A Heart to Listen

Michael Mitton

From: Lion & Lamb Summer 2005

The author of this book was previously Deputy Director of the Acorn Christian Foundation which heads up Christian Listeners. As a boss and as a friend, he encapsulated all the qualities of a listener that are rarely found in a noisy and superficial world.

In this captivating book he invites you to take a journey of discovery about what lies at the heart of listening. In doing so you will realise how difficult and how rewarding becoming a good listener is.

The clever use of a narrative tale, running through the book, serves as a parable to convey the main theme of each chapter. It is entirely fictional and based in Africa where what he experienced had a profound effect on him.

It explores how with God’s help we can relearn the art of listening and develop a heart that naturally listens. In doing so we can become a source of help and healing for others and for ourselves.

Despite the fact that it is really not difficult to learn to listen well, most of us find all kinds of ‘Ivory Towers’ to retreat to, and fail to give the level of listening that is so badly needed. Chapter 3 helps us to identify what our ‘Ivory Towers’ are and how we can come down from them. We will all recognise ourselves here!

In our society, encountering difference is something we are all familiar with. When we meet someone who is different, we are given a choice, to retreat to safety or to encounter the unknown. Michael explores how listening is a true expression of ‘agape’ love – that if we are disciples of Jesus we are required to listen to ‘our enemy’, the one who is different to us, whose values we don’t share, who annoys us. You know, the one who just has to open his mouth for us to know that what he says is wrong! He shows us that by listening to someone we can actually start to meet the person rather than the argument. Perhaps then the mechanism for reconciliation can be put in place?

It helps us to think about our wounded planet and open our ears to those in the particularly troubled areas of our world.

I think, above all, this book will surprise many, as it uncovers the enormous depths and profound impact that something so simple as ‘listening’ can have on each one of us and the people we encounter. They will also discover, as many have done, that listening is one of the most healing and precious gifts that anyone can possess. That we can each be the ears of the body of Christ so that people know they are not alone!

This book is easy to read, in short chapters that you can absorb, a bit at a time. But I doubt that you will be able to put it down. It will inspire and challenge. But it will also remind us that listening is a ministry committed to us by Him who is Himself the great listener and whose work we should all share.

Reviewed by Lynne Livingstone, Co-ordinator of Christian Listeners Ireland

From ‘Retreats’ 2005

Michael Mitton spent many years involved in the training of Christian listeners with the Acorn Christian Foundation, yet he has written this book from his own life's experience rather than as a handbook on how to listen. As our world gets busier, more superficial and more stressed, we are encouraged to relearn the art of listening to God, our own hearts, others, and the wider community and world. This very readable book is ideal for both individual and group study. Each chapter ends with a cross-cultural narrative tale which provides further reflections on the book's themes.

By learning the wisdom of listening, we will be able to build deeper and more caring relationships with God and others, whilst at the same time bring healing to our noisy uncaring world. A must read for us all.

Reviewed by Rachel Burgess

From The Aidan Way Issue 49 November 04 – January 05

I received a review copy of Michael Mitton's book A Heart to Listen: Becoming a Listening Person in a Noisy World. This is, I believe, a vital book for us as a community. Please study it.

The book was born out of Michael's introducing Christian Listening principles to South African carers of AIDS sufferers. It addresses reasons why we shrink from listening. It reveals how the members of the Trinity provide welcoming space because they deeply listen to one another and how Jesus is the world's Great Listener. It shows how listening is important in evangelism. Quoting Bonhoeffer, Michael points out that we understand God's Word by listening to God, and we enable others to receive it by listening to them. He shows how we need to listen to the earth, and the eco-therapy that can result. He explains how listening enables community to grow: Nelson Mandela was a great president in part because, in discussions, he listened to each viewpoint before putting his own. Michael tells how, on retreat at Lindisfarne, he began to dream of a 'listening church', and how, in his 'spare' time, he now facilitates a church that listens to God in the neighbourhood: Most important of all in our post 9/11 world, he shows how listening is central in healing the land. Terrorism is fuelled by those whose anger at not being listened to explodes beyond reason. The lesson the British eventually learned in relation to the IRA, that there is no military solution and that there must be a mutual listening, is needed as never before in the Middle East and in our local communities. Not listening creates fragmentation: listening leads to wholeness. Each chapter is linked by a beautiful serial fable, which itself brims with healing wisdom.
If only...

Ten years ago the Community's leaders failed to listen to one another during a difficult patch. I say to myself 'If only I had done the Enneagram at that time, I would have known that type fours often feel attacked when others misunderstand them, blow things out of proportion, obsessively nurse hurt feelings, and ought to check out what others really meant!'

And in this book Michael shares how he has had in recent years to confront, if he is really to listen to others, the fear of facing pain, and resist the compulsion too easily to fix things: 'When I'm swimming in the sea, I don't like going too deep. Yes, you've got it I like being in control' This call to redemptive listening, he suggests, is ‘a commitment to adventure, whereby we are explorers proclaiming ... what we have discovered so far, but always on the lookout for something more'.

From: CLC World January/February 2005 Issue 49

This is an unusual book for two reasons. First it invites us to explore the art - or the heart - of listening, which the author probes from his own experience of the ministry of listening. Then, intertwined with this teaching, is the ongoing story of a fictional but disconcerting visit to rural Africa. There is much to absorb from both sections of this intriguing book. The material is not merely very readable but eminently practical - who couldn't learn something about listening to the people we hear -or don't really hear every day? And how can we hope to gain wisdom, to build deeply caring relationships, without knowing how to listen to God? Mitton's writing is not only scripture linked but also includes thought-provoking quotes from a variety of writers. I think it could be helpful to a wide range of people, and perhaps especially ministers who do pastoral work. I found it deeply moving in places and I know I must read it again!

From: Home & Family Winter 2004

If you have ever felt the frustration of not being properly listened to, then this book will help you not to cause the same frustration in other people. Listening can also help us to understand those with whom we bitterly disagree. Most importantly, we are shown that giving time to listening to God in our own lives bears much fruit.

The book has two threads - a story, and an examination of the value of listening. I found the story most illuminating in itself. Many of us are so busy along our own tracks that we become shallow and, ultimately, self centred, undervaluing the worth and experience of other people. Listening is risky - we might have to change!

This is not a very long read, but one that is well worthwhile, especially for any who may feel they have a particular ministry of listening and seeking to help those they meet.

Reviewed by Carolyn Willett

From War Cry 18 September 2004

Is listening a lost art in our noisy world? Michael Milton urges us to rediscover how to listen to God, to the community around us and even to our planet. Greater understanding and tolerance are born from the desire to hear what people are saying in difficult or controversial situations. How can we hope to gain wisdom, build deep relationships and share our faith without listening?

Believing that healing and wholeness are linked to this important ministry, he interweaves the story about Aids in Africa with biblical reflection and personal insights.

From: Chrism Autumn 2004

Until recently Michael Mitton was Deputy Director of Acorn Christian Foundation, heading up Acorn’s Christian Listeners. As such he is more than qualified to write a book on ‘Listening’, and has done so with his usual warmth.

But don’t get me wrong. This is not a book on how to listen. For that he directs us early on to Anne Long’s Listening (DLT 1990) and the Acorn Christian Listener courses. It is something much rarer – a book which identifies ‘listening’ as something which is right at the heart of Christian spirituality and indeed theology and the Gospel. That is not to say that the reader won’t find plenty of practical help in this book. In particular the chapter To Unlock the Door contains a number of valuable pieces of advice: e.g. on what he calls ‘your ivory towers’, by which he means your inner fears – that you will be expected to offer solutions; that the person you are listening to will be upset in a way you can’t handle etc., etc. But even in that chapter he goes on to make the theological point that we are all called to listen well (with the ‘ears of Christ’ because of Jesus’ own example; and he quotes Dr Frank Lake: ‘God has not only spoken through his Son; what is perhaps more important, he has listened through his Son’.

In another place he quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who called God ‘the great listener’ and who said that we need to listen with the ears of God before we speak the word of God. And again, ‘The one who can no longer listen to his brother and sister will soon be no longer listening to God either’. This is enough to illustrate the spiritual and theological depth of this book – and to whet one’s appetite! And it is a book which covers a lot of ground as well – listening to one another within church communities, to the marginalised and the people on the fringes, and to our earth!

Readers of Michael’s earlier book on the ministry of healing Wild Beasts and Angels will be delighted that he has followed a similar pattern here and included a continuing narrative at the end of each chapter which is also a parable. I found this intensely moving and something which touched both mind and heart.

Now Michael, along with his congregation, is trying to put into practice his dream of a ‘listening church’ in his post in Derby Diocese.

+George Hacker

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