Leadership expert John Maxwell's most recent book, Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, discusses the importance of the ability to connect with others. This is the second segment in a series of four.
Preaching: Let's start from the negative standpoint. What would be an example of something you've seen pastors do—or fail to do—that causes them not to connect?
Maxwell: I think they live in their own world. They teach and preach from their own perspective. I think they give a lot more answers than ask questions.
One of the great times of my life was when I began to understand that connecting is all about asking questions. Zig Ziglar—many years ago I heard him, back in 1975 probably—was at a Positive Mental Attitude rally. I was a young pastor—first time I'd ever heard him. He made this statement that he's known for: "If you can help people get what they want, they'll help you get what you want."
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It was a eureka moment for me. Up until then, I thought as a leader-pastor that I was to get people to buy my vision: "Come get on my train." I always was trying to get people to come my way; but Zig that day said, "No, no; go their way. Go where they are. Get off the mountain, go down to where the people are. Walk slowly through the crowd, put their interests first. Help them with whatever they're struggling with, and they'll turn around. You'll influence them, and they'll begin to follow you."
That was life-changing. That changed the way I led. That changed the way I preached. I quit hanging around with people like me, and I began hanging around with people who weren't like me and asked them questions. I found out why they didn't come to church and that they had a lot of valid reasons for not coming. It really helped me to get into their world.
I think this is unique to pastors. I think they live in their world—and their world and the world that needs desperately to know the Good News are pretty far apart. So first of all, put other people first. Go to them. Find their agenda. I have a phrase I use in the book quite often, "Find common ground."
All change occurs on common ground. Change doesn't occur because we're different. So every time the church talks about its differences, I say to myself: Do they not understand that's alienating to other people? There's nothing appealing about that. There's nothing that draws people into that. There's nothing that makes a person say, "Wow, they're so much different than me I want to go over there and explore their territory." No, they live in their world; and if we're going to reach them, if we're going to connect, we've got to get there.
When you find common ground—and that takes a lot of effort and energy—then you can lift them to higher ground. That's when you can start to take some of the steps to move them up. First, you've got to find out where they are, get on common ground and have them sense that you know and care. Once that understanding, caring link is there, then they're ready to be led and influenced, ready to hear the Good News, but not until then.
