You Might Not Be Communicating as Well as You Think You Are

 

BART BLAIR: Dave Jacobs. Thank you so much for jumping on this Zoom call and spending some time with me today. I have been, I’ll say, a fan. I have been a longtime fan.

DAVE JACOBS: A fan. Oh?

BART BLAIR: A fan. I’m going to say a fan. I have listened for the last few years to the 200 Churches podcast and you’re obviously well-connected with Jeff and Johnny, the hosts of that podcast and you’ve been a guest. I think on the website they have like a whole section called the Dave Jacobs files. I think there’s a whole section.

DAVE JACOBS: They told me. I can’t believe this. They told me that in all the years they’d been doing this, they have no single individual that’s been on the show more than me. And like, they’ve had some heavy hitters. I mean, just like some great guys and so I’m always making fun of them as, really? You can’t do any better than me?

DAVE JACOBS: And they just say no, no Dave, Dave, you know, and stuff. Yeah, they’re great guys. I don’t think there’s a, you know, it’s hard to find a better podcast other than yours, you know, is out there, you know, like them. They do such a great job.

BART BLAIR: Yeah, I have learned a ton listening to that podcast over the years. And, you know, and of course, I’ve grown familiar with you and your work over the years as you’ve been a guest on their podcast so many times. So I really appreciate you taking the time with me today. Specifically, I want to talk about, we’re going to talk about communication but the reason we’re going to talk about communication is because I recently read your most recent book, which is called Second Thoughts. It’s got a subtitle to it. Do you remember the subtitle? Read it.

DAVE JACOBS: One Hundred Things Small Church Pastors Need to Reconsider. I even had to look, you know, because I finished it, like, over a year ago and I kind of forget now. What was that book about?

BART BLAIR: Yeah. So, I mean, so it’s a fantastic book. I have read all 100 things. One hundred chapters. I haven’t read many books that are 100 chapters long. Fortunately, every chapter is just a few pages. It’s very bite size. It’s super super practical.

BART BLAIR: But, one of the things that struck me and as we record this, we’re right in the middle of coronavirus, COVID-19 and one of the things that, one of the things that kind of occurred to me as I was reading it is that churches are often having a much more difficult time with communication.

BART BLAIR: Big churches will have like a communications department or a communications professional, a communications team leader. Somebody who’s responsible for sending out e-mails and doing social media and calling people and making sure everyone knows what’s going on. In small churches, it’s the pastor. The pastor is the one that’s responsible for the communication and there are so many different things that need to be communicated right now, whether it’s just logistics, sometimes it’s vision, sometimes it’s, you know, it’s personal stuff that needs to be communicated.

BART BLAIR: And so, I’m going to start with a quote that I’m going to read from the book and I love this. I highlighted this. It says, “In the absence of information, people will come to their own conclusions and often the conclusions they come to are the ones that we do not want them to come to.” So, I’m going to guess that you have some experience in that and that’s part of the reason why that has come up as something that was worth 100 things to rethink and the chapter is called.

BART BLAIR: Let me just make sure I got it correct here. The chapter that this one is called is “Reconsider How Well You Think You Communicate”. So, based on that little setup there, what would you say to the pastor who may think that he’s communicating well or maybe is struggling with communication during coronavirus, during COVID-19, or maybe just struggling with communication in general? How would you coach us through that?

DAVE JACOBS: Well, you know, the first thing I’d want to find out is, you know, do you think you’re a good communicator? Most pastors are going to say, yes, I’m a good communicator. And then I want to find out, what do you base that on?

DAVE JACOBS: I mean, have you been told by your spouse? Have you been told by your volunteer staff, your leadership team that you’re a good communicator?

DAVE JACOBS: We think we’re better than we are, you know? And it’s kind of like, how do you know if you don’t have a preaching coach? How do you know that you’re a good communicator? If you don’t have, you know, you’re a coach and so you understand the role of a coach. How do you know that you’re communicating? You know? Well. Because people typically aren’t going to come up and say, you suck at communicating, you know.

DAVE JACOBS: But, what I have found out….

BART BLAIR: But they might say that you suck at preaching.

DAVE JACOBS: That’s always fun to hear too.

DAVE JACOBS: But, you know, it’s kind of like, typically pastors think they’re better at certain things than they really are. And it’s not like that they’re living in some fantasy world and stuff. We just we’d like to think that we’re communicating better than we are. And so, I would begin by finding out, you know, do you think you’re a good communicator? What are the different areas that you typically have to communicate in? Are some of those areas, are you more effective in communicating than others? You know, like you might have some, let’s say, Outreach Event coming up. So you’re communicating that kind of thing. That’s different than, let’s say, communicating vision in your church. That’s different than maybe communicating an upcoming agenda that you’re going to have in a leadership team meeting. Are you better at some communication than others? And so, you know, we have to kind of start there. Where do you think you know you’re at? Let me just ask you, how do you feel? You know, you’ve got all this experience of leading in churches and pastors and churches. How would you describe your own skills as being a communicator?

BART BLAIR: I would say that I typically think that I’ve communicated, I think that I’ve communicated better than I have. I’m a talker. I’m also a verbal processor. So a lot of times I have to overtalk to get to the point that I actually want to make. And while I have said a lot, I’ve probably said a lot that didn’t necessarily need to be heard. And sometimes the things that I really wanted to be heard got lost in the processing, you know. In terms of written communication, in terms of strategic communication, I actually think I’m pretty solid at that. I think I’m pretty good at planning what needs to be said when it needs to be said and trying to communicate to people in a timely, in a timely way. But sometimes, like I said, because I’m a verbal processor, I will say a lot more without saying exactly what I need to say sometimes. So, I think that’s something that, for me, I know I personally, I can personally struggle with. Even right now, I’m verbally processing the answer to that question.

DAVE JACOBS: I think that’s where, as pastors, we get into trouble. It can even be in our in our preaching. We assume that a half hour sermon is going to be more effective than a 20 minute sermon.

DAVE JACOBS: Not necessarily. And so the more words we use in attempting to communicate, the greater chance there is that we’re going to sabotage what we’re trying to communicate. So simplicity and accuracy is a big deal when it comes to communicating, whether it be to a leadership team, a church or whatever. I actually like to encourage pastors, if they’re brave enough, to every once in a while, you know, survey their top leaders, some of their people to find out in some kind of objective kind of way how they feel we do in communicating. Do you feel I use too many words? How often are you not exactly sure what it is I’m getting at? See, our problem as pastors and communicators is that typically we have been sitting around thinking of things for a while and chewing on what it is we want to communicate and now it’s clear to us and so we communicate it but because we’re so familiar with what we want to say, we can leave things out. We can leave maybe a key or important word or a sentence or just some bit of information. In our brains, we haven’t left it out because we’ve been going over it so much. But when we communicate, there’s gaps and we don’t even know that. We don’t even see that. And so, we have to go into communicating, realizing that our listeners are automatically at a disadvantage because we’re throwing something at them that we’ve been working on for a while. Does that make sense?

BART BLAIR: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and, you know, it’s sort of like the movie that plays in my mind. I can see it very vividly. But yeah, but that but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can always articulate it clearly and thoroughly. You know, you said clear, I think the words you said were specific, you know, clear, specific communication. Now, let me kind of bend things a little bit in terms of sort of where we are today. We’re in the middle of coronavirus. Pastors are challenged in a lot of communicative areas because they’re not engaged in person with the people that they’re in leadership of, the people that they’re shepherding. They’re having to make decisions, oftentimes with a leadership team, sometimes just as solo guys. You know, in what you’re seeing with the pastors that you coach and what you see on the landscape, what are some of the pitfalls that you would see pastors potentially falling into during a time like we’re in right now?

DAVE JACOBS: Probably going at it like, nothing too unusual is happening here. Kind of like business as usual. I think, the longer we’re under lockdown, the longer that we’re dealing with adjusting our lives and our ministries to the virus, the more normal it’s going to become, the more fatigued people are going to be. I see pastors just trying to communicate the same old stuff to their people as if nothing was happening. People right now are in.

DAVE JACOBS: fatigued by the coronavirus and how it is impacting their lives. Some of your people that you work with, they’re living in areas where they’re being impacted more than in other areas. I live in southern Oregon and we’ve been doing pretty well in southern Oregon. So there’s not, I mean, we’re wearing masks when we go outside and, you know, we’re doing all the social distancing, you know, things. But, you know, some areas are more impacted. People I think, they need to see from their pastors that we’re going to be OK. We’re going to get through this. They don’t need to hear everything’s OK because everything’s not OK.

DAVE JACOBS: People are dying and stuff, but they need to hear from us. We will get together. We will get through this together as a church. And so, if that means we need to communicate that kind of pastoral love and care and reassurance to our people. That’s one of the things that we need to communicate. I think we also need to communicate to them why some of the things we’re doing to adapt are good. Maybe even good enough, maybe even better than what we were doing before. To reassure them that having a Zoom meeting, a Zoom prayer meeting is good enough. To have a leadership team meeting that’s a Zoom. To have, you know, a limited number of people show up to our building for a service, that’s OK. For them to hear us say, time after time, after time. It’s OK. This is OK. We’re going to be OK. We’re gonna get through this. Let’s hold together. I think, that is what people need to hear during a time of crisis such as we’re experiencing right now.

BART BLAIR: Yeah. I mean, it’s one of the biggest challenges is that, you know, things are changing on a daily basis. Right?

DAVE JACOBS: Oh my gosh, it’s so right, yeah

BART BLAIR: We don’t really know where we’re going to end up here. We don’t really know where the plane is going to land. You know, we’re in a, you know, it’s been an interesting journey, to say the least and I don’t know if you feel the same way that I do. I’m grateful, at this particular point to not have the pressure of pastoring a church through this, although I’m trying to pastor pastors who are…

DAVE JACOBS: Yeah, me too.

BART BLAIR: And trying to be empathetic to their cause. I had one pastor that I’m working with share with me that, you know, he’s in such a challenging situation because he’s got about half the people in his church that are very, very fearful and I think the words that he used were they think that, you know, coronavirus is going to turn into a flesh eating disease and everyone is going to die.

DAVE JACOBS: Yeah zombies. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

BART BLAIR: And the other half of the congregation is saying, it’s just a conspiracy. There’s no disease. Right? And and no one’s in the middle except for him who’s trying. He’s trying to steer the ship in the middle and communicate to both sides of the congregation with differing opinions and trying to bring unity. On that note, let’s talk about unity for a second. Unity, for us, at Assist Church Expansion, unity is one of our key values. We’re really trying to help churches stay unified and work through transition in a unified manner. In what ways would you coach a pastor to use his communication gift, to use his communication platform, in terms of bringing unity and maintaining unity in a church that might have groups of people or factions that are feeling different ways about the situation?

DAVE JACOBS: Yeah, and that is probably, I think right now I’m coaching 50 pastors either once a month or twice a month. You pick the denomination. I am either working with them or have worked with them. And so, what I’m running across is, is that very same thing. I think it was yesterday, I was talking to a pastor saying, in my church, I’ve got people.. This was a Presbyterian pastor. And he said, in my church, I’ve got those on the far right saying this is all stupid and made up. And this is a conspiracy. And they’re going to, you know, inject us with a chip once we get the vaccine. And then, the other part of his church are on the far left. You know, that, you know, you’re not even a Christian unless you’re willing to wear a mask, you know, and just all. And here’s this poor pastor, right in the center. You know, most churches, most pastors are in that in-between part. You know, I mean, it’s nice if your church is 100 percent on the right. That’s easy.

DAVE JACOBS: If your church is 100 percent on the left, that’s easy. That’s no problem. What the problem is, most churches, it’s a mix. So the pastor has to figure out a way to communicate and teach and train his people about how to love each other when you disagree about significant, important things and not be afraid to really call it out as it is. In other words, if you have to say, I know that some of you think that Donald Trump has been the best president ever. And some of you think he’s been the worst president ever. How do we dwell together in unity when we have such strong feelings about stuff like that and just call it out and talk about it and teach about it. This is, I’m very concerned with, not just the corona, but, you know, everything’s going so crazy in our country. I mean, corona is huge, but it’s one of many divisive kind of topics that are hitting the church. How do we teach? How do we train? How do we encourage? How do we model to our people, loving and agreeing to disagree, respecting the other person’s opinions without feeling like we have to agree or attack? This is a big deal going on right now.

DAVE JACOBS: I think that first, the pastor has to get firm in his or her mind that I’m going to try and be a peacemaker as the pastor of the church. Then somehow, how can I pass that value onto my key leaders? And then, how can it be passed on to the normal people in our church? How can we come out of this time, a stronger church, a church that loves one another more and a church that is comfortable with having differences of opinion, even strong differences of opinion over extremely important subjects and topics? Corona is just one of them. You know, you and I could probably rattle off 10 things that, you know, Christians fight about, and it would be easy, you know. We’ve got to figure out a way, how to live together and respect and love and honor people that we disagree with. This is not an easy thing to achieve, but we have to figure out a way to move in that direction and it’s a big part of communication, isn’t it?

BART BLAIR: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I think, the first thing that I think of when you say that is the message that we send to the rest of the world who doesn’t yet know Jesus and what we’re communicating to the world by the divisiveness and the division within the context of the church versus the love that we have for one another, which is really supposed to be. That’s supposed to be the defining characteristic of the church.

DAVE JACOBS: It’s supposed to be…Oh, my gosh.

BART BLAIR: So, we have to find ways to love one another through the disagreement, through the challenge, and just one another, one another. And it is tricky, it is. It’s a very challenging season to be. So, you and I have just had a pretty interesting conversation, at least it was interesting to me. I hope it was interesting to anybody who’s following along here. And this is like one launching point out of one chapter of your 100-chapter book. I mean, you’ve written two 100-chapter books. Like, I like that. I like the way that you do that.  I know exactly what I’m getting into it when I get into it.

DAVE JACOBS: I tell people, you know people say, what I love about your books is like the chapters are so short. And I tell them, I don’t think I’m smart enough to write anything longer than a one-page chapter, you know and so but yeah…

BART BLAIR: And you cheated in this one because some chapters are actually just a complete repeat of another chapter. You said, hey, I’m just gonna repeat the thing that I said in this other chapter.

BART BLAIR: So, I’m not bagging on you, though, because you’ve written 100 more chapters a couple of times more than I’ve written a hundred chapters. So, I applaud you and I appreciate your work. And I’m recommending the book to, not just small church pastors, normal sized church pastors and big church pastors, because I think that a lot of the things that that you address in the book are things that have become sort of these “traditional expectations” for the way that a pastor is supposed to operate. Many of them take back decades or even a century or more, and some great conversation points to have with an elder group or a leadership team in a church with the pastor to say, you know, of these hundred things, you know, there might be a few things in every church that every leadership team can take a look at and and think through how they want to navigate those things.

BART BLAIR: Dave, I’m going to wrap this up now. We’re going to have an hour together on Tuesday, July 28 for our Assist Church Expansion, church revitalization, cohort call and so this is just a taste of what our friends are going to have an opportunity to experience in that call. I’m going to have some specific questions for you and we’ll do a Q&A time together and again, I just really, really appreciate your time, just giving us time.

DAVE JACOBS: I’ll tell you, it’s my honor. I’m having fun. I can’t wait to meet with your cohort. I’m really looking forward to meeting them and us to just talk about some good practical stuff. So, I can’t wait either.