Listening: Moving from Guest to Partner

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Listening is a critical component of gracious leadership. In Peter Block’s seminal work on building community, he says, “This kind of leadership, convening, naming the question, and listening, is restorative and produces energy rather than consumes it.”[1]  In Holy Currencies language, we must listen to the voices of those whose voices have been suppressed in order to circulate the currency of truth. This is a shift from seeing ministry as something we do to someone else, and instead, the allowing of others to find their voice. It is a ministry of empowerment. 

St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral has just begun a new ministry, one of listening and empowerment. During the Currency of Truth workshop as a part of our Holy Currencies model for ministry, the Cathedral team came to a crucial realization.  While there was transformative and holy work taking place on Wednesday mornings with worship, job preparation, art, and community breakfast for over a hundred of the housing-insecure people of the neighborhood, there was a much-needed vehicle for learning the story of these individuals and building a more holistic community. 

The Cathedral’s Holy Currencies team member, Denise Dinkins, suggested creating a leadership team from guests of Wednesday morning. The team created a process in which once a month volunteers set communication guidelines, study scripture, and dream about the possibilities for the neighborhood and community.  Together, the Cathedral and the residents of the neighborhood are discerning a collective vision. 

One resident suggested that programs in the summer for children would be helpful.  A clergy member of St. Mary’s reflected that programs were done the summer before but were not well attended.  The resident offered to go door to door and recruit as she would be trusted in the community.  Here, a person, who had been seen as a guest of St. Mary’s was being empowered to become a leader in the community on behalf of the church.  The Very Rev. Andy Andrews, Dean of the Cathedral shares, “In the listening session I attended, a participant shared that what they were really looking for in the Cathedral was a safe space to be present, to be heard, and to be prayed for, and not a place to be fixed or where programs would supposedly make them better.  I am learning that more programs are not always the answer.” 

St. Mary’s has now conducted two leadership rounds, one in April and one in May of 2016.  There is a healthy tension between wanting to respond to many of the concerns that are being raised by the residents of the neighborhood and those who are housing-insecure. St. Mary’s is learning more about the issues of the community, the challenges of bad credit, dishonest landlords, of issues of safety and the need for mental health advocates, drug addiction programs, and literacy help.  The Cathedral team is learning that as their community creates more porous boundaries, many of those who had been seen as clients or guests are empowered to be agents of change as they live into their ministry.  This is not the result of creating programs to fix others, but instead learning to listen which in turn turns a guest into a partner in the holy work taking place at St. Mary's.