HOW TO HELP YOUR AUDIENCE IMPROVE THEIR LISTENING SKILLS
Jesus often said, ``He who has ears to hear, let him hear.’’ (Mk.4:9) He also understood that some people would continually hear but never understand. Some people need help in sharpening their listening skills. Here are several suggestions that should help your congregation improve their ability to listen, hear, and understand all that is being communicated!
1. Begin by explaining from the parable of the sower and seed in Mark 4:1-22 the different levels of listeners:
A. The resistant, closed and shallow listeners -These folks are compared to crusty roadside - the hardheads who are closed to new insights. They prefer to remain impenetrable to what God wants them to know.
B. The open but superficial listeners These people listen for the facts that are being shared, but fail to grasp the crucial principles. For this reason the new ideas are quickly forgotten. Because the thoughts are not really understood, the truth is not given sufficient opportunities to mature in the minds of the hearers.
C. The open but distracted listener -These people are open to truth, but allow the worries, riches, and pleasures of this life to deter them from focusing on what its applications. Since their minds are so cluttered that they cannot focus on the true meaning of scripture, the word is not allowed to produce fruit in their lives.
D. The responsive and obedient listener - These people listen, understand, and obediently apply the scriptures to their lives by faith. They continually remain open to new insights. They are searching for new insights into the scriptures constantly. The responsive feed on the scriptures as food for their nourishment, growth, and vitality. They are not content to just feed, but they search for ways to teach, preach, and use the insights they gain.
In order to help more of your people ascend to the highest level of listening we must examine some of the characteristics of the responsive and obedient listener:
1. He is discriminating, discerning, and determinative in what he hears. In other words, he is not gullible believing anything that people tell him. He is able to discern the degrees of truth and sort out half-truths out of each message. A smart communicator will learn to target his message to certain key people in his audience. These will then become the catalysts, change agents, clarifiers, elaborators, interpreters, & models to the majority after the message is completed.
2. He is willing to be truly attentive to all the facts, emotions, ideas, implications, and applications of whoever is speaking. In other words he is willing to put aside some of his prejudices against the speaker to value what is being said.
3. He is willing to reconsider some certain parts of his mind filters (Biases, Emotions, Presuppositions, Values, Beliefs, and viewpoints). This does not mean that a listener gives up his viewpoints, but is willing to see things from another’s perspective.
4. He is interested in perceiving ideas from another person’s framework. Appreciating another’s culture, experience, education, personality, context, or background shows a real mark of maturity for a listener.
5. He is willing to put away negative feelings, grudges, hurts, angry feelings, resentments, and forgive and forget past misunderstandings. Perhaps, this is one of the greatest stumbling blocks for most listeners.
6. He is willing to give his full mental attention by taking notes. Subconsciously many people tend to allow their attention to drift during a message. Through the discipline of taking notes, retention of the message can increase by as much as 60%.
7. He is ready to make application to his thoughts, attitudes, and actions. A man ready to be a doer of the word and not merely a hearer of the word (Jm.1:22) will generally listen better.
8. He is able to suspend judgment, criticism, and harsh evaluation of the speaker and the message. If listeners are not able to listen without erecting the barriers of criticism of the speaker, they will not be able to understand all that God has for them. Remember that God chose to speak to Balaam through his donkey!
9. He possesses the patience and the concentration to wait for the other to develop their full message. Many people have such short attention spans that they are not able to listen for more than five minutes attentively. They must train themselves to be able to listen for long periods if they are really going to understand the Pastor’s full message.
10. He needs a commitment to learn from anyone at anytime at anyplace despite any difficulties.
If an illiterate man is speaking it should not mean that listeners refuse to pay attention. We can learn from anyone. God is not partial about whom He chooses to use to speak to us.
11. We need to learn to identify key verses, principles, and words in the message. Some people listen for the entire story but fail to grasp the essential lessons. Learn to listen for the key thoughts in the message. Help your people by repeating the key words, topics, principles, applications and words several times.
12. Help your listeners to screen out the unimportant or irrelevant ideas. Every person comes with different needs. Every person must learn to listen for the areas of the message that are most applicable to him or her.
13. Help your listeners to ask questions of the Pastor of the deeper meanings of the message. There is a Chinese proverb that says, ``He who asks a question may appear to be ignorant for the moment, but he who always fails to ask a question may be ignorant forever!’’
14. Help your listeners learn to listen for knowledge, understanding, applications, points of analysis, explanations of synthesis, and then evaluate what they’ve heard. When we evaluate before we have proceeded through the first five steps we listen in reverse sequence which is bad.
15. Help your listeners learn with mutual respect for the speaker. Encourage people to allow for differences in perceptions. Each person will look at issues with different feelings, values, and priorities. No one person has a handle on all truth.
16. Help your audience listen for multiple meanings. There is a difference in the denotative and the connotative levels of meaning in a message. Help your people to discern the difference between what is meant as the dictionary interpretations of the words and the implied meanings of the words.
17. Show your people that they do not have to be afraid of a challenge. Help alleviate people’s fears of listening to some truth that requires change. Point out the advantages of the growth, benefits, and enrichments of challenges. Give examples of those who received challenges and were blessed.
18. Prayerfully teach your people to ask God to open His word to their minds, hearts, and wills. Always begin your messages with prayer asking God to open everyone’s mind to the full understanding of the meanings and applications of the word of God. The Holy Spirit will move in each willing heart to instruct, teach, and convict.
19. Emphasize dialogue in your preaching style. This will encourage people to want to listen to you if you are willing to listen to them. As you open yourself for input, the audience will naturally open themselves up. When you reveal needs the congregation will be more disposed to examine the deeper needs in their lives. The opposite extremes from dialogue are seen in the following degrees of coercive communication:
A. Threats - This kind of preacher never listens to his congregations’ needs, neither does he care. He is only interested in insisting that his people submit to the threats, laws, and dictates from the pulpit.
B. Manipulations - This preacher has listened for the peoples’ insights but only so he can use them for his own interests. He majors on intimidation tactics, oppression, and suppression of dissident viewpoints.
C. Dealing - This preacher understands what the people want, but he is only willing to trade for something he needs. He has not been willing to listen unselfishly. He needs to learn how to trust his God and his people without requiring a bargain to be struck before there can be cooperation.
D. Convincing - This preacher has a mutual understanding of the needs of his people. He is cooperatively persuading his people to conform to the will of God. He shows the audience how knowing and obeying the will of God will bring benefits to all. However, he still subtly creates a dependence upon him for instruction.
E. Dialoging - This preacher has complete open two-way communication with his members. He is willing to visit, listen, and understand his people’s needs, wants, and perceptions. He tries to foster that same dialogue between the members and God, His word, and Christian brethren.
