Download Hamm, Asking The Right Questions, November 1, 2010 Edition
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A Travel Free Learning Article
By Dick Hamm, Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership
Voice: 317.490.1968, E-mail: DHamm@TheColumiaPartnership.org, Web Site: www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org
Earlier in my life and ministry I spent much of my energy seeking after the right answers and trying to give the right answers. Answers can be good and helpful, especially when a person or an institution is at a total loss as to where to go or what to do. The older I get, the more I think answers are over-rated. Getting the questions right is more important.
I love the story of the children’s sermon in which the associate pastor held up a picture of a squirrel and asked the children, “What is in this picture?” There was a long silence, so she repeated the question, “What is in this picture?” Finally, one little boy said, “Well, it looks like a squirrel, but this is church so I know the answer must be Jesus”.
As the bumper sticker says, “Christ is the answer,” but many people are unable to benefit from that answer because they have not yet identified or asked the right question.
Jesus was a master of asking the right questions. “But who do you say that I am?” “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” And my personal favorite, “Do you want to be healed?”
The questions we ask either limit or expand the breadth of answers we are able to recognize and receive. For example, in John 5:2-9, if Jesus had asked the paralytic, “Why have you not been able to be healed after spending 38 years here at the Pool of Bethsaida?” This is the question the paralytic had been accustomed to being asked and actually the one he began answering: “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is troubled.”
The question Jesus actually asked was, “Do you want to be healed?” Apparently, even as he was giving his pat answer to the usual question, this deeper question was penetrating his consciousness, “Do you want to be healed?” And so he became open to receiving the healing he needed rather than continuing to recite all the reasons why he could not be healed.
How a question is framed makes all the difference.
Often congregations that come to a cross roads in their life together as a faith community will ask, “What do we want to do now?” When that is the question asked, the answers have to do with what most of the people in the congregation want—majority rule. If the question is reframed to ask, “What does God want us to do now?” the answers perceived and received are likely to be very different. One process is democracy and the other is discernment.
Democracy seeks to know the will of the people, and there is a place for such processes, but it is not discernment. Discernment seeks to know the will of God. Democracy is pretty easy: just vote and see what people want. Discernment is harder: it requires the employment of the spiritual disciplines of prayer, study and dialogue. Discernment requires suspending one’s own truth long enough to hear some new truth that God may be seeking to impart. (If our truth is really true, God will keep it safe while we are exploring other possible truths, since God is in charge of all ultimate truth.)
Another question churches often ask is, “What does this church need now?” The answers to this question are likely to be institutional responses. “We need more members.” “We need more money.” “We need a new preacher.”
A more discerning question would be, “Who lives in the area this church is called to serve and what do they need?” The answers that come from this question will be very different from the institutional question. Because mission is the life blood of the church, the church that is asking the question about “who lives here and what do they need?” is more likely to see its institutional needs met than is the church that asks the institutional question first.
It comes down to the question, “What is the point?” If the institution is the point, then we have missed the point. The point is really God’s revelation of the love and grace made known in Jesus Christ.
Coach-consultants are most helpful to us personally and to our institutions when they focus not on giving us the right answers, but when they focus on helping us ask the right questions.
So, who lives in the area where your church is, and what do they need? And, in the light of that, what is it God is calling you to be and do now? And there is that question that is the most important for us to ask either as individuals or as institutions: “Do you want to be healed?”
Sometimes we can ask these questions for ourselves, but sometimes it helps to have someone from outside our self, or in the case of congregations and other church institutions, someone from outside our systems to ask these questions. In any case, the questions we ask determine in large measure the quality and depth of the answers we will be able to receive.
What questions is your congregation asking or being asked?
Important Things to Know
Dick Hamm is a Ministry Colleague with The Columbia Partnership. He is also executive administrator for Christian Churches Together in the USA. His most recent book is Recreating the Church: Leadership for the Post-Modern Era. He is available for speaking and coaching with leaders, congregations, denominations, and parachurch organizations.
The Columbia Partnership is a non-profit Christian ministry organization focused on transforming the capacity of the North American Church to pursue and sustain Christ-centered ministry. Travel Free Learning is a leadership development emphasis of The Columbia Partnership. For more information about products and services check out the web site at www.TheColumbiaPartnership.org, send an e-mail to Client.Care@TheColumbiaPartnership.org, or call 803.622.0923.
