Lynne Baab

True to form, Lynne Baab has offered us another practical and informative book that places our texting and email frenzy in the world of faith and finds compatibility there. Author of Sabbath Keeping and Reaching Out in a Networked World, Baab names the suspicion that email and texting, not to mention Facebook, are not real ways of maintaining friendships. Then she turns that suspicion on its head.

Using her own experience as a child who moved often (she now lives in Dunedin, teaching pastoral theology at the University of Otago), she has had to make new friends and nurture old friends for years. She says the issue is not that technology determines the depth and health of our relationships. Technology is neutral. We are the ones who give email, texting, and entries in Facebook meaning.

Media is vilified by some and embraced fanatically by others, not unlike the telephone nearly a hundred years ago. Yes, dynamics are lost in email (voice tone, facial expression) and body language is lost on the phone. Yet these still are vital media for our maintaining relationships of all kinds over vast distances, greater than ever in our history.

Baab finds inspiration in scripture. What faith brings to technology (or good faith in those who claim no stated belief) is practice such as that described by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians: Love is patient; love is kind. And Colossians 3: ...clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another...forgive each other. Friendships maintained by email, text and Skype require the same values and skills that all relationships do. For those of faith, kindness and patience dictate how friendships are maintained whether they are on Facebook or face to face. Baab then offers a series of chapters on friending skills: Initiating, Listening-Remembering-Praying. Asking-Giving-Thanking. Sharing-Caring-Being together and apart. Pacing-Choosing. Accepting- Forgiving. “The challenge in friendship isn’t to figure out who is a friend,” she asserts. “The challenge is to grow in the ability to act like a friend.”

After exploring good relationships and those which helped her grow, Baab offers a final chapter on her experience of living in New Zealand. The distance has changed the intensity of some relationships and made her acquainted with loneliness she hadn’t experienced for some time. She concludes, “Befriending loneliness more intentionally has been a healthy spiritual endeavor for me.” Indeed, since Jesus called his followers friends (John 15:12-17) and the model of God’s love for the world was “patterned into us at creation because...we are made in God’s image,” faith teaches us how to care for ourselves whether alone or with others. These skills grow with practice.

With questions for reflection, journaling, discussion or action at the end of each chapter, Baab leads us to ways of sharing our own experiences, often a source of spiritual growth. Lynne Baab concludes, Every act of friendship, whether it is well received or not, transforms us into people who know a little bit more about love, who understand a little more deeply what it means to be a neighbor to the people around us. Friendship transforms us, even as it brings healing, reconciliation and warmth to the world.

(Published in the Journal of Missional Practice, Autumn 2015)

My local church, AuburnLife, has been discussing the missional practice of listening. We have been challenged to listen to one another and to our neighbourhood with acute attentiveness. One of our members quoted the wise words of the Dalai Lama: ‘When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new’. Listening is not just part of a good friendship or a ministry skill for the counselling room. It is a mission skill for parish awareness. Nineteenth century French doctor Laenneec, who invented the stethoscope, used to say to his students ‘Listen, listen to your patient! They are giving you the diagnosis.’ Our neighbourhoods, if we listen, will help us understand how we can bring them healing and wholeness. Moreover, in a local church, we need processes for listening to one another to discern how God is leading us in mission.

This is why we were eager to learn from Lynne Baab’s wisdom on congregational listening. Baab is a Presbyterian minister and teacher of pastoral theology based in New Zealand, but also a writer on congregational health and spiritual practices. A feature of her writing is that she combines biblical and personal reflection with stories from interviews of dozens of people from different contexts on her topic – in this case listening to God, obstacles to listening, listening in church, and listening to the wider community. Baab teaches listening skills to trainee chaplains, but her advocacy for listening is not just for pastoral counselling but as a broader framework for community engagement.

I appreciated Baab’s reminder that Jesus was a champion listener, for example responding to Nicodemus (John 3:1-21) and the woman at the well (John 4). Jesus used what Einstein later called ‘holy curiosity'; questioning and listening in ways that provoked life change. Jesus enabled the blind to see and the deaf to hear things they had not perceived before; and wants to help us see and hear new things.

The best chapter of the book was on ‘Anxiety and listening’. Other parts of the book offer a toolbox of practices for fine-tuning our listening muscles: avoiding multitasking, switching technology off, and using empathy, non-judgment, body language and silence (a baseline for listening is to stop talking ourselves). But Baab’s chapter on anxiety profoundly explores anxieties that cuts listening off. Sometimes people or churches are so busy with their own agendas, they have little time or energy for listening. If a congregation has minimal energy to meet needs beyond themselves, they are less likely to be interested in listening for those needs in the first place. When someone’s cherished ideas are threatened by someone else, it’s hard to listen to new ideas. When Christians think people do not want to talk about religion because they see it as merely a private matter, they will be less inclined to listen for opportunities to explore people’s spiritual search. Baab urges adopting a theology of abundance (rather than scarcity), an attitude of learning (rather than close-mindedness), and an openness to discuss spiritual matters with people curious about the meaning of life. She offers reassuring advice about not having to agree, not having to have all the answers, and not being responsible for all problems we hear.

Our church especially appreciated grappling with Baab’s teaching in two areas: congregational discernment through listening to one another, and mission discernment through listening to our broader community.

Decision-making through congregational discernment and consensus begins with listening. Baab counsels giving everyone the space to say, ‘This is what I feel or sense’ and to aim for consensus of everyone affected on important decisions. This reminded us of the importance of listening to and counting not just ‘voting members’ but those on the margins of our worshipping community, and our children have not always been invited to contribute to decision-making. Baab says listen for voices that say, ‘I’d love to do that'; more than burdensome thoughts of what people think we ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to do. She also discusses the value of listening through Scripture and engaging the text together. I appreciated reading of how one minister asks her people ‘What bugs you? What shimmers? What confounds you? … What else is tapping you on the shoulder?’ (p.84) Baab advocates an interactive approach to engaging Scripture in preference over straight sermon-preaching.

Listening is also essential as a church opens their ears to their community. This is an area our church is growing in. Baab maintains that in a postmodern world of competing worldviews and diverse cultures, we cannot expect to operate from shared assumptions. We need to listen to know what brings pain and struggle to people. Karl Barth suggested preachers should prepare sermons with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. But listening for the pulse of our neighbourhood is not just for preachers. It’s a skill for any of us who wants to understand what good news means for our neighbours. When we practice considering how everyday life beyond our church walls overlaps with our faith, we will be more ready to explain how our faith engages everyday life. Baab encourages us to open our newspapers, enjoy local art, take long wandering prayer walks around the neighbourhood, and exegete popular culture.

One of our local church artists, Tim Rhyder, painted a canvas of our neighbourhood with our children one Sunday. It hangs proudly on our church walls to remind us to be attentive to our closest local context where God has placed us. That is a symbol or icon for us to remind us to attentively listen to our neighbourhood.

Baab tells stories of churches who exercised community listening and the missional innovations this fostered. For example, Eileen served in India as a missionary and returned home to a dispirited congregation that had dwindled to 25 members (pp.1-4). Convinced by her global exposure that all churches should engage the world locally, nationally and globally, she encouraged the church to pray about global needs. They planned an overseas mission trip to Malawi. But they also surveyed local needs and Eileen encouraged people to ask questions of people whom they met in the community and pray for perception about concerns and unmet needs. They asked three questions of one another:

• What’s your passion?
• What burns on your heart?
• Why are you here?

The resulting conversations helped them tap into God’s nudges about where to place their energy. After months of listening, several members reported feeling a burden for mothers feeling isolated. They explored starting a preschool and involving the parents, and this led to Alpha and Marriage Alpha courses. They also started a foodbank, which expanded to have national connections – thus fulfilling the church’s aspirations to have global, national and local mission influence. It all started with listening to God, to their own passions, to one another as a church, and to community and global needs.

The Power of Listening offers practical listening skills, models a posture of openness, and grapples honestly with some of the obstacles and anxieties of listening. It promises to be an invaluable resource for individuals and churches who want to listen empathetically to one another and to their neighbourhood.

Darren Cronshaw

Darren Cronshaw is passionate about training and resourcing missional leaders through his work as Mission Catalyst – Researcher with the Baptist Union of Victoria and pastor of AuburnLife Baptist Church. He serves as Head of Research and Professor of Missional Leadership at Australian College of Ministries (SCD), Honorary Research Fellow at Whitley College (University of Divinity), and Adjunct Professor of Swinburne Leadership Institute He is co-author with Kim Hammond of Sentness: Six Postures of Missional Christians (IVP 2014).

My local church, AuburnLife, has been discussing the missional practice of listening. We have been challenged to listen to one another and to our neighbourhood with acute attentiveness. One of our members quoted the wise words of the Dalai Lama: ‘When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new’. Listening is not just part of a good friendship or a ministry skill for the counselling room. It is a mission skill for parish awareness. Nineteenth century French doctor Laenneec, who invented the stethoscope, used to say to his students ‘Listen, listen to your patient! They are giving you the diagnosis.’ Our neighbourhoods, if we listen, will help us understand how we can bring them healing and wholeness. Moreover, in a local church, we need processes for listening to one another to discern how God is leading us in mission.

This is why we were eager to learn from Lynne Baab’s wisdom on congregational listening. Baab is a Presbyterian minister and teacher of pastoral theology based in New Zealand, but also a writer on congregational health and spiritual practices. A feature of her writing is that she combines biblical and personal reflection with stories from interviews of dozens of people from different contexts on her topic – in this case listening to God, obstacles to listening, listening in church, and listening to the wider community. Baab teaches listening skills to trainee chaplains, but her advocacy for listening is not just for pastoral counselling but as a broader framework for community engagement.

I appreciated Baab’s reminder that Jesus was a champion listener, for example responding to Nicodemus (John 3:1-21) and the woman at the well (John 4). Jesus used what Einstein later called ‘holy curiosity'; questioning and listening in ways that provoked life change. Jesus enabled the blind to see and the deaf to hear things they had not perceived before; and wants to help us see and hear new things.

The best chapter of the book was on ‘Anxiety and listening’. Other parts of the book offer a toolbox of practices for fine-tuning our listening muscles: avoiding multitasking, switching technology off, and using empathy, non-judgment, body language and silence (a baseline for listening is to stop talking ourselves). But Baab’s chapter on anxiety profoundly explores anxieties that cuts listening off. Sometimes people or churches are so busy with their own agendas, they have little time or energy for listening. If a congregation has minimal energy to meet needs beyond themselves, they are less likely to be interested in listening for those needs in the first place. When someone’s cherished ideas are threatened by someone else, it’s hard to listen to new ideas. When Christians think people do not want to talk about religion because they see it as merely a private matter, they will be less inclined to listen for opportunities to explore people’s spiritual search. Baab urges adopting a theology of abundance (rather than scarcity), an attitude of learning (rather than close-mindedness), and an openness to discuss spiritual matters with people curious about the meaning of life. She offers reassuring advice about not having to agree, not having to have all the answers, and not being responsible for all problems we hear.

Our church especially appreciated grappling with Baab’s teaching in two areas: congregational discernment through listening to one another, and mission discernment through listening to our broader community.

Decision-making through congregational discernment and consensus begins with listening. Baab counsels giving everyone the space to say, ‘This is what I feel or sense’ and to aim for consensus of everyone affected on important decisions. This reminded us of the importance of listening to and counting not just ‘voting members’ but those on the margins of our worshipping community, and our children have not always been invited to contribute to decision-making. Baab says listen for voices that say, ‘I’d love to do that'; more than burdensome thoughts of what people think we ‘should’ or ‘ought’ to do. She also discusses the value of listening through Scripture and engaging the text together. I appreciated reading of how one minister asks her people ‘What bugs you? What shimmers? What confounds you? … What else is tapping you on the shoulder?’ (p.84) Baab advocates an interactive approach to engaging Scripture in preference over straight sermon-preaching.

Listening is also essential as a church opens their ears to their community. This is an area our church is growing in. Baab maintains that in a postmodern world of competing worldviews and diverse cultures, we cannot expect to operate from shared assumptions. We need to listen to know what brings pain and struggle to people. Karl Barth suggested preachers should prepare sermons with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. But listening for the pulse of our neighbourhood is not just for preachers. It’s a skill for any of us who wants to understand what good news means for our neighbours. When we practice considering how everyday life beyond our church walls overlaps with our faith, we will be more ready to explain how our faith engages everyday life. Baab encourages us to open our newspapers, enjoy local art, take long wandering prayer walks around the neighbourhood, and exegete popular culture.

One of our local church artists, Tim Rhyder, painted a canvas of our neighbourhood with our children one Sunday. It hangs proudly on our church walls to remind us to be attentive to our closest local context where God has placed us. That is a symbol or icon for us to remind us to attentively listen to our neighbourhood.

Baab tells stories of churches who exercised community listening and the missional innovations this fostered. For example, Eileen served in India as a missionary and returned home to a dispirited congregation that had dwindled to 25 members (pp.1-4). Convinced by her global exposure that all churches should engage the world locally, nationally and globally, she encouraged the church to pray about global needs. They planned an overseas mission trip to Malawi. But they also surveyed local needs and Eileen encouraged people to ask questions of people whom they met in the community and pray for perception about concerns and unmet needs. They asked three questions of one another:

• What’s your passion?
• What burns on your heart?
• Why are you here?

The resulting conversations helped them tap into God’s nudges about where to place their energy. After months of listening, several members reported feeling a burden for mothers feeling isolated. They explored starting a preschool and involving the parents, and this led to Alpha and Marriage Alpha courses. They also started a foodbank, which expanded to have national connections – thus fulfilling the church’s aspirations to have global, national and local mission influence. It all started with listening to God, to their own passions, to one another as a church, and to community and global needs.

The Power of Listening offers practical listening skills, models a posture of openness, and grapples honestly with some of the obstacles and anxieties of listening. It promises to be an invaluable resource for individuals and churches who want to listen empathetically to one another and to their neighbourhood.

Darren Cronshaw

Darren Cronshaw is passionate about training and resourcing missional leaders through his work as Mission Catalyst – Researcher with the Baptist Union of Victoria and pastor of AuburnLife Baptist Church. He serves as Head of Research and Professor of Missional Leadership at Australian College of Ministries (SCD), Honorary Research Fellow at Whitley College (University of Divinity), and Adjunct Professor of Swinburne Leadership Institute He is co-author with Kim Hammond of Sentness: Six Postures of Missional Christians (IVP 2014).

I’m grateful that Lynne Baab so faithfully follows the call she’s been given. Every year or two she writes a new book that is exactly what Christians and the church need to hear, steadfastly and practically writing about spiritual disciplines that help us live more and more attuned to God’s grace. Her books on Sabbath-keeping and friendship have been especially helpful in seminary classes I’ve taught, and now she has written The Power of Listening: Building Skills for Mission and Ministry, about this foundational practice for devotion and discipleship.

In all Dr. Baab’s books she draws on Scripture, theology, communications theory, and in-depth interviews with Christians. That mix gives vitality to her work, bringing ancient wisdom into conversation with the daily lives of people today. In this book about listening, we see how essential listening is to our relationship with God, how Jesus teaches us to listen, and how people around the world experience the blessing and challenge of the biblical invitation to listen. Throughout the book we’re given practical guidance in how to improve our own listening, so that when we’ve read the book we’re not only inspired and enlightened, we’re also equipped.

As the title of this book suggests, the Power of Listening; Building Skills for Mission and Ministry, is an accessible and hands-on read. This book speaks candidly about the merits of listening and invites pastors, missioners, lay leaders and congregants to consider more thoughtfully the virtues of listening as an integral characteristic of Christian spirituality. The call “for congregations to be places where good and interested listeners are nurtured” (p. 167) lies at the heart of this book. Each of the eleven chapters offers a pathway for enriched conversation around what it is to listen. Congregational life, mission, consensus and discernment, reading scripture and spiritual practices are some of the key areas explored. Diligent research around these topics along with the author’s commitment to provide actual experiences in conjunction with biblical content created a fluid but steady flow of conversation in which I found myself willing and eager to participate.

If the title suggests this is just a technical book of “how-to’s,” it camouflages unintentionally Baab’s deeper pastoral concern. The Power of listening has a prophetic but subtle edge which I would strongly suggest presses those thumbing its pages to ask, how do we listen well? In a globalised world of online noise, we are given mere seconds to process one media bite before the next cuts in on the conversation demanding our immediate attention. Without a moment to pause, we feel the urge to once again download information. Suffice to say, our neurological capacity to stay attentive to the various nuances of a conversation, are somehow squeezed, possibly flattened by the immediacy of the moment. Baab tackles this reality by offering multiple angles that call us to think more holistically and comprehensively about listening in view of how Christ-followers might be faithful in their daily interactions together with each other, and with the outside other.

The opening chapters draw attention to the missional nature of listening. Baab reminds readers that listening has implications for mission. Attention falls on the process of our interactions. Three delightful phrases are offered – holy listening, holy curiosity and receptivity. These concepts are picked up later in the book but remain quietly present, hidden within the rhythm of the text. In chapter two, Baab expands the notion of mission by identifying a posture of listening that is most often overlooked. It is listening to the unspoken communication of a congregation as well as the community surrounding it. Moreover, the author notes the importance of exegeting culture and listening to God in the midst of life and creation. It is a hearty reminder that listening is not just a functional exercise of our rational faculties but also an intuitive acknowledgement of God’s immanence and transcendence.

Beyond the opening chapters, discussion focuses on congregational life. Baab gives considerable attention to the kind of listening that might underpin the connectivity, health and wellbeing of a congregation.  Her ecclesiology is unapologetic.  Sub-headings like “congregational conversations matter” point astutely to the pastoral significance of listening. She argues that listening is intrinsic to the spiritual vitality of any congregation. These claims are in conversation with recent research provided by Professor Nancy Ammerman, Professor of Sociology of Religion, Boston University. Baab applies Ammerman’s research by probing aspects of congregational life, from small groups to ministry in daily life. Her challenge is explicit: “Congregational leaders need to listen to the lives and concerns of members and make a place for them to talk about what they do and how their faith intersects with their profession, ministry or community service” (p. 48). This statement anticipates the content of next chapter which expands on an earlier claim that listening is an integral element when engaging in mission. As a qualitative researcher, Baab describes actual ministry situations where mission was nuanced by the challenges of listening to the wider community. Each narrative peels back the intricacies of how mission may actually take place over and against the institutional assumptions that accompany our sincere missional endeavours. The wisdom gained from this discussion may indeed prompt the reader to think more seriously about their own congregational setting and consider wisely what congregational blind-spots might inhibit the effectiveness of their mission engagement. There is an imperative in Baab’s analysis that calls congregations, when engaging in mission, to be more socially astute and more collectively aware.

If a greater social awareness within congregational life is needed, what place does listening have? This is a question the author has in view in chapter 5 where “listening” brings into focus “congregational consensus and discernment.” Baab is candid in her appeal. She states that “with decreasing resources, congregations need to be very sure they are engaging in exactly what God is calling them to instead of committing themselves to scattered activities that don’t accomplish their central purpose” (p. 66).  The author is precise about what she means by each term and goes to some length to describe each concept. However it is the application of these concepts around the practice of listening that will delight the reader. Baab shares her own experience of serving on a national body which assesses candidates for ordained ministry within the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand. It’s an intriguing narrative that brings to life the essence of a robust process in which listening is central. 

Another aspect of this book I valued was author’s vision to frame not just the outward dimensions of listening but also the inward and upward dimensions. Listening to God through scripture together, along with listening to God together through spiritual practices is familiar territory for the author.  Lecto Divina, retreats, sermons, communal fasting, and contemplative prayer are in view. As an accomplished writer, Baab has published numerous books that offer encouragement and wisdom on matters of Christian spirituality. This is evident in the way she combs her own experiences and those of others for understanding and insight. The outcome is a generous offering of ideas, encouragements, and insights on how to bring authenticity to the journey of faith and engage the presence of God both collectively and alone.

The final chapters of this book are grounded in practical suggestions, guidance, and winsome advice for those wanting to improve their listening skills and discover fresh approaches to difficult spaces. This would be a welcomed resource for pastoral workers, church leaders and congregants alike. The expertise of the author as a communication specialist is clearly evident in the way she skilfully presses beneath the surface and is able to identify anxieties that block our ability to hear the other.  Moreover, as Baab poignantly comments, “listening requires a posture of humility that is not ‘sexy’.” (p. 144.) Moreover, she argues that strategies for coping with anxiety depend on humility.   

What I appreciated about this book was the reader’s own authenticity and humility.  On occasions, she renders a personal story in order to press a particular point.  Her vulnerable posture invites the reader to thoughtfully consider their own pastoral presence and ask: Do I listen deeply to the other? Self-reflection and consideration of one’s own listening attentiveness is clearly intended by the author. At the end of each chapter a set of provisional questions are listed to prompt discussion and ongoing reflection.  This is complemented further by a list of resources which expand on areas covered in the book. For those involved in any form of pastoral work as well as those managing and leading people, this book has something timely to say.

(Published in the April 2015 issue of Stimulus, the New Zealand Journal of Christian Thought and Practice)

According to research, most of us are poor listeners. Baab believes this sharply limits our effectiveness in carrying out the ministry and mission God has given us in the Church and in the world. Fortunately, she also believes listening skills can be taught and learned. In The Power of Listening she attempts to give leaders and educators the vision and tools to equip people to listen better and also to build a culture that affirms the value of listening.

Following the pattern in many of her other books, Baab draws heavily on interviews (63 of them for this book), anecdotes, and personal illustrations to explain and discuss principles, concepts, and skills that pertain to listening. This approach has the great advantage of keeping her books rooted in real life. This is not a book on the theory of listening but a collection of practical insights and tools to help each of us become better listeners. As I read the book, I found myself again and again saying, “I wonder if I do that?” or “Perhaps I should try that approach.” I was constantly thinking of ways I could apply her insights in my own ministry.

Baab explores listening needs within the congregation, listening to the local community, and listening to God. Two areas that I especially appreciated were her discussion about congregations learning to listen to their local community in order to carry out effective mission (Chapter 4) and her discussion on how listening pertains to consensus and to discernment, two different approaches that are commonly used in listening for God’s guidance (Chapter 5). The story of Eileen in Chapter 1 is a powerful illustration of how good listening advances the mission of the Church.

Baab also discusses numerous obstacles to good listening. One that I found especially interesting was the anxiety we feel in nearly every conversation. Unless we learn to recognize and manage that anxiety, it will get in the way of good listening, and Baab shows us how we can address that. Her extended illustration about Sandra (a church leader) and Mary (who brings a complaint to the church board) is very insightful in describing several obstacles to listening in a common ministry situation.

With this latest book of hers, The Power of Listening, Baab has added another valuable tool to the toolboxes of pastors, Christian educators, and active laypersons.

I'd love to be a really good listener. In fact three longings cluster together for me. I'd love to be more humble, to be more holy - and to be a really good listener. Why? As far as I can observe, this is the combo that God delights in using and I really want to be used by God. Simple as that.

Don't get me wrong. I can listen well - particularly if the expectation for such listening is in place. For example, over the years I've developed different structured listening exercises in which the perspectives of others are given precedence. The trust it builds and the team it develops is terrific. This facilitative leadership makes space for others. It draws them into setting the agenda. I love it.

But ne'er a week goes by without me having three or four self-flagellating debriefs for not listening better in a conversation. I am an enthusiast. Sometimes I jump in at inappropriate times. I am curious. Sometimes my questions flow far too fast and furious. I have a mind that is as active as it is forgetful. Sometimes the only way I won't lose a gem is by expressing it verbally - immediately. It's bad. You'd think that by my age I'd have learned to do this better.

This is why I jumped on the opportunity to read Lynne Baab's The Power of Listening. I've enjoyed her books before (see here). She has a distinctive style. It is chatty and accessible. It is practical and realistic. It is collaborative with much of what she writes being generated by what she hears from others. It is transparent as she lives in her own vulnerabilities without wallowing there (check out p119). Plus there is an authenticity here, as Lynne has worked at becoming a good listener herself. I've benefited from this.

The focus in the book tends to be on congregations and communities, with the first half of the book making its way around the power of listening in this setting: 'healthy congregations are composed of people who listen well (ix).'

It is all good stuff, as each chapter concludes with a list of questions for discussion - and then each list concludes with an encouragement to 'pay a compliment' to someone. A nice touch.

But for me the book finds another gear towards the end. The final chapters on The Listening Toolbox, Anxiety and Listening, Humility and Listening, and Listening, Receptivity and Speaking Up ... this is where I was helped the most. For example, in the 'Toolbox' chapter (107-126), Lynne opens up (a) the skills that encourage people to keep talking; (b) conversational directing skills; (c) reflecting-back skills; and (d) skills that build empathy. Anyone involved in the caring and forming of others (which is pretty much all of us, isn't it?) will benefit from this chapter. The pages on 'Roadblocks to Listening' (150-153) are likely to make some others feel as uncomfortable as they did for me ...

Tomorrow I return to India after a three week visit home to New Zealand. It has been a personal visit with a threefold purpose: take my niece's wedding, gain a longer visa for living in India, and be present for the birth of our second grandchild (just slipping in a little photo of Amaliya Grace - afterall it is my blog and I can do with it as I please!).

Over these few days at home I've been struck again by how much listening we do. And not just to wedding vows and High Commissioners and baby cries.

To live well is to listen well.

I've been to a large funeral, a concert (Grieg's Piano Concerto), a party (or three), a lunch (with Don & Joy Carson!), a lecture (with Richard Bauckham), a breakfast (with an accountability group), a lunch (with another accountability group), numerous family chats - and then, remarkably, 14 different lingering conversations with friends, facing all kinds of situations, mostly difficult, and mostly at their initiative: redundancy, sickness, separation, life intersections, disappointment etc. And while this is all going on I am doing my Langham work - comprised mainly over these weeks with capturing the essence of a week-long meeting with our key leaders ... which was really one long listening exercise for me.

To listen well is to live well.

In her book Lynne Baab takes me back to my cluster of longings. The essence of humility is not so much 'to think less of myself , but to think of myself less' (Keller) so that I can attend to others and listen to them well. I wonder, too, whether holiness begins with being so absorbed with God, listening to him well - so well, in fact, that I take his primary expectation of holiness seriously - so seriously, in fact, that I give his Holy Spirit full reign in my life to do his primary thing - help make me holy.

(This review originally appeared on Paul Windsor's blog, The Art of Unpacking.)