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John Perkins listened

Lynne Baab • Friday October 2 2015

One of the adults who went along on a church youth group mission trip told me an amazing story. The Seattle youth group went to Mississippi in July to spend a week learning about racial reconciliation. Each morning, Dr. John M. Perkins spoke to the group about Christian perspectives on reconciliation. Dr. Perkins is an 85-year-old civil rights leader who has received an astonishing 13 honorary doctorate degrees for his work.

On the first and second mornings of the youth mission trip, Dr. Perkins gave an overview of racial reconciliation to the group. Both mornings, as an aside, he mentioned how deeply...

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Listening to creation as a part of environmental stewardship

Lynne Baab • Friday September 25 2015

“The whole world is singing but we’ve stopped listening.” Those words show up in a cool video showing a sound and light exhibition at the United Nations about species loss. A friend sent the link to me in response to my two recent posts about listening. (One of my posts recommended a game about listening and the other suggested that as we listen, we view ourselves as detectives.)

I’ve been interested in creation care as an aspect of Christian discipleship for a long time, but I had never before explored the connections between my listening research and God’s call to steward and...

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A game that nurtures good listening

Lynne Baab • Saturday September 19 2015

“How little can you say?” That’s the second piece of advice in a blog post about building relationships through better listening that I wrote about last week. The author suggests that we imagine ourselves playing a game.

The game we all usually play is: How smart can I make myself sound? Bad game. You want the other person to feel good. Let them sound smart. So here’s the game I like to play: How little can I say? The fewer words you speak, the more points you get. The only exception is asking questions when they pause. Don’t be interesting. Be interested.

I like...

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Good listeners are detectives, not tennis players

Lynne Baab • Saturday September 12 2015

A friend forwarded me a wonderful blog post about good listening as a way to build relationships. Out of six pieces of advice about listening, the first item in the post suggests that good listeners should view themselves as detectives instead of tennis players who are waiting to hit the ball back as quickly as they can.

The author writes, “Rather than having to fake being interested, turning it into a detective game actually makes you interested. And this makes the other person feel special.”

Yes, yes, I totally agree, being a detective is a great idea. And I agree that the fruit...

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