Video Transcript: Discerning the Moment: Listening to God While Officiating

Henry - So today we're going to talk about discerning the moment, and this, in a sense, it's dealing with like as a chaplain now functioning as a chaplain. What  are some of our thoughts? How do we basically think about it? So let's talk  about this. A Chaplain once gave a perfect prayer but missed the moment. A  grieving teen said, I wish somebody had asked how I was doing. He officiated  but did not discern this was the heart of our session. So in some ways, you  know, we could look at it like, what happens if you miss something? You know,  because we're not going to be perfect, no. So what? Let's deal, in a sense, this  is a self care kind of question. Like, you know, in some ways, I could be at this  point in the message blown away. The last thing I want to do is be a chaplain,  because how can I learn all this? I should have done this. I should have done  that. I felt that way. We were talking about the last session, various suicides that  happened in my ministry. Again, we were both reflected. We did not have this at  the seminary we went to. In fact, we don't have yet a suicide class yet to help  minister. I mean, some classes deal a little bit with it, but, but in general, what  happens when we were not what we wanted to be? As we look back, how do we address that?  

Tom - Yeah, that's you keep coming up with heavy topics here? Well, it's  ministry training here. Yeah, ministry training. One of the things is, we should  show ourselves the same grace we show other people. Okay, there will be times when we just miss the mark. We don't understand all the dynamics of what's  happening. Whatever it is we miss the signals that maybe if we had been more  alert, we might have picked up on and responded to, but we're not going to get it we're not going to get it right. So we do our best to prepare for the situations we  might encounter. And depending what kind of a chaplain we are, what are, what  type of institution we're working in, we probably focus on certain kinds of things,  like, if I'm a hospice chaplain, I'm going to be focusing on preparing people to  die. I'm going to be focused on preparing people to say goodbyes to their loved  ones, right? I'm not going to be focusing on that. If I am a chaplain to the  motorcycle club, gotcha. So what are the things that I should be preparing for?  And when something happens that's just totally outside of that realm, I need to  give myself the grace and say there's no way I could have predicted that that  would happen, right?  

Henry - And even when you make a mistake, you are Yeah,  

Tom - I make mistakes and people, people are gracious. I find I I don't find that  people are angry because I did not do a perfect job of caring for them, right? At  least, that's what I tell myself when I can't be fully prepared because it's just  impossible to be ready for everything, then I focus on being present. What can I  do in this situation now, even though I may have missed some of the dynamics 

that were going on, even though I might not have asked the right questions, right something that's helpful in hindsight, is to get together with other chaplains, just  like any other professional field, you get together with people who are in that  same line of work, and you have a debrief, or you talk it through. This is a  situation I encountered. This is what happened. I wish I had done this. I didn't  realize this. What advice do you my peers, my friends, have for me that would  help me in the future? So we can't help but make mistakes, but we can try to  learn from our mistakes.  

Henry - A lot of ways, it comes down to developing a discernment, I mean  Jesus in the crowd, who touched me. You know, he's interested. He's engaged  Phillip, with the eunuch. You know he You see, there's just openness to trying to  understand things and to, you know, ministry happens, where prepared,  wisdom, preparation, Spirit led, listening, watch for who hasn't spoken what's not been said, when to pause and pray. In some ways, there's a curiosity journey to  being a chaplain.  

Tom - I sometimes look at it that you're sort of a detective or investigator to try  to figure out the. Pieces, and you can't beat yourself up because you'll never  figure all them out. But like, like here, who hasn't said anything, right? How  come this issue that seems to me like it would be an expected part of the  conversation? How come nobody's brought that up? Right? What's going on  here that keeps them from being willing to say that when is it appropriate just to  let a pause linger, so that people have more time to think about things we do,  critical incident stress debriefings. Anyone who's a police chaplain, a fire  department chaplain, a Coast Guard chaplain, does a lot of critical incident  stress debriefings. And what you do is you gather the people who are involved in the incident, whatever the incident was, and you kind of walk through it with  them. But what you focus on more than who said what is who didn't say  anything? Because that person who's at the end of the table and isn't saying  anything is probably somebody that you need to focus some personal attention  on afterwards. And if you're not, if you're wondering, Well, why didn't anybody  mention this? You might not want to bring it up in front of the whole group,  because they may not think it's a safe topic to talk about it, right, right? But you  might want to get like, let's say there were four or five people involved. You  might want to ask each of them, you know, I was, I was a little surprised that  nobody mentioned this, right? And they will probably know the backstory, which  is why they didn't want to mention it, because it may point to somebody who was in the group, maybe not doing their job, right? So it's the discernment is takes,  take some room. And I like those you know, just slow down. Be patient. Be  looking around the room. Use your ears, use your heart, use your eyes. What do you see? What don't you see? Be very gentle in your questioning. Don't try to 

solve everything right? Let let the process evolve. And follow the guidance of the Spirit in Scripture and try to bring people around to hope.  

Henry - You know that close of encouragement. You don't need to perform. Just be present. That theme, I just hear it again and again. Be present. You represent Jesus, tears, Job's, friend's silence, Psalms, Soul language. You know you're  there, but you're not trying to fix it all, you know, but you're there in the like, I  loved your word about a detective. So, you know, I sort of, as we're kind of  putting this whole presentation together too. Just think of some call to actions,  you know, just to practice a few things like pause 10 seconds before speaking. I  remember that was something like, I'm kind of a talkative kind of person, and I  remember one time I went to a kind of a listening group, and just that, you know, ask God, what are you doing here, but without questioning God, because in  God, but still, what are you doing that something to glorify Him and Something  to bring goodness. Can come out of this? Write down what you discern. What do you do? Practices like have you done? Practices like this?  

Tom - One of the things I've learned, and I'll throw a lot of ministers, pastors,  chaplains, under the bus here and say, we like to solve people's issues. Yes, we  want people to come to us to tell us what's going on, and we want to fix them.  And so that pause 10 seconds is something that I am still working on, because,  you know, we'll be having a conversation, you'll tell me something, and I'll think,  oh, so the reason this is upsetting for him is because of this, right? Because he  said, he said something, yeah, so I'm going to assume that I've already zeroed  in on the issue, and so I'm going to address that issue now. That may be an  issue, right? And it may be helpful that we address that issue, but you may just  not have gotten to the real issue yet, right? And I've now addressed this issue,  I've given you some marvelously wise guidance in how to deal with the issue.  And I'm going to go home and say, Boy, I'm sure glad we were able to take care  of that, and I'll have missed the whole issue because I didn't listen enough in  order and sometimes when, we're especially when we're talking about traumatic  things, like we certainly are. It takes a while for people to be to feel free and safe to talk about it, and the quicker we respond to whatever they say, the harder it's  going to be for them to build up whatever it is they need. In order to bring up that especially difficult part of what's going on for me, you know, people, the biggest  thing people have been afraid to tell me over the years in a time of trauma is  that they're very angry at God, right? And when they finally get around to daring  to say, you know, I am very disappointed that God did this and or it's laced with  profanity as they tell me what they think about God, yeah, and then they look at  me like, what's the chaplain going to do? Right? Is he going to tell me I'm going  to hell? Is he going to and when I say to them, I understand your anger with  God. And from what I read in Scripture, I believe God understands your anger. 

And then you get asked, what, and then you can talk about, again, less talking is better. But you can then talk about, you know, look at all the places in the Bible  where people complained to God that God was screwing things up, right? And  God never struck them with lightning. He just let them vent, and he let them  express their frustrations, and it was okay, because God can handle it. God can  handle our questions. He can handle our disappointment, he can handle our  anger. And in spite of all those things we say or think, he doesn't give up on us.  Wow. And then somebody will say something about, you know, God let me  down. The other person says, Well, I would have never dared say that. And then I say, so you don't think God knew that that's what you were thinking. And then,  well, I guess he did. But give people the chance to express themselves,  because they're thinking it anyway, and if they can't let it out, it's going to come  up in other ways. But I the pause of my wife has gently told me I should  probably pause 20 seconds before speaking,  

Henry - you know, it's interesting as I'm listening to this, in some ways it's  conflict with God. And conflict with God is a normal human reaction on a  spectrum of reactions. I mean, we might not like this, but we don't like this a lot,  or, you know, we don't want this to happen, but mildly, we don't but this to  happen. You know, now it's like, I don't even want to align with you, God. So in a lot of ways, it's a navigating conflict. And that takes like in human conflict takes  that way, if you have a conflict with a brother or sister or something, or a friend.  Nobody wants to try to sell you on forgiving someone until you're ready. Yeah,  this is human. So in the whole Wolf and waterfall of life, the reality is, is, is? It  can be complicated.  

Tom - It is complicated, and we should expect it to be complicated, and I like the prayer help us to be chaplains who listen to heaven before we try to speak on  Earth. Listening is really that physical presence that being there with people is  really the most important thing of chaplaincy.  

Henry - Awesome till next time