The Rest of the Story ...

Last October, I preached a sermon called "Basic #5:  Speak Compassionately."  The sermon was part of a series called Kingdom Basics.  The series focused on the key spiritual practices that lead to significant spiritual growth.

If you want to read the whole sermon here it is [Speak Compassionately]. A few key points from the sermon:

• I used the story of Paul's interaction with Lydia to speak about evangelism.
• "People on the margins need the words of God’s Good News spoken compassionately. "
• Our challenge is this:  "The very folks who most need to hear the Good News of Jesus – have blocked the voices of Christians because they have not heard words spoken with compassion.

As an example of speaking compassionately to people who differ from us, I used the example of the Chick-fil-A conflict last summer.  Here's what I said:

"Consider for a moment the chick-fil-a controversy over the summer as it relates to speaking compassionate Good News to people in the margins of our world.  As you may know by now – The Spivey family loves Chick-fil-A.  We ate there 8 times in the first week our new store opened in the spring.  This summer Chick-fil-A got caught in the cultural wars which rage in our country.  For several weeks, eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich no longer became a matter of hunger, but a political statement.
            On August 1^st people from around the country and here in Habersham rallied behind Chick-fil-A.  People posted pictures of their Chick-fil-A sandwiches on their facebook pages.  In our desire to be right about Gay Marriage in our country – our words and actions did not speak compassion to a world on the margins.  Instead, I fear we did more to push the margins farther away from Jesus.
            One of our members sent me a pastor’s blog in reflection on that day.  It was called “5 REASONS WHY THE CHURCHFAILED YESTERDAY.”

1.      Christians all over America ignored the second greatest commandment: to love our neighbors.  While this was not hated – it was not love.
2.      People felt hate and we ignored that.  Whether we intended it or not – people on the margins, in need of God’s good news – missed it that day.
3.      By rallying behind CFA, Christians put an issue above people.
4.      The mass actions of Christians built another wall of distrust between the Church and the GLBT communities.
5.      Nothing we did that day proved that Christians don’t hate gay people.
 Once this issue, though, dropped from the news cycles, Chick-fil-A did not stop working to address this issue with words of compassion.  Last week The Charlotte Observer ran a story about Shane Windmeyer, Campus Pride executive director in North Carolina.  After the events of the summer Campus pride launched an educational campaign known as Five Simple Facts about Chick-fil-A in their attempt to get college kids to stop eating at the campus restaurants. [Read first article here.]

This campaign quickly gained the attention of Chick-fil-A executives. Thus, Campus Pride was one of the first organizations that the company contacted.  Windmeyer said he has met with Chick-fil-A executives – including Dan Cathy, CEO, – twice in Atlanta.  Shortly after, Windmeyer suspended his Five Simple Facts campaign. 

 Here is how Windmeyer described his experience with Chick-fil-A:  In order to listen to someone you have to put down your sticks,” “I didn’t want to continue the campaign without at least acknowledging that they’re making a good faith effort to reach a common ground with us.”

While the cultural war raged out of their control pushing people farther to the margins, Chick-fil-A chose to speak compassionately into those at the margins.  They spoke compassionately by listening.  By allowing others to feel valued and understood.  In evangelism language – we call this type of listening – winning the right to be heard.  When we listen before we speak – we speak compassionately.  In so doing, we truly displayed the Good News of Jesus – one person at a time."  

At the end of January, Shane Windmeyer posted a detailed article in the Huffington Post about his relationship with Dan Cathy.  Here is the article.  Here is a key thought from the post that grabbed my attention.

Through all this, Dan and I shared respectful, enduring communication and built trust. His demeanor has always been one of kindness and openness. Even when I continued to directly question his public actions and the funding decisions, Dan embraced the opportunity to have dialogue and hear my perspective. He and I were committed to a better understanding of one another. Our mutual hope was to find common ground if possible, and to build respect no matter what. We learned about each other as people with opposing views, not as opposing people.

We often hear the stories of how difficult it is to find any common ground with people who are different than us.  We see it in government, culture and even our families.  The story of Shane and Dan is an example of a Christian business man living out his Christian beliefs with compassionate listening and speaking.  How would the world change if more Christians approached the world with this kind of compassionate listening and speaking. How could we make an impact for the Kingdom of God in the world?

One final example of compassionate speech.  Here is a conversion story from Rosaria Butterfield.    In this article she tells how compassionate speech from a Lutheran pastor drew her to Jesus.  

Loving folks into the Kingdom of God does not begin with being right - rather in happens slowly as we demonstrate with our lives and our words the deep love of Jesus.