Hi Mark, Still loving this thread, and one of the Sola Panel’s I ALWAYS read (what does that say about my personality lol).

I do keep trying to work on things in my personality that may be sinful, but it’s hard. Often the rebukes have been intensely wounding and incredibly painful.

Any ideas of ways to gently “calling account for sin” in others?

Dear Georgina,

I have, over the last couple of days, been mulling over your request for some ideas on how to gently “calling account for sin” in others.  I am very bad at giving generic ideas - I work by developing a large group of key ideas and thoughts that govern how I deal with an issue, and then work out the concrete and particular ‘hows’ on a case by case basis.  I tend to reinvent the wheel regularly for new situations.

I think what I probably need to do is write up what I think is involved in challenging someone and submit it to Sola Panel as a blog (or two-part blog).  A kind of worked example of some of what this series looks like in one area.  I’ll try and do that this week or next before returning to the next entries in the ‘main series’.

In the meantime, here are a few concrete ideas that I think are useful most of the time.

1. Make sure the person has a reason to trust what you are saying.  Calling on someone to change, especially by confronting their conscience is a Big Deal to that person.  They will generally be open to what you are saying to the degree that they have confidence in you.  Either you have to give good arguments, have respect as an authority in the field (e.g. be on staff at the church), be the kind of person that people trust because you’re seen as genuine and good natured, or the like. 

The trick here is not to tell them why they should listen to you.  You can’t summon respect.  You need to earn it.  You don’t need to earn huge amounts - just enough to warrant listening to the point you want to make. So don’t hold back ‘because you don’t have the right’: genuine concern expressed with just basic sensitivity is usually more than enough.

2. Most Christians challenge others ‘cheaply’.  It doesn’t cost the person making the challenge much. It puts the onus on the person being challenged to hear it well - little effort is taken to make sure it is said in a way that makes it easy to hear it well.  The challenge comes down from lofty heights.

To the degree that you are asking them to do something hard and personally confronting, it should take the same cost from you.  Otherwise you aren’t bearing one another’s burdens - you are just handing an extra one to someone without really doing anything costly to yourself to help lift it.  Calling someone to repent is very serious - and that should make demands of you in the way you go about it.  Make it your aim to make it hard for you so as to make it easier for them.

3. Listen well. Work hard at listening.  It goes to point 1 - if you have nothing else going for you, people will tend trust someone who they feels have ‘heard’ and ‘gotten’ them.

It also makes it far more likely that you will saying something genuinely useful, genuinely confronting and in a genuinely gentle way.  A person who makes a serious effort to listen is someone less likely to misunderstand the situation, why it has arisen, and what needs to be done to change it.  Bad listeners are generally bad pastors.

The more emotions are likely to be engaged beyond the point where they are helpful (the heat overshadowing the light) they need to be dampened down so as to allow meaningful discussion to take place.  You working hard at listening does that, because it offers no ‘hard surface’ for the emotions to build up on and be reinforced through feedback.  Someone has to work hard to get more and more angry with someone who is genuinely listening to them.

4. Have a sense of what repentance is going to look like, but prepared to adjust it in light of what the conversation reveals. 

Is this something where there has to be a big ‘all or nothing’ change right now (“I really think you shouldn’t be planning to murder the church organist”), or is it something that is going to happen in small steps (“why don’t you aim to only insult five people each day, rather than everyone you meet”).

Does the person need an action plan on how to change?  Do they need to be reminded of how the behaviour is either incompatible with our salvation in Christ, or how our salvation in Christ makes it possible to change that thing?

What does repentance look like for this person?  Greed will be different for the student, the businessman/businesswoman, the blue collar worker, the stay at home housewife.  Repentance will look different as well.

5.  The best context for positive change is one where unconditional acceptance is partnered with very high demands.  So the grace that teaches us to say no to ungodliness needs to be both the content of challenge, and the substance of our manner in making the challenge.  The person should feel simultaneously safe and being called on to do something hard.

I think those five are right up there on my list of ‘practical how tos’ in calling someone to change.

Is that what you were looking for?  To get more specific still, I think I might need some scenarios to respond to.

Hi Georgina,

That’s fine - my internet involvement is sufficiently erratic due to what’s going on in the real world, that I’m not going to complain about tardiness in someone else.

Glad you found it helpful, will be praying for your conversation. 

I think, unless you have strong feelings otherwise, I might not go ahead with the post on how to challenge someone at this stage.  I think I’d rather finish this series properly first, and maybe do something like that on it’s own, or in connection to a broader range of ideas than just this series.