
clinical definitions, but it does give us some insight into what people
are, what people say need to be present so they can
experience being heard.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So what did they tell you? What did they tell you were some of the things. How
they experienced being heard from the study? What did you hear
on that, Amber?
>> Josh Packard: Um, well, we got some really great
stuff that was like. Some of it will not be surprising,
but then there's. There's other stuff that I think in its
magnitude becomes really critical. So the,
the. In a. In a short, like, we sort of trying to combine this
into ways that, um, you know, people can
grasp onto. And the biggest things that
people were telling us is that you want to be
relatable. So when people are. When people
affirm that they understand the thing
that you're. That they're saying to you, if you can affirm that.
That you understand it, that's. That's a way of being relatable
that's really critical. It tells people, like, okay, I get you. You're not
alone. You're not off the deep end here. Secondly, you want to
be reliable. So you want to. If in the conversation
or if you're listening to somebody, if they tell you something and it
comes up again, um, that you remember that it came up again or
that you follow up on it later, um, after the conversation
is over, or if they say, yeah, I'm really stressed about this event that I
have next week and you can check in with them to ask how
that event went, that those are examples of being reliable.
And the third is to be curious, to be genuinely
curious, because that tells people, you know, that you
value their story, you're not listening to change their mind,
you're not listening. So that you're confined, opening to share
your own point of view, but that you're genuinely
just wanting to know more about them, it communicates so
much value.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: I am curious, uh, as you looked at the data,
and I know you like to cut it up in all sorts of ways,
were there any significant,
uh, variations? For example, are young people
more like. Does this impact young people more than
perhaps Those closer to 50? By the way, I have a total
issue with the fact that adults finish at 55. As
I'm 52, I'm just putting it out there.
Someone needed to say this, and I just did. So,
uh, but was there a difference? Are. Because our
older people, like, I don't need to be hurt as much. I'm. I'm. What do you
think? What did you see here?
>> Josh Packard: Adults don't finish at 55. We. We were
trying to think through the feedback we had gotten around. You know, what
are. What. What. What would cover the vast majority of the ministries
that are out there that are currently designed, um, and that
our partners cared about, and they, you know, parents and children
were a big part of that. And so, yes, with limited resources, you
have to make some decisions. Um, but again, first word,
not final word. Uh, we will. We. We.
We're not forgetting about you, Lorenzo.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah. The.
There. There were a number of really interesting things that came up
between the sort of age ranges. Although
I think one of the. Though it's not as many as you would think,
like, adults and teenagers often are very, very close to each
other. So I'll tell one of the biggest things, like, the biggest
barrier to somebody feeling heard. Like, even if you. Even if you
couldn't do the other three things that I just talked about, like, if you can't
be relatable and you can't be reliable and you can't be
curious, if all you can do is sit there,
that's actually okay as long as you're not being judgmental.
So, like, the downside of being
judgmental is so bad
that you don't even have to do the positive things. You just have to not do the
negative thing. Um, so
adults will say, for example, like, 81% of adults will tell you if they feel
more connected to someone who listens without judgment.
And, like, 74, 75% of teenagers will tell you
the same thing. So with. That's within 5, 6,
7% of each other. It's not a tremendous difference.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Um, okay.
>> Josh Packard: And I would have thought, I don't know about you, but, uh, walking in,
um, you know, I would have thought that teenagers would be, like, stop
judging me. You know, exactly. Like, through the roof
on that. Um, but actually adults were a little bit higher,
although not substantially so. So there were some differences,
but nothing that, like, as we sat down to write the white paper,
uh, and put the results and make up all the graphics and stuff,
um, we didn't find any of the breakdowns compelling
enough to, like, that's a story that needs to be told. You know, we ended
up just telling the basic story around listening and faith
information.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: So what else did you find within here?
Listening, making people or having people feel
heard through. Through the ways. And some. And just
don't be judgmental if that's the least you can do is not be
judgmental, which is interesting. Also, uh, you'll recall
a few months ago, you and I were talking about the
toxic brand that the church is. And in
those things that I've seen from Barna and others.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: One of the things that they list as the main reasons why
the church is toxic as a brand to them is
because they feel it is so judgmental, especially for
young people. So that makes sense.
>> Josh Packard: Sense. I was giving. In fact, I was giving a talk
yesterday, um, to a group of
pastors, and I was trying to make the point. This exact point. I said, because of
the baggage that people walk into the conversation
with you holding the burden of proof
to prove that you're not being judgmental is on you.
You're not starting from neutral. You're often when you
interact with people who don't know you as a pastor, you're
start. You have to assume you're starting from a deficit, that
they think you're going to judge them. So you have to actually
prove that you're not. And I think for us, this comes
up pretty clearly as we dug into
in the interviews, especially in the how to be relatable part.
You know, that first premise of being a good listener. Well, being relatable is
tricky because especially in ministry, we think that to
tell somebody that you understand them also
is tacitly condoning whatever it is that they're
talking about.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah, yeah.
>> Josh Packard: Um, and. And a lot of times in ministry situations, people will
tell you things that are, frankly, not very healthy, you know, that they're
thinking about doing or. I mean, I experienced this as a
professor when students would come into my office and we would talk about their
career plans, and we get into, you know, sometimes their personal life
would intersect with their academic and career goals. And so they would
tell me things, and I was like, oh, man. Like, that's just a terrible
choice. Like, you know, you should really break up with that boy or
whatever. Like, things that I knew in my
core to be true. But what I learned over
time is that I had not earned the trust with them to be able to tell
them.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. Especially young people.
>> Josh Packard: Especially young. Right. And so the.
What. What was so affirming out of this research and other stuff that
we've done, though, is that people actually don't experience that. They want to
know that they're understood, but they do not confuse
understanding with condoning. And. And they. They
also often don't need to be told when they're screwing up. They.
What I found out was like, you know, as I. When I was a young professor and
I was so eager to jump in and tell somebody that they should break up with
their boyfriend because he's, you know, toxic or whatever, they already
knew that. They didn't mean me to tell them.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's. Most people that do that Right. They just want to hear from
someone else that, that that's the case.
Also.
As a soc, as a sociologist, what is, I mean,
is this unique to our period in time?
Do you think just humans have been this way
since Jesus was among us, being with us?
Or is it because we keep hearing all about the loneliness
epidemic, all these other things, social media
exacerbating all of these other issues?
Is this unique to our moment or do you think. No, this has always
been there. This is why the church has always been relational.
Right. The things that people find at church go way beyond
just you find community, you find your people, you
find all these other. So what do you think as a sociologist? How much
is it. Is what you found in this survey
impacted by the external forces of the
politics and the polarization at the moment or the loneliness
epidemic?
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, uh, it's a really great question. I think
ultimately it's useful to understand where
we're at in that story so that we can
make an honest assessment of what
practices, postures, theologies,
dispositions from the past to carry forward and which
ones we can maybe let go of. Because the
reality is that the present
conditions, whatever they are, for whatever era you're living in, they
do matter. They don't matter in the sense that we should
immediately compromise all of our principles
or radically alter our theology just
because something is happening this week or this year or even
this decade, but they should inform. So
I think where we're at is that, yeah, the church has always been,
in its best incarnation, has been relational.
The amount of relationality that it's needed to do
explicitly has varied throughout time.
Currently, in a moment where people distrust authority
figures so much, they distrust institutions so much that I would
argue that the need for relational approaches to
ministry is at or near an all time high. I mean, this is the
guess. Nobody's ever measured this before, but I mean, you know, I don't think it's
dissimilar to many of the
people that Jesus was reaching during his
ministry who were very skeptical about
Roman authority and state sponsored.
Anybody, right. And that included church authorities.
So the approach that Jesus takes matches the time
that he's living in. It's very relational, it's very
conversational. He's asking a lot of questions. And I'm no
theologian, but I think I know enough to know like that part of
it. Right. So, uh, this current moment I think calls
out especially for pastoral leaders
to sort of tip over the cart by
listening and not just preaching and, and.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know, it's, it's Interesting because when you look at Jesus going back
to. To the people want to feel heard, he
was talking to those that were on the margins, those that nobody paid
attention to, those that. Nope, they would, they were,
they were unclean, whatever it might be that they were. And so
it makes sense, right? So I. It's just
the connection is still there. Uh, I'm just surprised it took
so long for someone to figure out that this is like literally
just hearing. Uh, now I know you all have.
>> Josh Packard: Hold on, I want to follow up on that. And so I think one of the things that.
So this point was made to me by one of the pastors in the
group that I was talking to yesterday. They said, you know, part of what Jesus was so
good is not. It was like really hearing all the.
All the other ways the marginalized people talk to him. So,
like, people who are not. People who are not used to feeling
heard will communicate in different ways. Like a woman
brings her last dime
essentially as a gift. You know, somebody
believes so much that they reach out for the hem of Jesus
garment. Uh, these are not people who are like stopping him to
chat on the side of the road because they don't even have. They don't even know what that
means necessarily if they've been politically disenfranchised
and socially marginalized for so long. And I think that
is not unlike the way so many people feel today,
where they might not even know how to say. But
as pastors and religious leaders, our job is to know how to
listen, even when they don't know how to say.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Now, obviously the survey was more than just one question.
Do you like being heard? Were there other
findings among there. The other headlines that came out
that, that, that are. That you want to share?
>> Josh Packard: Well, I think that this is a particular, like,
sociological angle from m. From me, which is not
surprising as, as a sociologist. But, you know, you and I have talked about this a lot,
that trust really is at the root of a lot of the things that the
church is grappling with. And the shift, as we sort of
already alluded to, this move away for institutional trust. And part
of the process then of like, why does listening lead to faith?
Information is, um, that one of the things it does is it opens up a pathway
for trust that is not. That doesn't otherwise exist. And
the connection between those two things
is really significant. So over and over again, people
affirming, when somebody takes the time to listen to me,
I trust them more. I'll follow, I'll have more conversations with them.
Later, I will listen to them more once they know me
because I trust that. It's almost like
their institutional distrust spills over to any
generic advice. No matter how good it is.
No matter how good it is. Right. It's not a question of like,
can you be accurate? The question is,
is this for me? Um,
so I'm going to give you this quote from Christopher. He's 41. He says,
um, I don't tend to trust authority figures.
I would definitely be more likely to listen to someone
who I felt was listening to how I was feeling.
Now I think what's really interesting in what Chris says, I would be
more likely to listen to someone who was listening to how I was feeling. He's not
saying I would listen to the person with the best advice or the,
you know, the most up to date information or who was the smartest.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: All these things that we trained theologian who knows everything about.
Yeah, yeah.
>> Josh Packard: Who has read the most, like all the things that we primarily train
pastors to do in seminary. Right. He is saying none of
that is what's going to get me to listen to you. The thing that's
going to get me to listen to you is if you've listened to me.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I think it goes to one of the other things that
the research on, um, the toxicity or how people
feel towards church, that church as a brand, you know, show
me. Don't try to convince me. Don't, don't try to use your, you know,
you get to my heart before you get to my head.
Rather than the other way around, which is a church is like, let me tell you about
Jesus so that you can be convinced. And the young people are more
like, no, no, no, I need you to get to my heart first.
And how do you, uh, to the point you were just making, it opens
up when you're listening. It opens up this, this pathway
to get to people's hearts. Uh, because if someone gets to the point where
they feel good enough to be vulnerable with you,
then, you know, you're getting to the point that really matters to them
and that's going to create trust. If they get to the point where they're
vulnerable with you, they've already, they.
It's not because you're wearing a collar or not wearing a collar
or you're a psychologist or anything like that. It's
just you gave them that, that space to do it.
Other findings.
>> Josh Packard: Uh, I think there are some counterintuitive findings that
really stand out to me. We said in one of the key principles was to Be
relatable. And one of the ways that people try to be
relatable is by noting. So you're telling a story
about something that's really hard that you're going through, for
example. And I have something similar in my background, and so I
share that too. Now, the natural thing, which is great,
that everybody affirms, that's awesome. It's useful,
especially if we have a power disparity. So if
I'm a pastor and you're a congregant, or if
I'm a teacher and you're a student or something like that, it's really useful for the
congregant or the student to see that person as like a
real life, you know, person who struggles with the same things.
Um, but the natural
extension of that for those of us who are in helping
professions, is that we then want to
tell that person, not only, man, yeah, like, I've been through that.
Like, I broke up with somebody, or I didn't handle a
situation well with my boss. And I totally get you. I hear that.
Is that we then want to explain how we got through it or what we
would have done otherwise or what we learned because of it.
And, like, as a way of giving advice
in that moment.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Correct fixing, if you will.
>> Josh Packard: And yeah. And we don't. I don't think that.
I think the intention behind that spirit, uh, I totally affirm, and I love,
is that you don't want to have to see somebody else who you care about go
through the same thing you went through. But that is not how it's
received, especially at first. Jonathan tells us. This is my favorite quote
from the whole project. He says he's 46. He says
there are a lot of people that when they listen, they will be more apt
to give you a solution wrapped up
in an opinion, which is, oh, you should do
this. And so they're just shooting all over you.
And I realize I have close friends who do that. They
listen, they hear a problem, and they offer a solution. And he calls it being
shut it on. And, uh,
so for the record, we're.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Not cursing on the podcast today, right?
>> Josh Packard: No, we are not. It's shooting. But that's how,
like, he puts it in such a way that lots of other people
mentioned both of the interviews and in the survey, but that
sharing what you've been through is really important, especially as a way
to build trust. And there will come a time later when you have earned that. They may
even explicitly ask you for advice. But
if you are always coupling your experience within what
is basically advice. People just think you're talking about
yourself.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It's interesting because beyond faith, where they can do faith
formation, it's also interesting to sort of see that it's just
being a good human being as well. You know, listening to people, being
present to people, it's not that bad. Which brings up a
point, by the way. People have been listening to each other for a long
time. This is. So
are people. If two atheists hear each other, are
they also forming each other in faith and they don't even
know it?
>> Josh Packard: Well, I would think so,
but not maybe. M. They wouldn't necessarily use that language. I mean,
so even atheists may feel connected to something
bigger. I mean, there's a lot of variation inside of that category of
atheists. It doesn't just mean that they. That there's no belief
whatsoever in anything beyond the here and now.
But yes, so it does foster these
deeper, you know, these deeper social and
spiritual connections to a project God, a
divine that is bigger than yourself, that you recognize
that somebody else is capable of putting their
own ego aside for a minute. That's huge.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Yeah. No, that's. So.
Okay, so the people who listen to this podcast are people who
are active in ministry, whether, uh, lay people or
ordained. If. If someone's hearing us
right now and they're like, this sounds great, how do we live into
this? Knowledge is. I mean, is the best of it. I
did this one time, actually. I actually had a little sign made
that said I'm a priest, and I would go to, like, my local
coffee shop, and I'd just put it down on the thing, and I would sit
there. And if you'd be surprised how many people. Also, I travel a
lot. You'd be surprised how many people do want to be heard by.
By someone of. But how do we use this
practically in the churches?
>> Josh Packard: That's a. So this is, of course, the. This is the big question.
And I think it calls into, uh, the first and foremost.
We got to question a lot of the things that we take for granted.
And I want to preface by saying that,
uh, there's good reason to hold on to some ancient practices. And
by ancient, you could mean a couple of thousand years old, or you
could mean 1965, whatever is ancient for you. But
there's good theological, ecclesiological reasons
often for holding on to some things. So I'm not saying throw out
everything that isn't working right now immediately. I'm
just saying let's reinvestigate, right? And figure
out which things were of a particular era and could
maybe be let go of. Uh, so the quick and
easy way to think about this is that people watch as
many movies today as they ever have, potentially more. It's just that
not very many of them rent them a blockbuster like they used to.
So find out what your blockbusters are.
Find out what your blockbusters are and, you know,
see if you can let go of them. And if you can't, that's okay. And if you can,
like, let's make some space for other things. So I'll give you an example. In
our study, uh, 67% of teenagers,
66% of adults said that their
faith, um, is deepened when. When somebody
listens to them. Only a third of those
groups said that their faith is deepened when they hear a sermon
now. So that suggests that listening is twice as
useful as now. That doesn't mean we're going to stop doing sermons like,
that's.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: It just means they haven't heard me. That's all that means. I mean, I'm just saying.
No, but that's. So maybe what we do is during the
sermon time, we just sit there and listen to each other.
>> Josh Packard: No, I think that's, like, that's the wrong conclusion to get
right. It's that maybe we want to come around the
sermon and not just think like that is the one
point or the primary even point of faith formation and
edification that people would get that week, um, but that we
would want to spend, uh, we would want to sort of rebalance
our time. So I read a study once that said that the average pastor
spends, uh, over 20 hours a week prepping for their sermon. Well,
I think that makes a lot of sense in a world where we trust
authority figures and we do everything they say in
1955. Right. Well, I don't know that we should be spending that
much time on something that is only
impactful for one third of people. It doesn't mean we should stop
doing it. But maybe we just rebalance how much time
we spend on that kind of thing. At. At Future
of Faith, we have a bunch of free resources that people can go and download
using what we call sacred listening techniques built around
this theory that helps us to think about how do we build
structure around listening so it can scale beyond
just what one person can hold in their heads, and we can get
sophisticated about relationships. So I think there are some
systems that we could use as well. But I think it first starts
with at least examining, okay, how much listening actually
is built in to what we do. And how could we do more?
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And going to the sermon for a second, you can. Actually. If I were
listening to this and I had a congregation that I went to on Sundays,
I could figure a way. It's like, okay,
strategically, I can make my sermons be
about listening for a while. Maybe during
the summer season or during this long period of ordinary
time, people would be like, you know what? I'm gonna take four weeks,
and I'm gonna go through the scripture, find times
where people were heard, maybe when God's mind was.
Was changed or whatever. But there. There's opportunities
to. And we can be strategic with those sermons
to say, listening is sacred and listening
does matter, and that's how you begin to create. Because
I also don't. Do not.
>> Josh Packard: I love that.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That it needs to be just the clergy person that does this. You
need to create a whole culture within your
congregation where everyone's okay with
listening, where everyone is like, hey, listen, I just
need you to hold my story for a few moments. It. It's
painful. It can't be taken away.
God forbid, you know, someone died or something. You could just be like, well, I
will. I remember, uh, actually, the John Pritchard,
the former Bishop of Oxford, wrote a book on the
life of the. The life. The life and
being of a priest or something like that, which was very fundamental. Obviously, I can't
remember the title, so. Very fundamental to my training as a priest.
So you take that with what it is. But one of the things he said is,
like, our jobs as priests is to be present to the
pain of the world. There's nothing we can do to take it
away. So do not. In fact, uh, I'm paraphrasing. He's
like, do not go in there and tell someone who just lost
their kid that, you know, it's gonna be fine, you
have other kids, God forbid, or that God needed
another angel. He said, in fact, if you try to
make it better, you're likely to make it worse.
But your presence there, to hear them
cry out that pain, especially in your
collar to them, can represent God
listening to that pain for that moment.
Right. It makes an impact.
>> Josh Packard: So, well put.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Creating a whole atmosphere, I think, within a congregation,
within a church where. I mean, I see it all over your
office when you and I talk. Right? Uh, listening is sacred. You have teachers
that say this. I mean, imagine if for one year, like, a
congregation just takes on the theme of
listening is sacred, and everything that we're going to do
for the next year, and all of our programming will be
figured about how can we listen more to each other?
How can we listen to our community? How can we listen
to those that are different from us? Right. And
all these things. And imagine what would, what would that congregation
be like at the end of that time when they've spent this time?
You would begin to change the system. You would
begin to change the congregation into one that's
not. Not just there to receive, but
also there to listen to each other.
And it doesn't cost anything. It's just
fascinating.
>> Josh Packard: Uh, and I'll just give a quick plug. These tools do exist.
I was just going to tell you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Where can people go?
>> Josh Packard: Well, uh, so you can come to our website. That's fine. Future of Faith has loads
of stuff that's free. You can see all the stuff from the study if you're
the, you know, you can have it all.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's future of faith.org people.
>> Josh Packard: Futureofaith.org but also Luke
Edwards has this listening, uh, church website that
he has. As you get out.
Yeah. How do you listen to your community? I think he's got some really great stuff
there. And that takes you sort of, uh, a lot of our stuff is
really designed for. How do you do ministry around listening? That's
interpersonal. And he's really thinking like, how does the church exist
in a neighborhood and in an ecosystem? Um, and so I would also direct
people to that. But look, in the Catholic world, all the stuff that's been
developed around synodality over the last couple of years is also. We
find, we take a lot of inspiration from that. We find it to be extraordinarily
useful, the amazing things that people have built out of this. So
there is a movement. It, uh, feels like. And I know that's partially
because we're out there looking for it, but sometimes
there are things out there that never get into movement because nobody's bringing them
all together. But we're trying to do that. And
there's a lot of stuff going on that is really, really useful and
interesting.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's fascinating.
Any last thoughts for us today
on Sacred Listening? Before we let you
go, I will.
>> Josh Packard: Leave you with this singular data point that just came out
from, um, in a journal article by
some people who work here. I'll actually get it so I can
give them the right credit here. It's called
Reimagining the Role of Graduate
Theological Education in Clergy
Formation. Reimagining the Role of Graduate
Theological Education in Clergy Formation.
Okay, so here is the amazing thing about this
article by Deborah Gannon. Joann Decian.
Uh, um, a couple of other co authors, I think they
went through and they asked pastors, what are a clergy? They said,
what are all the skills that you use in the course of your job? And they list out the top
20. This is a standard way of doing this kind of professional,
um, uh, research about professions. What are
the top 20 competencies of all the alums? You have
2,800 alumni from,
um, theological schools to respond to this.
Active listening top 10 for every demographic
group. The whole study, break it down by women, men, lay,
whatever. And then they went through all the catalogs
of all the ATS schools and looked at what
is being taught. There is exactly one
class at one seminary being taught
about listening. One class. Now,
of course, I know that listening weaves its way into the curriculum
in other places, but when you look at the level.
I would encourage anybody to look at this article. It's fascinating. They're not writing
about listening. That's just what I picked up on it. They're writing about all kinds of other stuff.
Um, but I just. It came in
38 out of 38 for all
of the competencies. So that would be the.
That's the. That'll be my takeaway.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Well, there we go.
>> Josh Packard: For.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: You know what. And I think that makes sense also that we should say thank you to those
who are listening to us today, because they're not saying anything.
They're just listening. They're holding. They're holding our
yelling at their.
>> Josh Packard: They're probably yelling at their phones or whatever. Like, no, that's not right.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: That's so wrong. Josh, thanks so much, uh, once again for joining
us.
So what's next on the Sacred Listening? Are there going to be more
studies?
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, yeah. So this is, uh, we've just started thinking about that now that
this has been fully published and is getting out into the world
and looking at designing in full
tritank spirit. Like, what would it look like to do some
experiments here? You know, we really, we don't want to get
hemmed in by just thinking about survey interview, survey
interview. I mean, maybe there's more questions to ask, but I think that there are some more
interesting ways to follow up on this than just,
um, redoing the same thing. So we'll have more
hopefully this fall, early next year coming.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: And I have a feeling there's going to be a couple of tri tech experiments
on this as well, because that's just how the things work.
Josh, thanks so much for being with us. Really appreciate it. Uh,
again, is futureoffaith.org
futurefaith.org. thanks, Josh.
>> Josh Packard: Yeah, thank you.
>> Father Lorenz Lebrija: Thanks for listening. Please subscribe and be
sure to leave a review. To learn more About
Try Tank, visit
tritank.org be sure to sign
up for our monthly newsletter where you can keep
up with all of our experiments. The Tri
Tank Podcast is a production of Tritech in association
with Resonate Media. Try Tank is a
joint venture between Virginia Theological
Seminary and General Theological
Seminary. Again, thanks for joining us.
Um, I'm Father Lorenzo Labrija. Until next time, May
God bless you.