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With Stephen Caldwell
290 Plays4 months ago
In many ways, the practice of sharing the gospel is the art of conversation. Though some may be more gifted than others, there are many simple ways to start and build great conversations. Today's guest shares his experience starting conversations with strangers and the tools he's developed to help us all gain traction in our evangelistic efforts.
Stephen Caldwell trains people to build and deepen relationships with others. In his program called Traction, he teaches people how to perceptively listen and ask probing questions during conversations that are spiritually or existentially focused. The book for Traction is titled Making Inroads: How to ask questions to better understand others. He has gained his experience by using the Socratic Method teaching English, serving as a chaplain during a year of clinical pastoral education, study of and participation in Ignatian spiritual direction, and both practicing and training others in consultative selling and non-directive coaching. He has developed, practiced, and led Traction since 2002.
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Transcript
Introduction to the PEP Talk Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Well, welcome back to PEP Talk, the Persuasive Evangelism Podcast. I'm Steve Osmond. As always, a pleasure to be hosting. And yeah, today it is just myself and our guest, Steven Caldwell, who we'll chat to and hear a little bit about and hear some of the work that he is involved with.
Who is Steven Caldwell?
00:00:30
Speaker
Steven, how are you doing today? I am well, thank you. So I am based in Scotland, and I'm calling you all the way in California. What's the time there, by the way? I don't actually know the time difference. Time, we're about 10 minutes to 7 o'clock in the morning. Okay, wow. Nice and early. Okay, I'm i'm sort of starting to wind down. We're heading into mid-afternoon now. Time for a spot of tea. Yeah, really for a good spot of tea. It's a tea and a biscuit. Why not?
00:00:58
Speaker
um well yeah Again, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me today.
Developing Conversations About Faith
00:01:03
Speaker
um Would you like to give us a little bit of background? Who are you? What ah work have you done in your career and kind of what are are some of the things that you're working on now? Sure. so um Basically, I think that the springboard for this conversation is a book that I developed. um and and put into print about nine months ago. But it actually came out of about 20 years of experimenting with a different approach ah to engaging friends, which I started when a pastor by church had said, you know, you have a remarkable ability to just go up and strike up conversations with anybody, anywhere, about anything, and most people can't do that. So come up with something that's accessible to everybody.
00:01:48
Speaker
So I remember in college, we had done one of these things where we walked around and said, hey, do you want to do a sociological survey? They would answer some questions. The end would say, hey, now we want to ask you about Jesus, which was kind of a gotcha, not totally cool. But I liked the principle on what it was doing, which was getting people to talk and share their thoughts. So for the last 20 years, what I've done is a series of questions that take place over a period of of three to four weeks. And It's really simple. You just go to a friend and you say, hey, Steve, you know um I'm doing something a little different in my church. We're on a project where I have to interview somebody and learn about life and how they see the world. Thought you'd be a cool person to do it with. What do you say? and We just get together over a cup of coffee and you know like talk somebody's questions. What do you say? And people will always say yes.
00:02:34
Speaker
you know Just statistically, I can't even think of anybody who says no to this. Then you do sit down and over a period of time. um and the And the reason you do it over a period of time as part of it is to build the relationship, to deepen it. um I think in many relationships, the challenge is is that we've known someone for quite a long time. but We've known them at a certain social level. So we could have been you know playing tennis with a buddy of ours for the last five years. And we've never had a chance to really take it to a deeper level. It's very awkward to then say, hey, Steve, you know, you and I have been playing tennis and it's been great as a doubles partner too. But you know, I've never had a chance to talk to you. about jesus Now, that's an awkward, that's an awkward lead within. So
Reflective Listening and Belief Exploration
00:03:18
Speaker
the question is, how can you drop the person to the next level? and The other challenge that I think we we find in conversations is that
00:03:26
Speaker
um There's something of what I would call a conversational quid pro quo. If we're having a conversation about a topic of of significance, after a while, not too many questions in, I'm expected to share my own perspective. um Otherwise, you're going to say to me, what's going on here? Is this like an interrogation, an anti-counseling session? But in my what I've done in the program is I've actually asked the person, is it OK if during these interviews I just ask you questions and learn as much as I can about you? Because now I've now i've permitted the conversation to really go exploratory. We can go far, far deeper. um
00:04:05
Speaker
and So a number of things are happening. One, I'm having a chance to start a conversation, explore it with somebody at a deep level. um And in doing that, and especially you know in in many ways I've found with non-Christians, um And many non-Christians don't have an opportunity to really reflect through things at a deep, deep level, because one, they haven't, it's not formally, you know, they're not in a formal environment where that happens, like with Christians who are reflecting through their worldviews. um And just the way, again, a way our conversations work, if
00:04:46
Speaker
if if i'm so If I'm asking you a question about something, say, say you what what do you you know what do you what do you believe happens after this life? and Do you say, ah, it's all about reincarnation. Oh, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, yeah, I believe in reincarnation, too. And pretty soon, we're talking about something because we we we were just exchanging and going back and forth. I never had to pick. Opportunity to peel back the ANSA. So when you say reincarnation, what exactly do you have in mind? Well, I mean this um Okay, so you said this now earlier you said this so we're gonna go back. So what I'm doing is I'm teaching people how to
00:05:20
Speaker
I don't call it empathetic listening, I call it perceptive listening because really the goal is is when I'm hearing somebody say something, do i really did I hear that correctly? and and Can I link that up with other things you've said elsewhere? Can I pick up the patterns? Because that's what people are looking for. is that, in a way, have a mirror put up against them so they can hear what they're saying, so they can reflect on it. And and when you you've succeeded at doing one of these interviews in a number of ways. One, when the person at the end says, hey, this was really helpful. I've never had anybody really spend the time to listen to me. And you help me identify a lot of things. Or two, thanks for listening to me. you know Nobody ever really pays attention to what I have to say.
00:06:05
Speaker
um And then ultimately,
Guide to Meaningful Dialogue: The Book 'Traction'
00:06:08
Speaker
you say, hey, this has been really great. um and And now you're friends with a person and you you may not have originally had that place where you can say, hey, you know we we've shot you know played tennis for the last five years, now it's time to talk about Jesus. You actually, in this this these interviews, there's 15 questions. You don't ever, there's none of the questions has to do with Jesus. They're all questions that pertain to just life in general. So literally non-Christians can take the class, but the issue is can
00:06:40
Speaker
and and the And the questions are are framed in such a way that um you don't have and ah any ideological reference points to your answers. So I don't go to somebody and say, who do you think God is? That's not a good question because if I'm a Mormon or I'm a Muslim or a fundamentalist Christian, I've already been taught that. And I'm simply going to regurgitate to what I think. But say my first question is, and this kind of ties into one of Andy's books, he says, what are two things that give you a sense of awe and wonder? So I i don't have a reference, but when I start talking about that, I'm going to share with you what's closest to my heart, who who I am. And gradually, and and you know, that so and the and the class is broken between
00:07:27
Speaker
um
00:07:30
Speaker
Wholeness, brokenness, and hope. So kind of, you know, creation, fall, redemption. yeah um and and um So the second week of question might be, what are you know which of the following would you most want to eliminate from life your life in the world? um Sin, guilt, regret, we fear, guilt, regret, worry, shame. So the person, it doesn't matter where you're coming from, you're a progressive or, you know,
00:08:01
Speaker
whatever you are, you still, there's no right
Barriers and Trends in Faith Conversations
00:08:04
Speaker
answer to one of those. They're all not good things. Choose one of them. But whatever you choose tells me about you and then we can explore that. um But again, the questions, you know, questions to question, obviously I put some thought into the questions, but the real issue is how do I train people to move from being super, super um factual into being kind of that perceptive and knowing what is the next question to drive the conversation. Yeah, that's um that's fantastic because I do quite a bit of university missions and going out to to church and doing training in more conversational ah evangelism and going to campuses doing more evangelistic talks with Christian unions and you you really can
00:08:50
Speaker
peel back and enter into much better conversation when you actually can listen to somebody. um And I think, that as Christians, often what we can do is we're we're sort of off and running and we want to try and just throw out all the answers um that we that we have in our tool bag or in our basket without really stopping to to listen and to understand the person. And so I think that approach is um it's just really, really um the way to go it it's um you know you learn a lot about people you and learn how to engage much deeper and i think that's formal fruitful in the long run um so the the the book then which is titled traction that that was birthed out of your experience of just doing this kind of thing over and over again is that right.
00:09:35
Speaker
Yeah, actually, I mean, the the program was originally called Traction back in like 2003 when I first started it, 2002. And the idea was, blessed are the feet that bring good news, but how often do we find ourselves slipping? in the course of trying to connect with others. We need traction. um So that that was kind of it. And then over time, i and by conducting it with
Engaging Strangers with 'Who is Jesus?'
00:10:01
Speaker
different groups, I realized what worked better than others. What was the better? So that the questions over time have changed. When when you're then um engaging and with people and using this kind of approach, what are what are some of the
00:10:18
Speaker
um I suppose barriers or obstacles that that you face or that you encounter when when you're speaking to people. Are there like some major trends that you see i'm coming up where people have certain issues or or big questions that they're wrestling with? Yeah, so I mean so traction is kind of a plan I put together to help other Christians. I've been doing this so long. I don't need to just use traction to get my conversations going. That would be if I'm trying if somebody says hey, I need to reach out to my friend or I want to do something at a church. I'll use that as a as a framework. I'll give you an example with me so.
00:10:56
Speaker
probably about in March, I decided I was going to go on a road trip in the United States and I was going to start in um Arizona, southern border, follow the border all the way around to Key West in in Florida. And on my way, I wanted to take a um do do some interviews as I went and the interview was I was gonna start with a starter question just about life find somebody random and then they would and but after they answered my question I would ask them to to formulate another question that I would ask the next person and then each person across the United States would be asking questions to questions answering questions I thought that'd be kind of fun but I did the first one in courtside just in Arizona and it was good and But then I was on a series of tent camping excursions, and there wasn't anybody to interview. So it broke my thing. I asked a couple of people. They didn't want to be reviews i um interviewed. So I said, I got to change this. So I came up with a really, really simple question. And I asked this question to people all the way, starting in basically Key West. And then I went all the way to to the Northeast. I went up to Maine, and then I came across to Chicago, and it got really cold, so I came home. But I'm on the road for about
00:12:04
Speaker
I was told I was on the road for 40 days. I made it biblical. And then, and the question was really simple. I'd walk up to people and say, hey, you know, I'm i'm doing something different. i'm ah I'm on a road trip. I'm traveling around the perimeter of the United States. And as I go, I'm striking up conversations by asking one question that everybody has an opinion on, and I'm getting into some really good conversations. Are you curious?
Youth and Spiritual Curiosity
00:12:27
Speaker
They say, yeah. He said, the question is this, who is Jesus Christ?
00:12:33
Speaker
and i and I'm curious as to what you have to say. So tell me what you think. I had the most amazing conversations. I had people, you know, I had, a I had one, yeah, yeah I could i can tell this, I actually just finished writing a whole series of articles on on this, but um but the the the issue is what I found is what's remarkable about doing this and part of the experiment, and again, this is where I have knowing ambitions about doing this and maybe I'm an interesting guy, I don't know, Nobody got angry with me, for for one. Only four people didn't want to talk to me. Out of 23 people, four people didn't want to have a conversation. um
00:13:19
Speaker
and 12 people we entered into really deep conversations with, and we had prayer at the end. Some people said, yeah, I want to say a prayer of, you know, confession at the end or repentance. But what I found is if if younger people are super interested, um they don't know the gospel. They don't have
Overcoming Evangelism Apprehension
00:13:43
Speaker
prejudices about it. they don't They're that ignorant. it's not even were Christianity is so far removed from their screen, and and and it strikes me. it's just so so spry The last guy I talked with in Malibu, just north of Los Angeles coming down the coast on my last day, um
00:13:59
Speaker
Asking the question, i says he says, I'm probably not the guy to talk to. I don't know anything about Jesus. I said, I get it. Yeah. you know Well, let's let's start with something easy. you know Maybe you've seen him on the cover at ah at a ah a magazine, at a grocery store. you know You've heard something. He says, I know nothing. I don't know anything. I said, wow, okay. So look, you are you are you curious? Do you want to learn something about it? He says, yeah, okay. Or, you know, I don't know how the conversation went. But yeah, just, it's really it's really remarkable how younger people I found um all right are are receptive.
00:14:34
Speaker
go ahead yeah yeah That's fascinating because we really are seeing the same kind of thing here in in Scotland, especially with the younger generations as we regard and speak to them. um When we go and speak at churches and we do equipping and training in evangelism, we often will speak to people and find out okay well what are the some of the issues? Why aren't we you know more um open about sharing our faith or doing it more more regularly? um and so i Because it is tough, people do have this idea of there's going to be a lot of extreme antagonism, or what if there's questions that come up that I can't answer, what if I don't share the gospel as well as I should, or if I make God
The Role of Theology and Curiosity in Faith Dialogue
00:15:16
Speaker
with that. All of these things that stop us from going out, and it's just so encouraging to hear you say that that yeah as you go out and have these conversations, people are actually really receptive.
00:15:26
Speaker
um And I think often we're far more afraid of sharing our faith than people are of actually having interactions with us. And so I'd like to pick up a little more on that. You pointed out that people just have no, like there's just no backdrop, no real idea of who Jesus is, maybe what the Bible is about. Chances are, and they've probably never picked up a Bible that never set foot really in church. um So just about everything they know comes from TV, social media, that kind of thing.
00:16:00
Speaker
What would you say then um is is the best way to start engaging? I think you've painted a bit of the picture. um But to keep pressing on with them, what what would that look like in a conversation for someone who who's maybe a bit apprehensive about sharing their faith? So your question is, what would be the best way to help Christians step out into that world we've been discussing? Yeah, I think so. well Maybe two parts. What do you think of um Yeah, what would you say to encourage encourage us to do that more and then and practically how to keep those conversations when you're in them ah moving to a space where you can move toward actually sharing more about who Jesus is? Yeah, so I think actually I think a lot of it really begins with, you know, good theology. dude Who is God? um How does God think of human beings? What is the gospel?
00:16:59
Speaker
um How important is the gospel? um
00:17:05
Speaker
You know, what is it? Because ultimately, that's the nature of motivation. Why are we gonna step out? Because if our motivation is not greater than our fears, we will never step out. There's always gonna be some hesitation that motivation has to be greater. So, are we reading the right kind of books? do it Or we listening to the right kind of podcast, or hearing the right kind of sermons, are we reading the scriptures in the way that it's gonna be conducive to just saying, i I have a great, great message. I've learned, I wanna share this. The world needs to hear this. The more enthusiastic I am, the more I'm gonna be motivated. um
00:17:36
Speaker
Two, I have to believe that God doesn't fill me with His Spirit so I will step out as much as He gives me some of His Spirit so I can step out and be receive more. i think there's ah i't I don't know if there's some kind of or Orthodox way of saying you know what I'm trying to say. But the idea is we always want to say, I'll do it when? No, just step out and God will bless you. um It's kind of like the if we're being persecuted, God will give us the words. Don't worry about what you're going to say. The Spirit will come. It's that passage. um And then the last thing is um genuine curiosity. you have to It's not about, I want to get the person to talk. It's like, I'm listening to this person, I'm really, really interested in discovering. And I think the more we do this with people, the more they become phenomena and we become phenomenologists. And I want to just discover, what is this person, this this cultural phenomenon that's occurring, this religious phenomena that's occurring in front of me, explore that.
00:18:37
Speaker
And then if my theology is right and my curiosity is is reasonable, I'm actually going to end up in discussions about Jesus no matter what, because because it's a part of the picture.
Integrating Faith Organically in Conversations
00:18:50
Speaker
it's It's a natural organic outflowing of who I am, my curiosity, my relationship with Christ. None of it's not the questioning, not the time to insert Jesus. None of that is contrived. It just naturally comes out. And I think ultimately it comes back to, you know, Am I in a deep, deep relationship with the Savior of the creation? Yeah. I am into that. And I think, um you know, you mentioned there the message that we have and just the the beauty of it. And that how how could that be something that we wouldn wouldn't want to take out to the world and we just wanted to hang on to it ourselves?
00:19:27
Speaker
um I think so much of the time, and this was definitely my experience as I was, you know, when I was a younger Christian, it was, you know, they're out there, the people who are called to evangelism, and they'll be so much better at it. Like, i' I'm terrified of it. um You know, and so I'll leave it to them. But I think when you really read the scripture, it's it's something that we're all called to do. It's because we have this amazing message, the truth, of redemption through Christ is just, how could we not want to share that? And the Bible, I think, is clear that this is for all of us. I mean, Jesus' words in the Great Commission, ah Paul, ah Peter, um in 1 Peter 3.15, always be prepared to give that answer um to those who ask. And so, yeah, to me, it's it's just so, so encouraging, um you know, you sharing that people are
Conclusion and Accessing 'Traction'
00:20:16
Speaker
ready to engage. And that's definitely been my experience. um I think by no means am I
00:20:21
Speaker
um a natural evangelist, um but you know it's something that we can all learn to be better at and learn to do more of it and just be good conversationalists, good listeners. And so I love that you um pointed that out. I'm aware that time is running to a close here, um but I think we're kind of just scratching the surface. If people wanted to get hold of your book, Traction, and if they wanted to learn a little bit more about your ministry and just keep up to date with the things you're involved with, how could they do that? So yeah, the book is on Amazon and it is called Traction, Pre-Evangelism in the Art of Listening. And then there is a, my website is gettingtraction dot.org.
00:21:05
Speaker
We will definitely make sure to link both to the book and to our website in the the show and notes and description. But again, thank you so much for taking the time to to chat to me today. I've really just enjoyed listening to it to what you have to say and learning a lot. I just really, really encourage it. So thank you very much for joining us. It's been great. Thank you very much for having me. um And as always, we will be with you for the next episode in about two weeks time.