The Secret to Conversations...
Conversation is easy with the members of my church. Not because they’re chatterboxes. Not because they’re “talkers.” Some of them are quiet as stone. But I sit with them anyway—and somehow the words still flow.
So what makes these conversations so alive?
One word. Love.
I love them. They love me. And when love sits at the table, talking isn’t forced—it’s oxygen. Their words pour out. My words pour back.
Take Sister Catherine. Hospital room. Her sister Betty and Betty’s daughter Pam by her side. I sat, I listened, and their stories pulled me in like a river current.
I heard how Catherine lost her husband, Chubbs—yes, that’s what he went by—in a wreck that ripped the family in two. But I also saw how suffering stitched them together into something stronger. And while she spoke of her loss, I carried my own—I’d just buried my mother. Pain recognized pain.
That family? They’re like a quilt, sewn by God’s hand, spread out for the world to take comfort in. And I got to sit beneath it.
Then there’s Tom Meadows. ER. Hospital room. Nursing home. I visited him in all three. Always in communication with Cheryl, his wife, who can carry a conversation as easy as Tom can cut a joke.
Tom and I laugh, we slice up the silence. But it’s Cheryl’s parting words that always echo the loudest: “Goodbye, Pastor John. I love you.”
There it is. The Secret Recipe. The engine that powers every word we share. Love.
This Saturday it’s Brother Jim Driver. He’s not loud. Doesn’t have to be. He’s deep water. And when you get him talking, theology flows out like gold from a mountain stream. Still waters really do run deep, and Jim’s proof.
Now here’s the revelation hitting me at sixty-one: conversations are the keynote of Christianity. We’ve made “witnessing” sound like an ambush—loud, awkward, brash. But Christ’s kind of witnessing? It’s softer. Stronger. Conversational.
Talking with Tom in the hospital led me to minister to Carlos, a stranger from Chile. Talking with Catherine, Betty, and Pam led me to pray with Catherine—while Pam prayed in tongues, and the Spirit filled that hospital room with holy fire.
That’s the heartbeat of it: a simple question, whispered at the end of a conversation— “Do you mind if I pray with you?”
That’s not technique. That’s not strategy. That’s love.
John 13:34–35 (KJVS)
A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. [35] By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Love talks. Love listens. Love prays.
And brother, love makes for some dangerous, beautiful, unforgettable conversations.