A Search for Joy

Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Maaning could be re-titled for me My Search for Joy. I've been searching for joy fro a long time, probalby my whole life. Joy really came to my attention a few years back when Conversations (a wonderful, but no longer published journal) printed an article about joy. In it I learned that joy is biologically different from happiness. They show up when experienced in different parts of the brain. Happiness depends on which way the emotional winds are blowing at the moment. Joy is more deeply rooted than that. Joy also dissipates over time and has to be replenished. Of course the Disney Pixar movie Inside Out helped as Joy was at the forefront as heroine of the movie's theme and focus. Joy became more real in the grace of a second relationship and commitment in marriage to Camille. And today I am mining the literature as well as my heart as to what taking delight in means. Joy and delight are akin. Joy and delight result in a deep sense of satisfaction. They involve spontaneity, improvisation. No wonder this early on introvert found great satisfaction in puns, those word jokes learned while practicing over a two year period of time for the National Spelling Bee. I also learnd from Anne that puns and jokes can hurt, so I had to tone down my spontaneity in that area and reflect before I go splashing my word tricks on someone else. This takes me back to the seed planting of this journey when I read Stephen Shoemaker's sermon about contentment which as I've discovered, is a part of joy and delight. Stephen wrote about Psalm 131:2 -But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content. (NIV) So what does this have to do with my life's focus now in working toward the healing of trauma through a ministry of the church? Abuse and trauma rob God's creatures of joy and delight that are born in the innocence of childhood, and even that of adulthood. The Good News, Banner Headlines, are that there is hope and healing even from the most brutal abuse or neglect! And a vital, living, renewed, refreshed relationship with God through Jesus Christ can bring that to re-fruition in a person's hear that has been shattered by the brokenness of abuse and neglect. For some of you today, all you can feel is the darkness you were plunged into at a veyt early age, or maybe, recently. Let me say with Psalm 30:4b - "...weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning." Wake up with me this day and find and experience joy. The Father has left that gift next to your bedside, ready for you to be dressed in it this day. Feel the warmth and clean scent of joy and delight wash over you as He clothes you in his righteousness. Let's rejoice! And, again, I say (along with the apostle Paul), rejoice! Blessings!

A Change in Direction (Somewhat)

First of all, I want to apologize for being away from The Epiphany Engineering Company for a long time since 2013. A lot has happened since then. Anne, my beloved wife of 42 years died in 2016. I retired from the Dallas ISD teaching at Spruce HS the next year. In 2019 while at the Texas Baptist Convention in Waco, TX, I reconnected with a long time ministry friend, Camille Simmons. I had met Camille in San Antonio 1n 1993 while doing a Story Listening Evangelism training event for the San Antonio Baptist Association, where Camille was Coordinator of Ministries for 16 years. After that three minute chance meeting in the hall of the Waco Convention Center, we began to talk ministry business over the phone two days a week. That turned into multiple times, daily, even after midnight. September 5, 2020, God's grace brought us together in marriage and a joy filled new chapter for each of us began. Both of us had recently known the painful loss of a spouse. For nearly 18 years I have also worked in the field of trauma, as an educator, author, and presenter. Camille shares in this calling with her own national prayer ministry for parents of small children. Here is the change in direction: Shortly I will launch podcasts aimed at helping both survivors of trauma as well as the Courageous Christians who answer the call to minister to those who have been abused and traumatized in the their lifetimes. This will be addressed to each group separately. I will continue to use and build the Trauma Ministry website: www.traumaministry.net. AND I will devote The Epiphany Engineering Company to talking about all things trauma. The blog will continue to include my work with Story Listening Evangelism which is a critical component of healing with trauma survviors as well as a critical tool for listening for those Courageous Christians who will be called to Trauma Ministry where they will be trained, equipped and, supported to increase their resiliency and capacity to enter into the pain of the stories and lives of trauma survivors. A long time ago when the modern missionary movement was launched, one person said, "I'll go down, if someone holds the rope." We may not live in an age of deep mining from which that metaphor came, but The Epiphany Engineering Company, Trauma Ministry, and every breath I take will be to hold the rope as Courageous Christians minister to Trauma Survivors and as Trauma Survivors have the courage to break their silences and enter into a world of care and healing for their brokenness. And for Trauma Survivors who have so longed to be seen, heard, known, and understood, Trauma Ministry will attempt to connectyou to a Courageous Christian who knows just how to listen to you, no matter what, so you will be, once again, seen, heard, known, and understood! So hang on for more guidance in the Change in Direction! Blessings! Erenst Izard PhD epizard@verizon.net

Let's get started

So what do you do first? Share a portion of the dialog you have had with the person to whom you are witnessing, especially where the sledding gets tough or stuck. Other things to share include: the first thing the person said themes that continue to emerge in the conversation what does the person keep on repeating when did the person change the subject when did the person become more animated what were some of your responses at key points in the conversation Let's start with these clues. There are more and we will add them as we progress or submissions bring them to the forefront. Blessings!

Invitation to Listen to the Lost

I want to change the direction of this blog a bit and invite my colleagues and friends and those they touch to bring their witnessing conversations to this blog community so that together we can help each other be used by God to lead that person to His saving grace. Using the model of Story Listening I have outlined in previous posts, we can listen over each others' shoulders to the conversations we are having with those God has put in our paths. The key rule to guide us is to always keep the names and identities anonymous of those we are witnessing to and sharing in this blog. I will plan to check the blog daily for entries and give my observations as soon as I have gained insight. I invite you to do the same as we share this help in Christian love. Looking forward to the journey with you.

What Will We Tell the Children?

I never met five year old, red headed Rebekah. Yet my life has been indelibly touched by her life. It was Hugo George Zobjeck, Uncle Hoag to everyone, who introduced me to Rebekah. Rebekah died a few weeks before my first Sunday as pastor of Friendship Baptist Church in western Kentucky. That Sunday during the sermon, children were moving all over the country church sanctuary, even rolling down the slope of the floor under the pews all the way to the altar. Uncle Hoag came up to me immediately after the service, apologizing for the distractions which had not bothered me. He told me how everyone in that close knit church family had performed the percussions on Rebekah’s small back, helping to loosen the mucous buildup of cystic fibrosis and give her the breath of life. His words still ring in my ears, “For us, children are a sign of life.” A few years later I held Uncle Hoag’s funeral, preaching from Joshua 4, asking “What will we tell the children?” Then and in many similar situations, I have walked through the valley of death with families, reassuring them, the children, and the child in all of us that God is faithful, just as He was to the Israelites. Placing an imaginary pile of stones in front of the gathered grief-stricken, I would build a monument in their hearts of how God frees us from the slavery of sin, just as he freed the Hebrew slaves. God saw them through the original rock and a hard place when they got caught in their exodus from Egypt between the impassable Red Sea and an approaching army of armed charioteers. The freed slaves passed safely on dry land to the other side. In 40 years of wilderness wandering God was faithful in seeing his chosen people through a dry, aimless, meaningless time in the desert. He provided guidance by day and night, food to sustain them, and leadership. Finally, at the swollen Jordan River (little more than creek in Texas terms), the children of Israel despaired at having come this far only to be prevented from entering the Promised Land. Just as before, God was faithful. Dry land guided them across the river bed. They left a pile of stones on the bank of the Jordan to remind future generations of God’s faithfulness. More recently, the Jordan River has become a metaphor for the crossing from life to death and into eternity. None of us have had full experience with that upcoming event. As I would close the service, I would remind the family that just as God had been faithful in the past, he will be faithful in death, being the first face and the hand that will reach out and welcome us and our loved ones into his everlasting arms. So, in the wake of the unspeakable horror at an elementary school in Connecticut today, what do we tell the children? What do we tell the child in each of us? Simply, God has the final word in all of our lives, not death. The ultimate power of the evil that raised it head and spewed its venom through bullets today was broken at the Cross of Jesus and the power of resurrection will vindicate the truth about evil, brokenness, sin, and the Devil himself. In the same breath, we can shout at the Gates of Hell, “You cannot, you will not have our children!” We tell our children that there is nothing that they can do or happen to them that will ever change our love for them. Just like God’s love, nothing can separate them from Him, His love, as well as our love. Now we needturn to our grieving, heartbroken nation and say in the name of freedom, liberty, and any other patriotic term we can muster, we can no longer pretend God out of our lives. We need to remind our neighbors, far and near, that the stars in the sky were not put there by some earthbound animator. Once again, we need to start living and walking by faith again--no apologies, no excuses, no fine print, no asterisks. Finally, we turn to the world community looking aghast at America and say, fatalistic belief systems will not solve the problems we face nor heal our corporate grief. Grace, love, and hope trump judgment and anonymity. Tonight, Anne and I have called our children and grandchildren, hugging them over the airwaves. We have taken this moment to remind our children what Rebekah’s short life taught me over a lifetime. What will you tell your children, the children of America and the world? What will you tell the child in you that today has been shocked, scared, outraged, numbed, searching for an almost forgotten innocence? If words fail you, remind yourself that God has cried today also. And as His tears dry, listen for Him to speak to your trembling heart. With the confidence of an eternity of faithfulness, hear Him: He WILL have the last word and IT will be a GOOD one, full of genuine hope, grace, and a lasting peace from the brokenness of our world. Blessings as we grieve together today!

Evangelism in a pluralistic world

How do we do evangelism in a pluralistic world? Our communities are filled with people of competing and conflicting faiths and beliefs, and even those who clamor for their attempt at unbelief to be believed. Perhaps the first thing we need to remember is that Christianity came into the world in a similar setting—a pluralistic world where government and its leaders were deified, multiple, competing deities clamored for attention and allegiance, and in that fullness was a vacuum that sucked the life out the spirit of everyday people. We could even go back to the beginning of God’s story of self-revelation. It came to Abraham in a land of competing deities. Moses wondered if the messenger in the burning book was also a jurisdictionally limited being. David, a man after God’s own heart, saw the God’s of the Philistines, Dagon, seemed to have clout with people. Later, reviving bull worship at the high places from the Egyptian past edged out the worship at Jerusalem, leaving a people divided in their expression of worship. The second thing to bear in mind is to remember what also has not changed over the years. God’s story of how He is at work to redeem his creation has not changed. And humanity’s story of brokenness in relationship to the Creator has not changed. The competing religions then, as well as today, sought to find God and His peace, forgiveness, hope, a place in the afterlife, and in some cases grace. That brings me to today. How do we share faith? By bringing God’s story and a person’s story together. As Leighton Ford wrote, “The aha! moment in salvation occurs at the intersection of God’s story and the lost person’s story.” The 21st century witness needs to be equipped, not with some exotic theology or dynamic business-tested sales pitch. Rather, today’s person of Kingdom faith concerned about the people who need to know Jesus, need to know God’s story, their own story of experiencing God’s story, and to know how to listen and hear that person’s story that can only be self-heard in its encounter with God’s story of redemption. Knowing God’s story is knowing the stories of Scripture. Also, the person sharing faith has to be sensitive to seeing, hearing, and feeling the movement of God’s story toward the person with whom they are sharing faith. Knowing your own story means becoming comfortable and confident in what God has done and is doing in your life. Years ago Paul Little wrote in How to Gove Away Your Faith that if a person waked in the room with a fried egg hanging off their ear, saying it was the best thing to ever happen to that person, you could not argue with that. In fact, that dangling gift from a hen may be the best thing that ever happened to that person. You cannot argue with experience. And that is true for the Christian. No one can argue with you that what Jesus Christ has done for you is the best thing that has happened in your life! Well, some people will try to argue with that. Don’t let them. Quietly let them vent their wasted arguments. Your testimony has self-defined you as a person of faith. What you receive in their arguing is a change back reaction that happens autonomically—trying to change you back to the person you were before, not because they are right and you are wrong, but because they are uncomfortable. The balance in your relationship has changed. The third ingredient of 21st Century evangelism is listening. Helping a person who needs to find God through a relationship with Jesus involves knowing how to hear a person’s meta-story—that deep structure story that is driving to the surface of that person’s consciousness all the other stories being told. Many witnesses have heard a person tell the same story over and over again. Each attempt to lead that person to faith experiences resistance. That is not because you, as the witness, have not heard the repeated story. Rather it is the storyteller that has not heard his or her own meta-story. The resistance comes because that repeated story may be what is currently holding that person’s concept of faith or disbelief together. When the meta-story is heard, an aha! moment occurs, and the story usually does not get repeated. Most importantly, God’s story gets heard and salvation begins. A number of powerful skills can be used to assist the 21st witness to share faith. The Aurora Network has committed itself to being the go to organization for cutting edge training in what we call Story Listening Evangelism. If you are interested in learning more about how to incorporate these listening skills into your witness, contact Ernest Izard at epizard@verizon.net. If you have someone you have been sharing faith with and have run into resistance, contact Dr. Izard and he will listen and look over your shoulder to make some listening skills suggestion on what to do net in your witness. This approach to sharing faith was successful on the Gaza Road for an Ethiopian official and for some one time philosophers whose stories were heard on Mars Hill in Athens. The same can be true for those you care enough to listen to in order to hear their story. We will be looking for your email.

Sunday Ain't the Time for a Sermon

I know I am a bit behind the times when I tell  you I heard Sandi Patty's song, The Bare Stage, for the first time last night.  If you are not familiar, the words express the deep longing and need for God by the performer who has walked off the stage having completed a performance to a rousing crowd. Now the stage is empty except for the lone work light  illuminating the darkness.

The song resonated with those moments after having delivered a sermon.  Emptied,   knowing full well only His presence could fill, no matter how much I got patted on the back for a good sermon at the backdoor.

Last night my mind raced ahead to think of the people in worship on Sunday.  I wonder if Sunday morning is when they will hear that sermon, that Word from God ?  Or will there be enough in the Word preached to remember in the moments after....?

...after notification of the death of a loved one,...after delivery of papers from the other's attorney,...after the doctor confirmed the symptoms with a diagnosis,...after your child reminded you that you might have trained them up in the way they should go, but they have definitely not returned--yet,...after a pink slip lies limp in your stunned, though competent hands,...after a betrayal kisses your face with the hot salt tears, staining your cheeks.

Most of us know the need for God in those moments.  What about after...?

...after that graduation,...that raise,... after that promotion,...after that wedding,... after the birth of that child, or grandchild,...after that mountaintop experience....?

Perhaps these are the moments that preceded Sunday morning sermon attendance.  I am not saying Sunday morning sermons are a waste of time, or that we have to schedule our times in God's presence as Israel did on the Day of Atonement.  Rather, I am yearning, along with Sandi Patty,  where is the sermon, the Word of God, God Himself when the work is over, the accolades have faded, and no one is around to know you were the headliner?  Just one source of light guiding you safely across the barren stage.

That's where sermons belong: like a bag of refreshing trail mix that gives timely energy for the present moment and the hike that lies ahead when we have used up all our stored energy.

I am confident that God will show up in those moments (He keeps His promises and appointments), like he did for Lt. Dan on top of that mast in the movie, Forrest Gump.  What about the sermon, the vehicle, equipping for that moment the listener walks off stage?

The challenge is twofold:  Proclaim the Gospel truth in such a way that the listeners will leave with more than a doggie-bag-ful, ready to nourish when those moments come.   As caring, compassionate Christians, we need to be sensitive to the clues from others who can't wait for Sunday morning's sermon.  They are in need of something more immediate than three points and a poem.  They need a Word couriered intervention from an ambassador like Philip on the desert highway. 

As fellow performers walking across the bare stage after our show is over, let's listen for others standing in the darkness.  Some can't wait for Sunday morning.  Others may not make it into a pew under a steeple next Sunday for whatever reasons.  Listen!  Then see the Presence of God fill that bare stage like He did for Isaiah when he grieved his king's death!  All because God loves them and used you to listen them to that aha! moment!

Want to know more about the kind of listening that makes such a difference as you share the Good News of Jesus?  Contact me at epizard@verizon.net.  I'll be listening for you.

"First things first"

"How does a person get started in witnessing?"  I get that often from people who are apprehensive and concerned about offending people.  The genius of Story Listening Evangelism is that the witness goes with what the person they are listening to is saying and doing.  That way, there is no offense.

So how do you get started? 

Listen to the first thing a person tells you.  Contained metaphorically, symbolically in those words is what the person is struggling with--their lostness.  Hold what the person says in abeyance.  Do not problem solve the issue(s) that surface.  That is because you will get resistance from the person you are listening to.  Just listen to the next thing the person says to you.

I went to the bank when we lived in New Jersey and said to the young woman who was the teller,"  Hi, how are you?"

"Can't complain," was her reply. 

I came back, "Would you like to?"

"Oh, no body will listen."  Hear the resistance?

So I said, "I would."

You'd thought I had hit her with a bat as surprised as she was.  For you see "can't complain" is an acceptable way to say "hello" in America.  AND it is not a neurological accident.  She was testing the waters to find out if anyone is listening because she did have something she wanted to complain about and people she had already approached turned her down.

With that permission from me she began to tell me her story.

Let me invite you to practice listening for the first thing a person says to you this coming week.  Listen, notice, even write down what they say.  Remember not to problem solve what they say.  Just pay attention to the next thing said.

Send me a sample of what you hear.

Next week we will go to the next step in listening a person into the Kingdom.

Blessings!

"I'm back!"

These are not the words from a horror movie. They are my own words to you before God to finish what I started and felt called to do for years: Complete the development of Story Listening Evangelism as a new paradigm for believers to share their faith and write the book, too.



Last year after several years of this effort languishing, I realized that my health was in the way of me completing this calling. I would leave work with great intentions of getting home and writing in the evening. When I arrived at home, I was tired, not only from fighting traffic for an hour, but also from the effects of being 140 pounds overweight and diabetic.



I knew that the direction I was going with my health would shorten my life and I would not see my grandchildren grow up, let alone be an influence in their lives. Earlier last year I asked god to give me one more chance like he did Samson. Now I did not ask him to let me take out several thousand people when I go. That is where the comparison ends. I just knew that I had sinned against God by not taking better care of the body He gave me.



Little did I know how He would answer that prayer. I was approved for bariatric surgery but changed my mind because of the risks. My heart doctor said I had no choice. I left his office angry at the situation I knew I was in. Later that day at the internist's office waiting for my flu shot, I saw a poster that answered my prayer as I found a safe and effctive program with a free health coach to guide me back to health. 10 months later I am 75 pounds lighter.  Thanks to the weight loss my blood pressure, blood sugars, and cholesterol have improved. Got a few more pounds to go to goal weight, but I have my health back. The weight loss has improved my energy level. That has helped me lose several thousand pounds of clutter around the house as I realized I needed to pare down for the journey that lies ahead.



So here I am almost finsihed with the declutter of home and body and ready to write and lead workshops on how to listen a person toward the Kingdom instead of just propositioning people with a checklist of do's and don't's.



Will you join me on the journey with this renewed enrgy? the teacher in me promises to teach you how to do Story Listening Evangelism. The listener in me will listen to what you are hearing and saying to the people with whom you are currently sharing faith.



Let me know by your response to these words and an email at epizard@verizon.net. Interested in following the weight loss and journey toward optimal health? Check out my blog at www.healthypilgrim.blogspot.com.



I have become a certified health coach with the same organization that provided the coaching that has saved my life and my health. that web site is at www.ernestizard.tsfl.com. Let me know if I can help you or someone else who struggles with their weight and health. I'd love to pay forward what I have been given.



Blessings!

"Saints Elsewhere"

Yesterday I was graciously worked into an appointment with a double-booked podiatrist for some overdue work on diabetic feet. As I sat down in the waiting room for what was supposed to be an extended wait, I pulled out my headset and settled into some of my favorite relaxing music. Soon a young soccer player and her mom came in. She looked soccer with her cast and book and skinned leg along with the lithe, physically toned body. What struck me was here I am in my own world of music. Mom is somewhere else with her cell phone and daughter is doing the same with her hand held gadget.

Here we are in a brief community of patients in a waiting room and all three are elsewhere with our electronic connections to elsewhere. Brought to mind not only our worship services, but also our interactions with lost people. We are near them, in their vicinity, maybe in a professional working relationship, but the Saints are Elsewhere, not just on their electronics, but maybe in their theologies, politics, or pet projects, and WE fail to be in community, right here, right now with the people God has placed in our path. When we are Elsewhere, we cannot listen to lost people and hear their cries for help for salvation.

What will it take to take off our outlets to another world, other people, even an eschatological future to just be present with one person who needs Christ? We listen, perhaps, or gab, with someone elsewhere, but we are missing opportunities to listen in the moment, live, realtime, with real souls.

That's what Story Listening Evangelism is all about: teaching and equipping believers with the skills to do that listening, hearing the person's cries for help and responding in a way to mirror their lostness back to themselves so that the Spirit can do its saving work.

Stay tuned: NO, get off this blog and listen to that person or persons in your presence.

THEN, come back here for help in hearing their cries for help.

I'll be waiting and listening for you.

"It's All about Listening"

In the past two days I have learned that two of the giants in my educational journey have been stricken with serious illnesses. After I recovered a bit over the initial shock of the ragged news, my thoughts turned to gratitude for their lives and how they touched my life. for the most part I do not remember the content of what they taught. What I do remember is that they listened to me. I was heard by my teachers. And that made all the difference!

That's what Story Listening Evangelism is all about--listening to lost people, hearing their stories, and mirroring their stories back to them so that the Spirit of God can draw them to Him. People, all people, lost people, people who have not met God or His Son yet, yearn to be heard. they yearn for their lostness to be heard. Our ears can become instruments of God's peace and salvation if we train them and tune them to hear the losts' cries for help contained in their words and stories.

I invite you to continue the journey with me as we launch this project to transform how we do evangelism. Start by listening to what the people who are around you now are saying. Listen for their story.

And I offer a tribute today to Andrew D. Lester and William E. Hull for their lives and the impact they have had in so many lives. Blessings on the journeys that lie ahead.

From a grateful student who was heard.

"I'm back!"

"I am back!" No those are not the words of Freddie Krueger or any other villain, rather my own words. I'm back to finish what I have been called to do--complete the manuscript and workshop development of Story Listening Evangelism. My hiatus was not planned. Health, burnout, and a radical change in employment within the Dallas Independent School District could all be blamed for time away from the subject. Susan Scott in Fierce Conversations says the person who can best describe the situation without blame will emerge as leader. Whether I can lead a reformation in how evangelism is done remains to be seen. What I can tell you is that blame is not the answer and my goal is to finish what has been given to me and I have not felt like I have been released from.

My dearest friend, Dr. John LaNoue, Sr., has committed to being my tor-mentor (Gregg Levoy's word in Callings) to keep me on track.

This column will be used to think out loud what has been in my heart and mind for years--that a lost person is crying out in their stories for salvation and that listening beleivers can be sued by God's Spirit to guide them to a saving encounter and the beginning of an eternal relationship with Him.

The goal, the end results will be a book about how Story Listening Evangelism works, hands on, working cognitive map of the process of Story Listening Evangelism, and workshops available to those who want to transform their calling to fulfill the Great Commission.

I am an old fogey enough to not be hip and up on all matters of social communication so this blog will probably be my all in all without Facebook or Twitter or other mode. That means I may let loose from listening and respond to what I have been listening to in the world and in the Kingdom. Perhaps then, I'll be heard for my yearning that the banquet table will be full as the Messiah convenes His crowning moment.

I hope you will share in this journey. I don't like feeling lonely and The Aurora Network is not a Lone Ranger Production.

I'll be listening for you as we engineer epiphanies along the way!

Blessings!

Tearing down silos

We are very familiar with silos in education where teachers close their doors and doo their work without help, input, or other outside assistance. I believe the same is true in churches when it comes to evangelism. Witnesses tend to be Lone Rangers, sharing faith without the help of someone else to look over their shoulder and make suggestions.

Story Listening Evangelism (SLE) as developed by The Aurora Network is designed to break evangelism out of the Lone Ranger silos and share faith to the lost in community. One of the ways we plan to do this in the coming year is to offer on ground and internet webinars where witnesses can share their evangelistic conversations with a group of concerned witnesses led by an evangelism coach using the SLE method. The conversation will generate approached to future witnessing conversations with the lost person that will hopefully lead to the aha! moment in salvation where God's story of redemption and the lost person's cry for help meet.

Let me know by responding to this blog if you are interested in becoming a part of this witnessing community or know someone who would benefit because they are actively witnessing to someone.

Blessings!

First Things First

How do you get started doing Story Listening Evangelism? Listen. Pay attention to the very first thing a person says to you or within earshot of you. In story listening, the first thing a person says, usually in highly symbolic, metaphorical form, contains what the person is struggling with. Do not try to problem solve the issue. you will get resistance, just like therapists in dealing with the presenting problem of their patients. Hold it abeyance, knowing you have a clue to the lost person's cry for help. Just listen to the next story and the next story as the person reveals himself or herself to you.

Listen for God's story as you continue to listen. The Spirit will give you the insights and words to say. Stay focused on the story you are being told and do not tell your own story yet or change the subject. that would be a sign that the pain in the life of the lost person is more than you have capacity to hear at the present time.

EXAMPLE: I walked in to the branch bank in New Jersey and said to the young teller: Hi! How are you? She replied: Can't complain! I asked: Would you like to? Her answer: Oh! Nobody would listen. My reply: I would!

Can't complain is an acceptable way to say hello in America. AND it is not a neurological accident. She had something to complain about and was testing the waters to see if someone would listen.

Go back and re-play conversations you have had with lost persons. What was the first thing the person said to you? What did they say next? What did you do with that information?

PRACTICE: Listen this week for the first things people share with you. Notice how that initial element of the conversation plays out as you continue to listen. I believe you will notice many clues the person is giving you as they attempt to reveal themselves to you as they cry out for the help needed in salvation.

WIIFM? Part 2

What's in it for me? Story Listening Evangelism (SLE) is for you if you have been witnessing to someone for a long time and without success or if you have been witnessing to a family member or close friend to no apparent avail.

SLE helps you step back from all the encounters and begin to make sense of what has transpired as you hear the clues that have been there all along from the lost friend or family member's story.

SLE provides a refreshing way to untangle yourself from the arguments, side stories, and other issues that get in the way of long term witnessing. It helps you stay current by hearing what the lost person is struggling with now and over an extended period of time.

SLE also gives you assurance that God is at work in the lost person's life to reclaim him or her for the Kingdom's sake. I do not believe God pulls the rug out from under a person to whom he is self-revealing his wonderful story of redemption.

WIIFM? -- Hope, knowing God is at work, using you, your ears, and your heart, as instruments of his redemptive peace.

For more information on Story Listening Evangelism, e-mail me at epizard@verizon.net. I will send you a map of SLE. If you are interested in a workshop in your neck of the woods, tell me what you are looking for and I will custom design a training to fit your needs.

Blessings!

WIIFM?

What's in it for me? I hear you. You are wondering what Story Listening Evangelism (SLE) can do for you. You are wondering if the training and focused listening is worth it. Is it effective? Is it biblical?

If you are a believer, SLE is biblical. It fulfills the Great Commission: As you go, make disciples.... You will hear words from lost people you would not have noticed before as God places them and their stories in your path.

If you thought evangelism is for someone else or the professionals, SLE is for you. SLE is not rocket science. You are already listening at a profound level at an unconscious level. Now you will be able to sharpen your conscious listening skills as well as your unconscious ones, too.

If you have never led a person to the Lord, SLE is for you. You don't have to argue, debate or have a vast systematic theological understanding of the Kingdom. You just need to listen. One of my dearest friends recently told me, "We are not going to win the world with systematic theology. God is not systematic." I beleive that because God is able to be sovereign God in each and every situation, no matter what our freedom of choice brings about.

If you are a pastor, SLE will not only boost your own witnessing efforts, it will revolutionize the ministry of your congregation. There will be a depth to service in the Kingdom not known before.

If you are someone who is seeking God, SLE is for you, especially. Help is on the way for you to be heard. God will send someone in your path to hear your cry for help and direct you to Him. I am confident of that.

WIIFM? Still asking? E-mail me at epizard@verizon.net and I will send you a PPT map of SLE. You can book a training for your group. Just let me know what your needs are.

Blessings!

GPS Evangelism

Memorizing and sharing the Roman Road to a non-believer is like throwing a map at them and telling them to follow it exactly as it has been printed. While many people have come to faith over the years with the use of those Roman mile markers, today's lost people need a GPS system to find faith because there is a lot of traffic, wrecks, construction, roadblocks, and turns on the road to faith.

Story Listening Evangelism is such a GPS-based way to share faith. Story is the signal sent from God and the lost person to guide the witness along the Roman Road or whatever path you find yourself on with a lost person. Story Listening Evangelism, or SLE for short, is a toolbox of listening skills that are flexible and powerful as you adjust your spiritual conversation with the lost person based on what the lost person tells you in his or her stories. From there you will have the clues to guide them down the road on their journey to faith. If you get caught in traffic, their stories will let you know. The same with roadblocks or different turns and choices. With SLE you can adjust the course on a moment's notice. If you, as the witness, get lost on the road that the lost person is taking with you, the lost person's story, if you have built rapport will make a course correction, just like an air traffic controller, will get you back on track with the lost person.

If you are interested in stepping into the 21st century with your witnessing skills, contact me at epizard@verizon.net for a PowerPoint introduction to SLE and an invitation to bring this cutting-edge tool for evangelism to your neck of the woods. I'll find you.

This ain't Kansas, Toto!

If I were to tell you on this blog that I had discovered the cure for cancer, you might think I am crazy or that I am like Sean Connery in the movie, Medicine Man. Well, I have not found the cure for cancer (wish I had!). What I have discovered is a way to bring the Kingdom of God to the lost of the 21st century. Like Dorothy in the movie version of the Wizard of Oz, this does not look like Kansas, the familiar landscape of the past, traveled on the Roman Road. But like, Toto, I want to share with you what I found when I pulled the curtain back on evangelism and revealed the wizard behind it.

Hear me up front! God is the only one who saves. The Holy Spirit draws a person to God. How we as beleivers assist in that process, fulfilling the Great Commission, is to listen to the lost person's story and mirror that story back to the lost person. The aha! moment in salvation occurs at the intersection of God's self-revealing story of salvation and the lost person's story.

What I have to offer is training, coaching, and equipping with the listening skills to hear the cry for help from a lost person and stay in the conversation as the lost person begins to hear their own story.

That way the witness stays with what the lost person has given and does not intrude. There is no one way to do Story Listening Evangelism, only listening with prayerfully sharpened and sensitive listening skills, one person at a time.

If you are interested in this cutting-edge, paradigm-shift approach to sharing your faith, e-mail me at epizard@verizon.net. I will send you a cognitive map in PowerPoint introducing Story Listening Evangelism. Then we can talk about how I can provide training and coaching to you, your congregation, or a group of interested witnesses.

It all begins with the first thing a lost person says to you....

What's in a Name?

This is a short blog to let you know that I changed the name of the Story Listening Evangelism (SLE) Blog that I have called up to this moment: Kingdom Come. Kingdom Come from the Lord's prayer is my fervent prayer: to make a difference in the lives of people through the Kingdom being on earth as it is in heaven. At the same time I have been captivated by a statement Susan Scott makes in her book, Fierce Conversations. She said the role of a leader is to engineer epiphanies in the lives of the people they lead. That is what SLE is all about, helping people have aha! moments in their lives--at the intersection of God's story of redemption and the lost person's own story.

Tomorrow I will share a synthesis of Principle 3 from Scott's book and SLE when I write about how a witness needs to be fully present with the person to whom he or she is witnessing. That can happen when we, as witnesses, listen more than we proposition.

See you tomorrow!

Unmasking Makes Evangelism Real

Last week I synthesized Susan Scott's first principle of a fierce conversation into an evangelistic setting: Master the courage to interrogate reality. Essentially, the witness needs to inquire into and value the reality in a lost person's life. This week I move to principle 2: Come out from behind yourself into the conversation and make it real. This is basically Scott's definition of a fierce conversation.

Both the witness and the lost person benefit in the evangelistic conversation when each in turn take their masks off and be real with each other before God. The witness unmasks as he or she is aware of the beliefs that are shaping the witness shared. More than the content of God's great story of salvation, the beliefs extend to what the witness believes about his or her own abilities in the conversation. What the witness believes about the lost person is also important. If the witness does not believe the lost person is a person worthy of God's salvation, obviously, that will impact the conversation. If the witness or the lost person is carrying around an incredible amount of personal pain, either may resort to abstract language, rapidly changing the subject, or telling their own story instead of staying on track with the witness.

The witness needs to create a safe enough atmosphere for the lost person to take off his or her mask as be real in the conversation, too. Letting the lost person know that it is safe to have questions, doubts, concerns, and even anger toward God, the church, or groups of believers is OK.

In her book for business and life, Scott encourages fierce conversationalists to write their own stump speech, just like a politician does. It needs to be brief, to the point, memorized, and told often. The witness needs to create a stump speech for his or her evangelistic efforts, answering these questions: Who am I as a witness? Where am I going in my witness with lost people? Why am I going there? Who is going with me?

Fro me, as a witness, I am fulfilling the Great Commission. In the spirit of the Greek participle of Matthew 28: 19, "As I go, I share the Gospel with those in my path." That is the value of a Story Listening Evangelism approach to witnessing. The tools are there for any occasion, for any person, to equip the witness to adjust the conversation to meet the spiritual needs of the unique individual God is seeking to save.

Where am I going in my witness? I am going to stay sensitive to the story that unfolds from the lost person and to the story of God that surfaces in the conversation.

Why am I approaching evangelism this way? Because it honors the lost person and provides room for the Holy Spirit to do the work of salvation.

Who is going with me? I hope you, the reader, is going with me. I hope business people who struggle with being politically correct in dealing with clients and colleagues will discover the effectiveness and respect that comes from this form of witnessing. I hope the person who has never led a person to the Lord is coming along, discovering that the process can be learned and followed by anyone willing to listen and care for lost people. I hope that people who want to be on the cutting-edge of the Kingdom will come with me on this journey to make evangelism real and fierce.

What mask do you need to take off in order to be a fierce witness? What beliefs mobilize your witness? What beliefs get in the way of your attempts to share your faith with a lost person?
What witnessing conversation are you avoiding with someone right now?

I invite you with the skills and tools of Story Listening Evangelism to show up in someone's life today, without your mask!