We must cultivate a culture that allows dialogue. Evangelicals have been criticized–many times rightly so–for being dogmatic and closed-minded. For too long we have been doing all the talking, without any dialogue. We are now serving new generations that have serious trust issues, and trust is not earned by takling just one-way. We must disarm this criticism and regain trust. We need to encourage, not discourage, people to think, to question, to discover. Why are we so afraid of encouraging people to think for themselves?…At the very least, we need to constantly encourage our listeners to check out our teaching for themselves, measuring them against Scripture. We must avoid, at all costs, giving the impression that we have all the answers and they don’t. We may indeed have answers, but if we appear to be arrogant about it, we’ll lose our voice. We need to encourage people to think. We need to encourage dialogue, even encourage people to challenge what we say. This can disarm people and prompt them to study more to see if what we are saying is true…We must be creative and have dialogue as a core value for how we communicate to and teach emerging generations. This is a huge necessity for being a missional leader in the emerging culture.
I agree completely with the point. I would only add that, "yep, this is a general truth." That is, this is not only for a theological context, an emerging culture, etc.. This is always true when working with people. Leaders must find ways to help people learn, to think, and to draw their own conclusions. That doesn't mean any conclusion is ok, it means we have to be smart as we guide folks.
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