We live in a world full of facades. A student is “okay”, but just had a bad fight with their parents, “doing fine”, but just got their 3rd Saturday school earlier today, “doing nothing”, but is freaked out the girl who might or might not say yes to going to the prom.
The message here is we frequently have to use a creative approach to “help” students reveal information they protect, but are often dying for somebody to know (or not as in the case of the last example below). As leaders, we can develop skills to help students reveal this information. I’ll share a few of my own methods here, I’d love to have your comments sharing what works for you.
Look for hints
Students try to be sly sometimes. In their attempts, however, they would be more subtle if they put up a billboard outside our houses with the message they want us to know. They’re trying to get us to dig deeper into what they may be afraid or uncomfortable to tell or ask us.
Spencer (not the student’s real name) is the king of this. He’s got an incredibly bad relationship with his mom… as far as I know. I’ve never met her, I just know her through what Spencer tells me. He and I have talked for hours over the past couple of years about this relationship. I have become his happiness coach. My goal is to teach him how to have a good attitude and be the Christian example in the face of what seems to be a very lonely path for him.
When Spencer and I first met, he projected an everything-is-okay demeanor. I would not have known he was in pain. It was a subtle comment he made about his mom that opened the door to helping him. I could have easily missed it. My guess, however, is that Spencer was hurting so bad that he would have continued dropping hints until I picked up on one.
The crazy thing is hints can be dropped by accident. A student might not intentionally open the door to their pain. We, as volunteers, need to always be engaged and perceptive to what students aren’t blatantly telling us. To take this to the extreme, a common phrase uttered at funerals of suicide victims is, “looking back, I can see the signs he was in trouble.” We need to pick up on those signs so we can minister to them.
Clarify comments (AKA – don’t let ‘em get away with whitewashing a story)
Ever feel like a student isn’t telling you the “whole” story? Clarifying comments is the process by which we draw out the truth behind the white-washed story. Students oftentimes want to appear the angel while painting their parents or teachers as the villains. We all know there’s typically enough blame to spread around.
Toby (again, not his real name) had a rough relationship with his dad. It was definitely a two way street. However, it took me a few months to discover how dysfunctional his relationship with his dad really was. Toby told me what he wanted me to know.
One year, we used Toby’s house as a cabin for our discipleship retreat. We slept there at night and returned to the church during the day for the sessions. At night, Toby, his dad and I had some very revealing discussions. I got to see them on their best behavior, but still needling each other a little. I could see a lack of respect on the part of Toby and a repressive side of his dad.
From that experience, I learned that whenever a student complained about an authority figure, to ask lots of questions that would pull out details of what happened. If a thought didn’t seem to be the “whole” story, I’d pry until the truth came out. This experience has made me a much more effective leader. The students benefit because when I know the real issue we’re dealing with, I can give wise targeted counsel. When I only know what they want me to believe, the best I can do is affirm or address what I they choose to reveal.
Take the side door
With students, sometimes asking a seemingly unrelated question will give us the answer to the question we really want to ask. Taking some time to think through the conversation ahead of time will help us creatively plan how to lead the student down the road of sharing we want them to travel.
The best example I have of this happened because of a lie one of my students told me. This became one of those sweet situations where he got busted by a turn of events that went completely the wrong way for him. It was pretty funny.
Johnny (not his real name) called one day to apologize for not being at small group the night before. He said he and his mom had been in a car accident. They were both fine, the accident wasn’t very bad, but that was the reason he wasn’t there. We talked a while longer. I told him I was glad they were okay. That would have been the end of this story if his dad and I weren’t getting together that afternoon.
The crazy thing is I hadn’t talked to his dad, Mike (name changed to protect the guilty son), in months. We are good friends, we just hadn’t seen each other. That day, however, 20 minutes after his son called to tell me about the accident, Mike showed up at my house. As soon as he came in the door, he said, “I left my phone in the car. I need to go get it because my son & wife were just in a fender bender. He needed his phone just in case they called.”
When Mike came back inside, I said, “You mean the accident that happened yesterday.”
Mike: “No. It was just about 30 minutes ago.”
Me: “Were they in another one yesterday?”
Mike: “No.”
A few minutes later, the guilty son calls. Mike asks Johnny what he told me earlier. At the time, Johnny didn’t know I was with his dad. Johnny told his dad everything Johnny wanted him to believe… his dad repeating every word for clarification. Then Mike handed the phone to me. When Johnny heard the first word from my mouth, the phone went dead.
A few minutes later, Johnny called his dad back with a fresh story to explain the “confusion” and how he was misunderstood and that there wasn’t a lie involved.
Here’s where the side-door question came in. We weren’t going to get Johnny to admit to a lie by asking him if he lied. He was just going to continue trying to explain how we were confused. To get to the undeniable truth, I told Mike to ask Johnny, “What did you want Dennis to believe by what you told him?” The only logical answer being, “The accident happened the day before which caused him to miss small group.”
This was a great lesson about lying for Johnny. It was also a great lesson for me about coming at an issue from a different angle to get at the truth.
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