I was recently asked what I do as the canon for pastoral support and stumbled a bit in my answer. Yes, I work with parish councils teaching them communication skills and effective ways of engaging with change. I help churches prepare for new things they see on the horizon. I work with groups who are clarifying new directions in ministry and projects. I also help people — priests, leadership and congregants — work through things that are going or have gone askew in their parish. However, the best way I can summarize the work I do is this: I help people have better conversations.
I used to jokingly tell people I worked as a translator (I was a lawyer and a mediator). We’ve all seen someone speak louder and slower to a non-English speaker in the hopes that repeating the same words in a different manner will help the listener. Sometimes this does help. However, when you speak the same language and your message isn’t landing, you need a variety of techniques to communicate. That is where I can be helpful.
In long standing relationships, sometimes people hear what they are expecting rather than what is actually being said. Perhaps the speaker and listener used to have a shared understanding of words and phrases, but those same phrases no longer mean the same thing to each person. In other situations, an assumption is made that parties share common values when that isn’t the case. In their enthusiasm, someone over-eggs the pudding on a new idea and everyone backs away because the idea comes off as too overwhelming. Some people are too abrupt in their communication and others are too wordy. A translator that can help catch the speaker’s meaning and reword it so that a listener can connect with it, creating a common language for understanding.
I love working with this diocese, helping people have better conversations. Translation work takes a variety of forms. Sometimes it means listening deeply to help people clarify what really matters to them. Sometimes it is helping people gain skills to speak about what is important to them. Sometimes it is offering a differently worded version of the original content that the listeners can connect with. And sometimes it is jokingly saying things bluntly to help make a point!
Excitingly, I’ve been asked to work with a parish council for the first 20 minutes of their monthly meeting for the next few months because they want to deepen their leadership and communication skills. Disappointingly, a different parish leadership group declined to work with me because they thought involving me in some conversations meant that something was wrong with how they are doing things — my presence felt like a personal critique of them. And in between, I’ve had the honour of hearing brave people talk about what feels good and what feels weird, the excitement that comes with clarity of purpose and a solid plan, the second hand relief of people realizing it is healthy to withdraw from things that no longer bring them life, the joy of watching breakthroughs in communication and friendships re-established, and the life giving shared humanity that is experienced when people feel listened to, respected and honoured, whether they are in agreement or disagreement. I would be grateful for your ongoing prayers for this work of translation in our diocese.
