by Margaret Hanoian

Please join me after church on Sunday, July 12 for an informal conversation about “Crucial Conversations”! We’ll talk about our plans for running a Crucial Conversations “Book Club” series in the fall. Here’s a little background…

What are “Crucial Conversations”?

Crucial Conversations involve:

  • High stakes
  • Opposing opinions
  • Strong emotions

In these situations, most people have a hard time communicating.

Why are Crucial Conversations important for our church now?

A few years ago, we had a discussion group using the book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High”. People who participated said that it helped them understand the impact of their words, and it gave them tools to be direct when necessary. With the book’s help, we were able to talk about actual miscommunications that were happening in our church. It was eye-opening to all of us!

I’d like to start a new group for Crucial Conversations in the fall. As our church grows and evolves, we need to communicate even better. It is a blessing to have so many new people, but our old patterns of  communication may not work well.

There have been some misunderstandings and some avoidance of important topics.

Here are some of the things that might benefit from crucial conversations:

  • Talking about the pros and cons of new ideas vs. old traditions
  • Talking about what’s not working – this is hard for everyone to do!!
  • Is there a generation gap in our church? I don’t know! Let’s talk about it!
  • How to talk about it if you don’t feel embraced by our church.
  • How to persist if initial reaction to your idea is not great.
  • What new procedures should we have to ensure ideas can develop into reality?

In my experience, these topics bring out Opposing Opinions and Strong Emotions. Also, the stakes are high – if we can’t continue to evolve, our church will not thrive. How will this book help us?

The book explains how fear and anxiety crop up and change important conversations from useful to destructive. We hope that the congregation will learn how to spot these things themselves, work on being able to express difficult things and listen to difficult things without emotion shutting down the rational parts of our system and shifting us into thought patterns that lead away from productive conversations. We will incorporate actual church topics into this book group.