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Listening to God and One Another:
A Journey toward Spiritual Conversation and Communal Discernment
Last week, I had the privilege of joining Pastor Ada and Tiffany Chen for a five-day retreat at the Ignatius Spiritual Formation Centre in Montreal on “Leading Spiritual Conversations and Communal Discernment.” Looking back, I believe it was no coincidence that the three of us attended together, but a gracious act of divine guidance.
The retreat centre provided a beautiful and peaceful setting for listening to God. The three teachers also created a rhythm that was highly conducive to learning and spiritual formation. Instead of filling our days with lengthy lectures, they would teach for about thirty minutes and then give us an hour and a half to meditate, share, practise, and listen—to the Holy Spirit and to one another. Afterwards, we would gather for questions, clarification, and further reflection.
The twenty participants were divided into four groups of five which enabled us to know one another more deeply and to develop trust through honest sharing and attentive listening. We were not simply learning a method; we were experiencing a different way of being present with God and with one another.
One of the most meaningful lessons was the importance of “Holy Listening.” Holy listening is much more than remaining quiet while waiting for our turn to speak. It is the spiritual practice of becoming fully present to another person, believing that the Holy Spirit may speak to us through what that person shares.
We were given five practical skills summarized by the word SPACE:
S — Silence: creating inner and outer stillness so that we can receive what another person is sharing.
P — Pace: slowing down and resisting the urge to respond too quickly.
A — Attentiveness: offering our undivided attention to the person before us.
C — Check-in: noticing and, when appropriate, gently clarifying what we are hearing.
E — Echoing: reflecting back significant words, feelings, or movements that we have heard.
Together, these practices form the SPACE we offer one another—a safe and sacred space in which people can speak honestly, listen deeply, and become attentive to the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit.
This kind of listening requires humility. We must temporarily set aside our own assumptions, judgments, and preferred solutions. Instead of asking, “How should I respond?” we learn to ask, “What is this person truly sharing, and what might the Spirit be saying to us through this person?”
Within our small groups, we practised three rounds of spiritual conversation. Each round helped us move from individual reflection toward communal discernment.
In the first round, each person shared what God had placed upon his or her heart. The rest of the group listened in silence and with attentiveness. We were invited to believe that the sharing of another person could become a channel through which the Spirit speaks to us. This belief changes the way we listen. We no longer listen merely to evaluate, agree, disagree, or prepare our response. Instead, we listen with joyful anticipation, wondering what more God may reveal through the experiences and insights of others.
In this round, our responsibility is simply to pay attention and hear what is actually being said. Each person begins with “me”—my experience, my prayer, my struggle, or my encounter with God. Yet as we listen prayerfully, an individual sharing may become a source of personal grace for someone else.
After everyone had shared, we entered the second round. This was when the “we” began to emerge. Each person reflected on what had been heard in the first round and shared what had touched, moved, challenged, or consoled him or her. Our reflections needed to connect with what others had actually shared; this was not the time to introduce a new topic or return our attention to ourselves.
The second round revealed how well we had listened during the first. To speak meaningfully, we had to remain focused on others, receiving their words with humility and allowing their experiences to enter our own hearts. This was a significant learning experience. We began to recognize that God’s grace was not limited to what any one person had received. As the different sharings touched and illuminated one another, we moved from “me” toward “we”—from personal grace toward the beginnings of common grace.
The third round became a form of mini-discernment. Having listened to each person and then reflected on what had touched us collectively, we asked:
What has the Holy Spirit been saying to us as a group? Where do we sense convergence? What common invitation, consolation, concern, or direction appears to be emerging among us?
At this stage, the focus was no longer primarily on what God was saying to me, but on what God might be saying to us. Through prayerful listening, recurring themes and shared movements began to emerge. What started as individual experiences could become a common grace given to the whole group. The movement could therefore be described in this way:
“Me” → Personal Grace → “We” → Common Grace
Spiritual conversation begins with personal sharing, but it does not remain there. Through holy listening, what God gives to one person may become grace for others. As the community listens together, personal grace can gradually converge into common grace, helping the group discern the invitation and direction of the Holy Spirit.
The retreat solidified much of what we have been learning and practising within our Deacons Board over the past ten years as we seek to build a spiritually discerning leadership community. The teaching gave us a clearer framework, while the repeated practice allowed us to experience how holy listening and spiritual conversation can lead a group toward communal discernment.
During the retreat, I sensed afresh that this experience is connected to a calling God has been unfolding in my life for more than forty years. God first called me to cultivate spiritual friendships—relationships in which people could share honestly, encourage one another, and grow together in Christ. He later called me to help build small-group communities shaped by deep personal sharing, mutual accountability, authenticity, humility, and biblical truth.
During the first twenty-five years of this journey, I learned the importance of developing our relationship with God and with one another. Over the past fifteen years, God has led me to take a further step: from spiritual friendship toward spiritual conversation, and from spiritual conversation toward communal discernment. I now see these as movements along one spiritual journey:
We begin by developing a personal relationship with God and genuine relationships with one another. These relationships then deepen into spiritual friendships in which we learn and grow together as an authentic community, much like the early church in Acts 2. Among spiritual friends, we learn to engage in spiritual conversations—not merely discussing church matters, but prayerfully listening for God’s presence and movement. Through such conversations, we become increasingly able to practise communal discernment, seeking together “nothing but the will of God.”
This calling is not only personal. I believe it coincides with God’s calling for SGBC and our leadership community.
As a congregational Baptist church, we do not want our life together to resemble a merely secular democracy in which decisions are determined only by competing preferences or majority opinion. We desire to be a Christ-centred, Holy Spirit-led community that is deeply grounded in Scripture, committed to making disciples, and highly sensitive to the voice and movement of the Holy Spirit.
The early church was able to say: “It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us…” (Acts 15:28)
What a beautiful picture of communal discernment. The believers listened, shared, wrestled with difficult questions, and finally recognized together the direction of the Holy Spirit. Their decision was neither simply human nor detached from human participation. They listened to God by listening prayerfully to one another.
The teachers at the Centre carry a vision to develop a wider movement—equipping Christian leaders to listen more deeply to God and one another and helping leadership teams practise communal discernment. We feel especially blessed to have joined them near the beginning of this movement. Many participants also brought valuable experiences and resources that may help us continue learning together beyond the retreat. The Centre plans to offer further retreats and courses to deepen this formation and, eventually, to equip some participants to teach and guide others.
My prayer is that SGBC will continue growing into such a community—a church where spiritual friendships flourish, where we provide SPACE for one another, and where our conversations are marked by silence, patience, attentiveness, humility, and love. May we become people who listen before reacting, discern before deciding, and surrender our personal preferences for the sake of Christ and His mission.
This five-day retreat was not simply another learning experience. For me, it was both a confirmation and an invitation: a confirmation of the path along which God has been leading us, and an invitation to go deeper. May the Holy Spirit teach us to listen, to God and to one another, so that personal grace may become common grace, “me” may become “we,” and together we may discern and faithfully follow nothing but the will of God.