Dialogue service
If you want to participate in rebuilding the wording of Christian faith, get together for a dialogue with faithful people (former) catholic, protestant, humanist or like-minded.
In dialogues one is listening carefully to one-another. One is trying to get a feeling of what somebody else is telling, to discover how a particular story goes with one’s own experience and notions. Appreciative inquiry can become fruitful.
Issues
· Aim of living
· Forbearance
· Mutual support
· Completed life
· Autonomy of Conscience
· Love and
confidence
. Idols of charity
Self esteem
Start
You ask your grown up daughter or sun for instance for a talk about the aim of life.
"I am involved with a project to get many voices for issues on the agenda of a folk synod. If you would be able to come with two of your acquaintances, I will com with two of mine.
Four steps
1 Getting acquainted
2 Sharing of experiences
3 Common sense
4 Action
At 1 Participants introduce themselves, not professionally but for instance by telling what they think of a picture or of a statement, a song or a poem.
At 2 Participants share personal
experience and feeling at the chosen issue.
At 3 Participants can freely give utterance to common sense which they discover in the given stories.
At 4 In turn each participant is invited to to explain in which action the common sense could be used.
Opportunities
Faithful people in dialogue on six seats can create formulas of common sense on moral issues. Later more people may adopt these formulas as a mirror reflecting collective wisdom of the grassroots, common sense of Christians.
Attitude
Before starting a dialogue one should know the very difference between dialogue and discussion.
The rules for dialogues are as follows:
Tell an applicable story from your own perspective
and experience without teaching
Give one another ten minutes to work out a story completely.
Be really curious about
the experiences, thoughts and feelings of each other. Ask only open
questions
Appreciate the story of others, do not judge. Each perspective and everyone's
contribution counts.
Some people will need more time to think about their answers. Allow that participants are silent for a while.
One of the participants should accept the task to watch that every participant gets 10 minutes, that the proper attitude is maintained and that the four steps are taken.
The circular way dialogue
The effect of dialogues in sixes can be expanded by organizing a dialogue the circular way. For a start guidelines from many dialogues in sixes sessions are exposed. Each participant in a circle of 50 people or less will mark one or two of the guidelines as preferential. With the outcome of these preferences comprising statements are made.
The more faithful people have participated in the original dialogues in sixes, the nearer these statements get to the character of a voice of the people of God, of the grassroots of churches