Heart-to-Heart Ministry Requires Intentionality

Loving people in heart-to-heart ways is a nice ideal, but how do we get started? We can start by practicing a little TLC—transparency, listening, and caring.

Transparency

Remember my friendship with Ed? One of my most vivid memories was a conversation with him that happened before I came to faith. I was studying in my dorm room one afternoon and Ed knocked on the door to come in and talk.

“I have to talk with someone,” he said.

“What’s up?” I replied.

“I just lied to a good friend and my conscience feels terrible,” he admitted. “I have to talk with someone about this.”

I’m thinking, What’s the big deal? I’m not ashamed of a little lie at times to get out of doing something. This was my unregenerate self talking. While I dismissed the urgency that Ed felt, the conversation did get me thinking. I wasn’t this honest with people about my faults. While I wasn’t a practitioner of honesty, I was an admirer of Ed’s transparency.

Author Philip Yancey writes, “Relationships deepen as I trust my friends with secrets.”[1] A mark of a rich friendship is the ability to share our secrets, our lives together. Consider the example of Jesus.

“Listening is a biblical virtue.”

In Luke 22:28 (NIV), Jesus takes His disciples away from the crowds and says, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials.” Picture the scene. Jesus has experienced the triumphal entry to Jerusalem, He has kept the Passover meal with the Twelve, and a disciple has left to betray Him. It is in this context that He expresses His appreciation for the disciples standing by Him.

Did you notice that His comment to the Twelve is in the past tense (“who have stood”)? It appears that He wasn’t talking about the cross because the cross hasn’t happened yet. What was He referring to? We know that He “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Heb. 4:15). From the desert to the garden, from the road to the upper room, He constantly faced an overwhelming temptation to sin. A personal compromise would torpedo His mission. This drove Him to prayer (Heb. 5:7) and to confide in His closest companions.

What can we conclude from this? Observe what the Lord affirms with the Twelve: “You have stood by me.” Standing by someone means more than standing next to them physically. We “stand by” people to support, encourage, and love them when they face trials. How will people know when to stand by us? They know because we tell them about the trial and we ask for their help. How could the Twelve know to stand with Jesus unless He was transparent enough to let them know what He was suffering?

Transparency takes place within relationships of trust and commitment. We could describe transparency as “a willingness to expose my personal struggles, fears, and life issues inside the safety of a [loving] friendship.”[2] Transparency invites people to walk with me, as I walk with Jesus, in heart-to-heart and committed ways.

Here are some simple steps to initiate transparency:

What is a current joy that I can share with someone?

What is a current concern that I can share with someone?

Is there a temptation or sin that I need to confess or ask for prayer from someone?

What is a current source of discouragement or a challenge to share with someone?

Listening

The second part of TLC is listening. Several years ago, Peggy asked me to get my hearing checked during my next physical. “Sometimes I don’t think you’re hearing me,” was her concern. Guess what? My hearing was fine but my listening was off. I heard but did not listen.

“Empathy moves the focus off myself and onto another person.”

Listening is a biblical virtue. James puts it succinctly: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak . . .” (James 1:19 NIV). I have a plaque I keep on my desk to remind me of the importance of listening. It reads:

Listen intently. Question deeply. Speak cautiously.

How can we listen well? These simple actions help.

• Pause before answering. I’m too often quick to speak but not quick to hear. A momentary pause helps me focus on the question or statement before I feel compelled to reply.
• Ask another question. It’s a bit of a cliché that good teachers answer questions by asking questions. I return questions with questions to help understand what a person is asking. I ask questions to clarify or illustrate what the problem or inquiry is.
• Restate what someone else asked. This is called framing or reflective listening. We reflect back to a person what he or she said so that we are clear about the question or statement. Restating or reflecting back shows we are listening.

Restating or reflecting must be done cautiously and not mechanically. My friend Grady had attended a workshop on reflective listening and was trying to practice it in everyday conversations. As he sat across from a friend at breakfast, practicing reflective listening, the friend pushed his plate back and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing but I wish you would stop repeating what I just said!”

We build heart-to-heart relationships when we listen well (without merely echoing back what people say!).

Caring

In practicing a little TLC, we demonstrate care in relationships. We care by choosing to be empathetic. Empathy is “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Putting myself in the heart and mind of another means choosing to feel with them what they’re experiencing. Empathy can start with asking two basic questions: What is the other person thinking? and What is the other person feeling?

Empathy moves the focus off myself and onto another person. When I can understand how a friend thinks or feels, then I can take a practical action step and care for them.

Caring happens in small ways. Our friends Mike and Karen are struggling with some family issues. Karen unexpectedly received a phone call one day from two friends who said, “We’re taking you out to lunch today!” These friends considered the stress that Karen was under—they were empathetic—and they chose an ordinary act to show they cared. The time laughing and sharing their lives over lunch (which Karen didn’t have to pay for!) refreshed her in the midst of family challenges. She felt cared for. We engage people heart-to-heart when we care.

Heart-to-heart is up-close and personal. Educator and author Howard Hendricks wrote: “You can impress people at a distance. But you can impact them only up close. And the closer you are to them, the greater and more permanent the impact.”[3] We get close to people through a little TLC.

This Is Challenging, Important Ministry

Living heart-to-heart is costly. It means intentionally giving up time, preferences, and energy to help another grow in Christ. For private people like me, we have to open up a little bit about our private worlds. We choose to move toward others even when they may not naturally move toward us. We choose to ask questions rather than talk about ourselves. We choose to spend time with people when we might prefer some personal down time.

I often pray Paul’s “life-and-death” challenge:

For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

—2 Corinthians 5:14–15

Loving our neighbors is a life-and-death challenge. It happens in practical ways, through transparency, listening, and caring. How can you practice being a good neighbor to someone this coming week? What will it take to do it in heart-to-heart ways? How can you practice some TLC? We invite people to walk with us as we walk with Jesus, and we do it in heart-to-heart ways.

---

If you’d like to read more about Heart-to-Heart Ministry from Bill Mowry, check out the entire series of articles:

• What Is “Heart-to-Heart” Ministry?
• Heart-to-Heart Ministry Is Rooted in Our Relationship With God
• Heart-to-Heart Ministry Leads Us to Love Our Neighbors
• Heart-to-Heart Ministry Requires Intentionality
• Heart-to-Heart Ministry Requires Discipline

You can learn more about Bill Mowry here, and more about the work of The Navigators here.

---

[1] Philip Yancey, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 41.

[2] Bill Mowry, The Ways of the Alongsider: Growing Disciples Life to Life (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2016), 53.

[3] Howard Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives: Seven Proven Ways to Make Your Teaching Come Alive (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2003), 94.