As was suggested in the matrixed journey guide section, it is in the interest of everyone concerned that the spiritual guide take the time when she can to properly locate where people are in their journeys relative to coming to faith and beyond. It was also suggested that the main way to do that was to ask good questions, listen to how they’re answered and especially observe their body language as they do that. Body language can offer clues and cues about internal feelings and emotions and they play an important and sometimes
decisive role in their interpretations.
It you do that with a non-manipulative attitude and in a manner of behavior that is interpreted to be non-manipulative, you’ll more likely do that successfully. But that’s part of the problem....you don’t have control over how people interpret what you attempt to communicate. So there will be trial and error, art and science.
Since you’re aiming to engage people conversationally in the important things of the gospel, and since you are interested in understanding what they think about these things and gauging how open they are to discussion about it, it’s a good idea to become adept at asking good questions and listening well to their answers. These are difficult skills to master and very few people are naturally gifted at it. Most of us have to work hard to listen well to others and formulate good questions to ask. Part of the reason for that is that these conversations can easily become polemical and you may find yourself trying to
There are several things to consider. One is that there are three planes or three pieces of information you wish to acquire as a part of assessing where a person is “located” in the matrix. Each piece of information yields important pieces to the puzzle and is worth the time to investigate. They will tell you how clear and to what extent they understand the gospel, are interested in investigating it and are willing to talk with you about it.
Second, and quite obviously, how you ask the questions is an important component in acquiring accurate and useful knowledge; so depending on the person with whom you are dialoguing (and especially their coefficient of defensiveness), your ability to do so without putting them on the defensive is crucial. Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned here is that if you are sensitive and yet feel comfortable asking occasional direct questions the more likely they’ll feel more comfortable, too.
Third, we’re not suggesting you ask the questions in a sort of interview format where the questions come rapidly one after another. Rapid fire, intense questions will often people on the defensive. We think it’s important for the questions to properly emerge in the conversation as a natural part of the dialogue. Choosing where to start (it isn’t suggested there’s a proper order to asking the questions) and which questions to ask is the art part of this engagement paradigm. Indeed, you may feel uncomfortable thinking about these sort of questions to ask rather than being completely spontaneously and spirit led, and if you do skip this!
And last (for here) it’s useful if at least the beginning of the conversation you manage to “break the ice” skillfully. This involves a lot of social intuition and perhaps skills of repartee where you parry between the personal and impersonal in your conversation. Remembering that most of communication is telegraphed via facial expression and tone of voice (and not just semantics), choosing to willfully love your colleague (or perhaps let God love through you) can go a long way.
So let us organize some potential questions for each of the categories we talked about in the matrix that may help you locate people. How and when you ask the questions is up to you:
Possible questions related to understanding their comprehension of the gospel:
- Tell me, to see if we’re on the same page in this conversation, what is your understanding of Christianity?
- What has been your personal experience of religion and Christianity?
- What are the parts of Christianity that you feel the most objection to?
- What is the one part of Christianity that you feel the greatest objection to?
- Have you had a specialized training in philosophy of religion or theology?
- What do think is the meaning of the atonement (could be other issues like: the crucifixion or the resurrection) and how does that bear on your understanding of Christianity?
- Do you have or have you had anyone in your life that you could talk about these things with?
Possible questions related to understanding their interest in the things of the gospel:
- Is it hard for you to talk about things like this?
- I sense it’s hard for you to talk about this...am I right?
- You seem a little reluctant to talk about these things...am I right?
- You seem comfortable talking about these things...am I right?
- Is there something that makes this hard for you to talk about these things?
- You seem interested in talking about these things...tell me about that.
Possible questions related to understanding their willingness to dialogue with you about these things:
- Do you feel comfortable talking about these things? How about with me?
- Do you feel comfortable talking about these things with me?
- You seem uncomfortable talking about these things with me...is there something I’m doing?
- You seem comfortable talking about these things with me....am I reading that correctly?
- You seem reluctant to talk about these things with me....is there something I don’t understand?