Years before I learned how to listen to doubters, I was just another overcaffeinated church planter in a hurry to save my city. One day in February 2015, I walked into a coffee shop in downtown Denver, and asked the owner what might have been one of the most spiritually presumptuous questions imaginable: “What church do you go to?”
Unfazed, he said, “I don’t go to church. I’m an atheist.”
I had taken the weekend to drive up from Dallas to Denver with a handful of volunteers, looking for a neighborhood where we could start a faith community. So there was more than a little self-interest in my follow-up: “Well, if you did go to church, what type of church would you go to?”
“If I went to church,” he said, peering over the top of his steaming espresso machine, “I’d go to a place that let me ask questions and didn’t judge me for thinking differently.”
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Just then, my friends called me to the door. It was time to walk the streets, to find the neighborhood where God might be whispering, Here.
But then the irony of the situation set in. We had come to start another church, and an unbelieving coffee shop owner had just described the only kind of church he’d ever walk into. What if the church we were called to start didn’t look like a church at all, but more like a gathering of quiet skeptics whose doubts were treated as holy ground?
Months later, I met the owner again, and reminded him that he said he would attend a gathering that allowed questions and didn’t judge people for thinking differently.
“And I still would,” he responded.
“What if you and I started a gathering called The Doubters’ Club,” I offered, “where you, an atheist, and me, a Christian, invite our friends who don’t think like each other, and we talk about issues that matter.”
His face lit up as he gripped a chair and bounced up and down a few times. He wasn’t just in; it was the community he was looking for. Here is what we came up with:
• Each meeting was going to be co-moderated by two people who don’t think the same way. This was not a debate. This was going to model friendship and help all parties involved to pursue truth together.
• We set ground rules from valuing respect above being right to listening without interrupting. The ground rules were going to be key to the success of every meeting.
• It wouldn’t take place in a church building. Let’s keep it open and dangerous.
• We would invite people who don’t think like us. Keep the conversation going.
• The group gets to vote on what they want to talk about. There is no curriculum. This is the theological and philosophical Wild West.
It was going to be exactly what we both longed for. Curiosity was catching fire, and I wasn’t about to let it burn without me.
In the years since those initial conversations, more than 150 Doubters’ Clubs have taken root around the world, and more are still being planted.
Obstacles to Understanding
Over the past decade of setting tables where skeptics and churchgoers sit side by side, I’ve gathered a few hard-earned insights about the art of loving those who see the world differently. But before we can talk about how to listen, we must first talk about what others are hearing when we talk about our faith. These two obstacles, I believe, are compromising the conversation.