Some disagreements about faith have stopped being conversations. You know the opening line, you know the rebuttal, and you both leave a little more sure you were right. This study gives you seven days to change your side of that pattern with one real person: a sibling, a coworker, a parent, a friend from college. The goal by Sunday is not to win them over. The goal is to become someone they can actually think out loud with.
The week is spread out on purpose. A one-time tip asks you to behave differently in a single heated moment, which is when old habits are strongest. Here, preparation comes before the conversation and review comes after it, so you can learn from your own reactions once the heat is gone. You can work alone with a notebook, or with a small group that meets at the start and end of the week. In a group, nobody needs to name their person or describe the disagreement.
The material comes from a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation in which Malik Blade interviewed Lisa Fields about why she built public discussions of contested questions as conversations rather than debates. Near the end, Blade asked what she would tell someone facing a hard conversation in their own life. Her answer shapes this week.
Before you start
Choose someone you will realistically see or talk with this week, and someone with whom disagreement is safe for you. Then write your own position in a few sentences, and under it, why you hold it. Fields put this first. She warned that “There are so many people who say they have a belief and can’t articulate why they believe it” and described people who enter hard conversations unprepared and come out doubting themselves because the other person simply had more information.
This step is not about winning ammunition. A person who has never examined their own reasons listens defensively, because every point from the other side feels like a threat. Mark each reason as studied or inherited. You will come back to this list on Day 6.
Three texts to read first
James 1:19. “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath:” James writes moral instruction to believers, and his three phrases form an order. Hearing comes first and fast. Speaking and anger come later and slowly. Notice which one you tend to reverse.
Proverbs 18:13. “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” This is wisdom literature, an observation about how life tends to go rather than a law with a penalty. A few verses later, Proverbs 18:17 adds that the first person to state a case seems right until someone else examines it. Both sayings assume you might be missing something.
Luke 24:17. The risen Jesus joins two grieving disciples who do not recognize him. “And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?” This is narrative. It describes one encounter; it does not command that every conversation begin with a question. Still, Jesus knew far more than they did, and he invited their version first, confusion and sorrow included, before he opened the Scriptures to them.
Observation prompt: In each passage, who speaks first, and what is the listener doing while the other person talks?
The week
Day 1: Restate their view until they would sign it
Write the other person’s position as fairly as you can. Fields described her aim for public panels in words that fit a kitchen table just as well: “let’s think about what you actually think about this, not what I think you think about this.” Blade offered a sharp test from a debate professor who made students argue the side they rejected: “if you’re gonna reject something first, take the time to understand it.” If you are unsure your summary would pass that test, you have already learned something.
Day 2: Retire one label
Name one category you use for this person: the church they left, the school they attended, the voices they follow online. Fields said people get boxed in by their schooling and their groups, and that her own friendships proved the boxes wrong. Her conclusion: “You have to engage them to see what they actually believe.”
Here is why that matters for your next conversation. A label does not just misjudge someone. It writes your questions for you. If you have filed your brother under “deconstructing,” you will ask questions designed to confirm the file, and he will feel it. So today, write one thing about this person the label would not have predicted, and then one question the label would never have prompted you to ask.
Day 3: Write three real questions
Fields observed, “I look at the number of times in scriptures that Jesus responded to questions with questions.” She connected this to her conviction that people sometimes need to reach an answer themselves. Jesus also answered plainly at many points, so this is not a rule against answering. It is a reason to prepare questions with as much care as you prepare points.
Draft three questions where any honest answer would teach you something. Cross out any question where you have already planned your reply to their answer; that is a trap, and it rebuilds the debate you are trying to leave. Fields explained what a debate does to its participants: they arrive “going in saying, I gotta win and I can’t look a fool.” A trap question puts the other person in exactly that position.
One question worth including comes from another of her observations. Rather than assuming someone rejects God’s word, she said, “maybe they got to this view because of a series of personal events that happen.” Asking how they came to see things this way gives that history room to surface.
Day 4: Have the conversation and listen for the deeper issue
Talk in person if you can, or at least where you can see each other. Fields said theological conversations over text tend to go badly, and that “one of the things that face-to-face conversation does is reminds you that the person you’re disagreeing with is human just like you.”
Ask at least two of your questions before making any point of your own. Fields distinguished active listening from waiting for the other person to take a breath so you can jump in. Her reason is practical: “oftentimes some of the information that you have is irrelevant to the person” because their first question may sit on top of a deeper one. Listen for what keeps coming up, or what they return to when the topic shifts.
Day 5: Review what stung
Write down anything they said that rattled or offended you. Fields counseled patience here: “sometimes they may say something and it may be offensive to you, but really they’re just processing. They’re not trying to be offensive.” This is the day the seven-day arc earns its keep. In the moment, a sharp comment demands a reply. A day later, you can ask whether it was an attack or a person working out loud through something painful, and you can decide whether to raise it next time instead of reacting to it.
Day 6: Test your own position
Return to the reasons you wrote before the week began. Did anything they said expose a weak reason, or show you a strong one you had not noticed? Fields said, “if your position can’t be tested, then you probably don’t believe in it.” A tested conviction may come out firmer, more precise, or more humble. Note which, and why.
Day 7: Plan the next conversation, not the verdict
Fields was realistic: “realize that it’s a process and you aren’t gonna change somebody’s mind in one conversation usually.” Write down one thing you want to understand better and one question you did not get to ask. You do not need resolution. In her words elsewhere in the interview, “We might not agree at the end of the conversation” and the relationship can still be stronger for having had it.
Testing the practice, and knowing its limits
One objection deserves an honest hearing: maybe this is just a smarter persuasion technique. You listen so they lower their guard, then you deliver your point. That can be true of the person doing it, so test yourself rather than the method. Fields described what changed her own posture, saying “I didn’t always have this posture,” and what she learned in a room full of people from other traditions was an exchange: “I’m trying to understand your perspective and you’re trying to understand mine.” The check is simple. Would you count the week worthwhile if you understood them better and nothing else happened? If not, you are still debating, just more quietly.
The practice also has limits, and Fields’s advice does not erase them. Her counsel to be thick-skinned concerns people who say hard things while processing. It is not a call to absorb contempt or mistreatment. If the other person mocks you, refuses to let you finish a sentence across several attempts, or uses faith talk to control or demean you, you can pause the subject and say why. If a conversation feels unsafe, end it. If the relationship involves abuse, this exercise is not the next step; the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233.
And if the other person simply does not reciprocate, that is not proof the practice failed. You may be the only one listening for a while. Fields held both sides together when she told her moderators, “We’re not gonna run away from the issue, but we’re not going to demonize a person for their beliefs either.” You can keep your conviction, keep your dignity, and leave the door open without forcing it.
Questions for discussion or reflection
- When you listed your reasons, which felt studied and which felt inherited? What would it take to examine one inherited reason?
- How close did your Day 1 restatement come to what the person actually believes? What did you get wrong, and where did the mistake come from?
- What question did your Day 2 work produce that the label would never have prompted? What happened when you asked it, or what kept you from asking?
- James orders hearing, speaking and anger. Which was hardest this week, and was it because of something they said or something you were trying to get across?
- Did the week test your position? If it changed, was it firmer, more precise, more humble, or something else?
- Looking back on the week, what do you think the other person learned about you, if anything?
For a group meeting at the end of the week, begin with questions 2 and 3, which focus on the practice rather than the people involved. Let anyone pass. A participant who reports that the week went badly has still brought something useful, and the group can receive it with the same patience the week asked for.
A question to carry forward
The two disciples on the Emmaus road were sad and mistaken, and Jesus still asked them to tell it their way first. What do you now know about your person that you would not have learned if you had spoken first? What do you still not know?