David:          Our Mains household presently consists of three members. That’s David, myself of course, and Karen, who’s here with me and our adult son, Joel.

Karen:          Would you believe each of the three of us is writing a book? How often does that happen?

David:          Not a single book. All three of us are working on together, but three books with each of us doing his or her own thing.

Karen:          We’ll talk about those three books in the rest of this visit.

Intro:             Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:          The three of us, David, Karen, and Joel, are all determined to finish our separate writing projects this year, 2022. What’s Joel working on, Karen?

Karen:          Well, Joel is working on a novel. Now, let me explain. His background is in documentary work and film work and television. In fact, we brag about this all the time. Sorry to be redundant, but he’s received five Emmys for some of his documentary work. But he’s taking another path into the creative process and he’s writing a novel.

David:          And he’s hiding out at our house.

Karen:          He’s hiding out at our house. We try not to bother him. So, he’s been working diligently on that.

David:          I would like to say what it’s about, but he’s not letting anyone read it.

Karen:          Well, I know it’s a historical novel and I’ve read first of the couple of the chapters, the early ones, but I haven’t kept up with his writing. And I think that’s not necessary. He’s revising and cutting things back. He says it’s too long and he’s not done. But in that process, you do as a writer, do that work.

David:          I would say he’s disciplined.

Karen:          Yes, he’s very disciplined.

David:          And what he’s writing is much longer than what I’m writing, I don’t know.

Karen:          What are you writing?

David:          Well, I’m the furthest along in this process, which could mean that I’m writing a much shorter book and that is true. I have passion about what I’ve written. In fact, I would say, Karen, I’m at the end of the writing process. I’m not going to fiddle with it anymore. But there’s a huge need to come to the reality that the church is not a praying church. I’m talking in general terms. I’m not talking specific churches. There may be exceptions, but generally speaking, around the country, we are a prayerless church.

Karen:          We are a prayerless church and a prayerless nation. I just pulled an article that was written about pastors. Why do we have so little prayer in the church? And the point was made that when committees are looking for a new pastor, there’s a whole list of things. Are they good communicator? Do they work well with people? Are they creative? Are they a good administrator? There’s a whole list of things. But in most of these search descriptions, there isn’t the quality that they are also a man of prayer.

David:          A man or woman of prayer.

Karen:          Man or woman of prayer. Thank you for the correction. And so, I began to do some research on what was the state of, are we just feeling this? But the Pew Foundation has done a lot of work in gathering statistics on prayer and prayerlessness. So, they have found that there is just a gaping discrepancy in the kind of prayer that does go on. Earnest, sincere prayer, not just the casual sort of stuff you’re supposed to do, but earnest, sincere prayer. There’s a discrepancy among people of faith in our country.

David:          I don’t think people would say this, but it’s really true. That most people, they look at prayer as kind of, yeah, we agree with that.

Karen:          We’re supposed to do that.

David:          Now let’s talk about the important things.

Karen:          Yeah. Right.

David:          It’s like we can move the church forward without that prayer base and it’s not going to happen.

Karen:          We’re not going to see the huge spiritual results without it. Now your book is titled, Prayer Vigilantes.

David:          Yeah, I’ve tried to use a word picture that is new to people. And I’ve tried to write it and really pack it, but not make it too long. So, if you make it too long and people aren’t going to read it.

Karen:          But that title indicates an urgency, an urgent need for prayer vigilantes. And you refer back to the vigilante movements that were current in American history when the West was expanding westward and there weren’t really firm legal, the courts, the legal system set up.

David:          The policing, there wasn’t time to establish this. So, if someone, which is the illustration I use all through the book, Rob DeBang, if you’re going to catch those people to maintain order, there had to be volunteers that came in as the vigilantes. That word has a negative to it.

Karen:          It can be negative, but you’re using it in a very positive way. And I’m very creative with it because I do think we have stereotypes about prayer, that kind of credo. “Oh, yeah, we need to do that” sort of response. And so, I think this is a very, really good title, good example of being creative in your verbiage.

David:          I’m pushing people to make a decision at the end of the book as to what they’re going to do by way of response. I feel good about it. I feel I’ve delivered my soul. And then I don’t know if it’s the enemy or who, but I continue to ask.

Karen:          Start to question it. Yeah. Is it worth it?

David:           Yeah, but you even got to read the crazy thing. You know, I think everybody feels that way when they write a book. It’s a huge effort. And then, you know, what’s it going to amount to?

Karen:           And so, you’re struggling right now with how do we publish it? How do we market it? We’ve done a lot of self-publishing. We have a publishing arm in Mainstay Media. So anyway, you could use prayer right now for wisdom and doors to open for you to get this out into the general society.

David:          Yeah, because I’m into the copywriting thing, the type setting, the cover art, need to write a bio as to who I am.

Karen:           All that stuff. Yeah.

David:           Let’s switch for a second. Talk about your book. What’s it about and what first got you interested in the topic?

Karen:          Well, the book is titled, “Tell Me: I Want to Hear, I Want to Understand.” And I am happy with that title. I’m trying to track how it began, but years ago, maybe 10 years back, I had a group of people who were working with me under the Hungry Souls and of the Mainstay Ministry. That was my sort of department. And we set ourselves up to experiment with tools that would help contemporary Christians grow in their faith. One of the things that we began to do was to have listening groups.

I’m going to go back in my journals and see if I can recall why this even started. I had really never been in a listening group myself, and I have about 700 names on a small list that I send out notices to and see if any of them want to join with me and help develop this tool. So, we had a group that gathered, and that group actually went for 18 months.

David:          When you say group, you’re talking about how many people?

Karen:          Three to four people.

David:          So, it wasn’t a large group?

Karen:          No, it’s a small group. And we met, let’s say, every other week. And we developed the listening group format by actually doing it. And out of that first group, then there grew an architecture that defines what a listening group is. You have three to four people. You meet regularly. The group can decide how frequently they want to meet every other week, every week, once a month. Any of those are fine.

David:           And what happens when the group meets?

Karen:           Well, it’s a simple architecture, but it happens to be one of those things you fall into, and you say, “This is beyond anything I could ever think up on my own.” Because the impact of it is remarkable, and I’ll explain why.

So, what we do is we gather. We have some chit chat when we gather. In all the listening groups that I ran, they were not people who knew one another. They were just people who signed up randomly to be a part of the listening group.

David:          And mostly in this area?

Karen:          In this area, because they had to come together. And they were all Christians.

So, we would gather, and I as a leader of the group would make sure we attended to what became the architecture of the listening group. And then we’d go into silence. And after a few moments of silence in which I felt that we’d had time to sort of take a deep breath and slow down and think about what we wanted to say and then get in touch with a prayerful part of ourselves, I would say, “Okay, who’s ready to share?” And there’d be a little silence, and then someone would say, “Oh, I think I can begin.”

So, one person would begin to talk about their life, whatever they chose to talk about. The rest of us just maintained silence. We’re not to interrupt them. We weren’t to comment on something they’ve said. We might laugh. We certainly were empathetic if they went to tears, which happened quite a bit, because they’re talking about things in their lives they’re working with. But you don’t rush in and say, “There there, now now,” and put your arms around them and say, “Let’s pray.” You just do not interrupt that process.

And they’d talk for 10, 15, 20 minutes, depending on what they wanted to share. And they were basically saying, “This is what’s happening in my life right now.”

David:          So, it could be good.

Karen:          It could be good. It could be painful. It could be filled with tears. Our architecture that we developed didn’t allow us to interrupt them at any time in that sharing. So, they were really attended to. And I actually encouraged people not to take notes because your eye contact then is broken. But it’s okay if you do, but I’d rather that they didn’t, that they just really listen.

David:          So, you’re sitting in a living room or on a table, wherever you want.

Karen:          Yeah, wherever you want to be disturbed.

David:           What if a phone ring?

Karen:          We just leave it. No one answers it. First person shares and then we go back into silence again. In that second silence, then we try and hear those things that rise in our soul that say, “Here’s a great question to ask.” And then we will begin asking questions of that person who shared.

Now the interesting thing to me as we developed this was this was the hardest part of the listening group process. People are not used to asking questions of one another. They do, but not in an in-depth level as easily.

David:          Well, they are not used to listening to somebody talk …

Karen:          … for 10 or 15 minutes either. And then we would begin to ask those questions. I found that the most impacting part of the listening group experience for many of those people were hearing their own answers that they gave back to the questions that had been asked of them. No one had asked those questions of them before. They hadn’t had people who would listen to them in this kind of uninterrupted way.

David:          So, they’re going to take turns?

Karen:          Yes. And then when they’re done, then we would go back into silence again. And that same process would repeat itself. The second person then would say, “Well this is what’s going on in my life or this is what my concern is.” Or “This is the thing I’m struggling with.” Or “This is what I’m glad about.” Sometimes we don’t have enough people.

David:          Something good happened.

Karen:           Something good happened. We don’t have people who listen to that either.

Well, we would do all four people. Most of the time we had four people. Now I was the leader of the architecture making sure we did it correctly. And every so often they’d say, “Well we have some time, Karen. Why don’t you share this time?” But most of the time I didn’t.

What I was amazed with was how warm, I just felt filled with a kind of tenderness and sweetness, even when I didn’t share. And so, we have a dear friend, Dr. Roger Veith, who is a neuroscientist, he’s a brain surgeon. And we “happened”, I’m putting quotes around there because I don’t think anything just happens, happened to be with him and with his wife. We love getting to know them and developing this friendship.

And so, I was just sharing about the listening groups and what kind of profound impact I felt I was experiencing with these other people. And he said, “Karen, do you know what’s happening neurologically?”

So, according to my friend, the brain scientist, the neuroscientist, and they could study this now because of the brain scan apparatus that they now have. When a person feels heard and understood, the neurological system acts up and I don’t have the scientific terminology for it. I can find it, but I don’t use it. It’s like the whole body has a little happy dance that’s going on. And I’ve asked people how they feel when they’re heard in these circumstances and they’ll say, “Oh, I feel warm all over.” Well, that’s the neurological system responding to this.

David:          That’s the happy dance.

Karen:          The happy dance. Or I feel held. These are actually words I’ve heard from people in these groups. Or I feel like someone’s put a warm blanket around me.

David:          It’s because nobody has listened to them for 15 minutes.

Karen:          15 or 20 minutes.

David:           It doesn’t talk.

Karen:          It really attends, doesn’t interrupt. But I think that because we were getting a multiple effect because even when I had not shared, when other people shared, I felt warm and embraced. And like there was a happy dance going on in me. So, even the listener in this process receives neurological impact from it.

Now, isn’t that extraordinary? It’s absolutely extraordinary.

David:           So, you’re putting this into a book.

Karen:          I’m writing a book about listening groups. And I start with we need to be known, and we need to know that we are known.

David:          Now you’re talking about experiments that went on with believers. Are you writing this for a Christian audience?

Karen:          I’m not going to hide the fact that it’s coming out of faith-based community, but my application will be to any reader who happens to come from whatever background or has whatever kind of faith-based existence they have.

David:          So, what are you wanting people to kind of be leaders of listening groups?

Karen:          I want them to say, “Can’t we start a listening group of our own?” And we’ll attend to the architecture and who feels most comfortable leading this.

David:          I guess part of the architecture is that people say, “These things are private, they’re not to be talked of.”

Karen:          Yes, yeah, thank you. I do have that caution. What happens in the listening group stays within the listening group. We have to feel that we are keeping one another’s confidence. As I did have a really interesting thing happen. I have a friend who is a psychological counselor and she and I had a one-on-one prayer time together. I think it was every week. And I was saying to her, “I just can’t figure out what’s happening with this.” And so, she said, “Well, why didn’t you pull me in?” And so, she did attend a listening cycle, not that first one, as a participant, not like as an expert. And after the first couple of meetings, I got back together with her and I said, “Well, what are you thinking about this process?” And she said, “Karen, do you know when that group entered into safety?”

David:           Entered into safety.

Karen:           Safety with one another, felt safe with one another.

David:           Okay.

Karen:          And I guess this is something that psychologists are trained in group therapy to watch for. Well, of course I had not had that training, wasn’t watching for that. I said, “I have no idea.” She said, “They entered safety in the first meeting. That never happens.”

So, there’s something implicit in the construction of the listening groups that the Lord has obviously led us to discover and practice. That was beyond our ken, our knowing.

David:          Part of that’s probably your leadership.

Karen:          Could be, could be. And I do want to account for that as well, that some people would not be able to lead this as comfortably as I have been. And if the leader is uncomfortable, that gets transmitted to the whole. But I think we can train leaders who are natural at this, how to lead the listening groups.

David:          So, you’re trying to put all of this and more into a book.

Karen:          Trying to make it a short book, so not a whole lot more. But the basic outline would include those things.

David:          So, it seems like a big job to me because I would say that I have not read very much of what you’re writing. So, in my mind, you’re just at the very beginning of the writing process.

Karen:          Well, I am writing the first chapters now, but I have probably a half a book written when I pull all the pieces together.

David:          You know, some secret thing that I don’t understand. How do you, where is that half a book that’s written?

Karen:          Well, I have a newsletter that goes out called Soulish Food, it’s an E newsletter.

David:          This is material on this topic…

Karen:          …that you’ve already written over the last 10 years. Yeah, I mean that newsletter provides me with a basis for a lot of my writing because I just say, okay, I’m going to write this out for the people who receive the Soulish Food newsletter. But then I have all that stuff to draw on.

David:          I tried to write out a sentence and I have no idea how to write one for Joel.

Karen:           If we kind of forget about that one.

David:           We’ll just bypass mine for the moment. I’ve heard you talk about this a number of times. One of the most powerful gifts we can give to others is to listen carefully and attempt to understand what they’re trying to say.

And my friend, if I just talk in on aside to anyone listening to us, it’s very difficult when you’re a home like this with a wife like this, not to listen to her when she wants to talk. So, I have to give her my full attention.

Karen:          I’m learning a lot about it though because a lot of people have written in various ways about it and I’m reading a book now. And his topic is that you not only attend, there are ways to affirm the talker who is talking that you truly are listening to them. So, you can give verbal comments to them like, “Oh, that’s fascinating.”

David:          You don’t say, “I’m very busy now, I’m trying to write a book.”

Karen:           You don’t say, I keep writing at your papers that you were working on.

David:           Yeah, I know. So, I would say that you have all kinds of parts.

Karen:          I have parts. I have to pull them into a coherent whole.

David:           So that’s going to be a job.

Karen:           It’ll be a job. It’ll be two, three months.

David:          So, we’re in February. Will it be bugging you if I keep asking you how you’re doing?

Karen:          No, I appreciate it very much. If you put your paper and pencil down and look at it, I really appreciate it. We’re joking with that, but that really is part of indicating that you’re a good listener. We respond by leaning into the person who’s talking. We do that naturally very often. We have eye contact with them.

David:          I would say the whole country is not good at listening. One advantage that I have, and people chime me about it all the time, “You have a cell phone, how come you never use it?” I don’t use it because it interrupts things all the time. And even when I’m praying, I’m talking to the Lord and I can ignore the landline, but the cell phone somehow that’s a problem.

Karen:           This is a huge point that the books I listen to.

David:           What so do the people bring a cell phone to your listening group?

Karen:          No, I haven’t had that yet. But I’d like to talk about the one-on-one thing. When anyone even has a cell phone on their desk, and it can be seen by the person who’s sharing on their desk or on the chair where they’re sitting, that interrupts the process that the person who is talking, even when they don’t pick up the phone, even when they don’t answer the phone, a feeling like they’re really being attended to. Because in the back of their mind, they’re thinking, “That person is listening for that phone call, or that person is listening for the phone to ring.”

It’s a whole new world in there. Put the technology away. Close your laptop, walk away from it, put the cell phone in a drawer wherever you keep it. And then you give to that person who is in the talking and listening process with your full attention.

David:          Do you sense that there is something prohibiting you from getting this project done maybe in half a year?

Karen:          No, I think I’ll have it done by the end of the summer, if not before, if I can write every day from this point on. There have been, because we’ve been doing major remodeling and reconstruction in our house. That’s done now. So, I’m not having to worry about that anymore. And I feel like I’m really at the point in this new year where I can just make this my major emphasis.

David:          Would that be something if all three Mainses get their books done, it would be terrible if none of us get them done. I know mine’s going to get done, unless I can’t find an artist to do the cover for. I don’t know. You sound optimistic. And you sound as though you got this thing under control and you’re moving along with it.

Karen:          I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

David:           And I don’t even need my people to pray for me anymore.

Karen:           Oh, I do. Oh, yes, I do.

David:          Okay, well, it’s the only time I know that I’ve had a house with three people, each working separately on a book and still getting along with one another.

Karen:          That’s a gift.

David:          Yeah, it is a gift.

Karen:          Supernatural gift, I think.

David:          And I think that I would say on a scale of 1 to 10, my feelings about what I have finished and now have to complete the job are a 10. I have very strong feelings about it. And I sense that you are at a 10. And if Joel would communicate more.

Karen:          Well, he’s working away on it.

David:          He has, he’s, yeah.

Karen:          He’s been hours at it, so you know.

David:           He said to me, he said, if I don’t do it now, it will never get done.

Karen:          Yeah, this is a rare time in his life, that’s true.

David:          So, he’s been very glad to have a house where he can come and be away from any distractions and just keep working on it. And yeah, this is an interesting time, isn’t it? Yeah, you still love me?

Karen:           I do love you.

David:           Wow, me, that’s very neat.

Karen:           Even when you keep your pencil on your paper and look down, talking to you, I still love you.

David:          Sometimes when you get deeply and gross, you look up and you think, who is that person? That’s me, right?

Karen:           That’s wonderful.

David:           I love you, though.

Outro:          You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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