Ministers should listen more, talk less

I was both startled and pleased when Bruce Jenner came out of his closet and shared with the world that he was transgendered. I had long been an admirer of Bruce.

I first became aware of him as he climbed the ladder of top athletics in the world and won the decathlon at the 1976 Olympics. I admire excellence and follow major professional sports. I am awed at what top athletes do.

Bruce was special. He did not go to a prestigious university. He was a small college kid. He reached top Olympic status by being the hardest working athlete of which I had ever heard.

Mustering the courage publicly to claim his sexual identity at age 65 exceeds the incredible work that he did to become the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion. When I watched the television version of his announcement, I cried tears of joy for Bruce Jenner.

I am a longtime member of PFLAG, the premier national advocacy organization for the parents, family and friends of persons, the large minority of people whose sexual orientation is not heterosexual. I served several years in the PFLAG organizational structure.

In the early history of PFLAG, members claimed their sons, daughters and friends who were gay or lesbian. Then bisexual persons were added to the list of their commitments.

I was serving on the PFLAG national board in 1998 when we met in San Francisco. On our agenda was the inclusion of transgendered persons to the PFLAG commitments and concerns. It was not a comfortable meeting.

The subject was outside the range of the experience of the PFLAG board members. These good, transgendered folks had bodies that did not match their emotions and feelings. We listened to transgendered people tell their stories. Collectively, we could not say “no.”

I now look back at that vote as one of the proudest moments in my PFLAG board experience. We listened. We voted. We voted an adamant “yes.” The key was listening.

I received my seminary training at Garrett Theological Seminary at Northwestern University. I was privileged to study under Dr. Carol Wise, an early student of Carl Rogers.

I studied human growth and development and pastoral counseling. Central to Dr. Wise’s conviction was that pastors and ministers in general did too much talking and too little listening.

Church pastors are special people. Hurting people come to us because we are very available and because we work cheap. A church pays us salaries. We do not charge.

I took Carol Wise seriously. Pastoral counseling was not to be an exercise in advice giving. It is an exercise in listening.

The stories I have heard would fill volumes. It has been in listening that I have learned about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. All of these feelings and experiences I heard are completely outside of my own experiences. I could not be more heterosexual in my sexual orientation.

Most ministers will tell about his/her call to preach. And preach we do. Some of us become quite proficient with this speaking art form.

However, I have yet to hear a Christian minister say that he/she was called to listen. The typical Christian minister thinks that counseling is about telling people what to think, what to believe and how to behave. They are totally unprepared to listen to the stories about the feelings and experiences of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons.

The U.S. Supreme Court has listened to a case that speaks to the rights of gay people to marry. A decision will be handed down in their fall session this year. Hopefully they will hand down a definitive decision that will settle the issue for all 50 states.

Already, more than two-thirds of the states have legalized gay marriage, some by legislation and some by court order. I have no doubt that sometime in the not too distant future, if not in the fall of 2015, same-sex marriage will be a legal right in the entire United States.

Once same-sex marriage is approved as the law of the entire nation, the dissenting response of Christian churches and ministers will continue. There is no shortage of ministers who will continue to misquote and quote out of context passages from the Bible, even though their thinking has been effectively rebutted.

Ministers will lead the way in fighting legalized same-sex marriages. Some will lead by their silence. They will recognize the justice being given to our gay friends by the courts, but will keep silent.

The vast majority of ministers will preach, advocate and counsel in support of denied acceptance of gay people in our churches. Angry gay young people will continue to flee churches. Many of their parents will follow. All too many young people will choose suicide.

My temptation is to be unbearably angry at my fellow clergypersons and call them distorters of the gospel of Jesus and outright bigots. That might be true, but I see a more tragic flaw.

Ministers have not been trained in, and have not learned, the art of listening. The Bible says nothing about loving same-sex marriages. Our information will be accumulated almost exclusively by listening.

Bruce Jenner is giving us a new opportunity to be listeners. In my circle of friends are several transgendered persons. They have no special claim to fame or prominence. Few will listen to them. But Bruce Jenner is different. He was once called the greatest male athlete in the world.

My prayer is that many of my fellow clergypersons will listen and do less talking. The whole world will be blessed.