Mission with Prophetic Power: The Journal of John Woolman (SRSC 12)

Resources for Application

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involved may be high, and the communication process is likely to be difficult. 6

As we have seen in John Woolman’s Journal , these kinds of conversations were an essential component of his ministry. He volunteered for the job of visiting slave owners to persuade them to give up their slave-owning (or a best possible alternative). Woolman often met with people who were older and whose voice carried more weight in his circles than he. I can imagine the emotions in play, the stakes implied for slave owners in giving up their ownership, the beliefs and the debates surrounding those beliefs, and more. Woolman’s Journal makes it clear that sometimes these crucial conversations, these times when talking is tough, were a heavy burden on his soul. He lost sleep thinking about a tough meeting in the eighteenth century just like we do in the twenty-first. Sometimes our tough talks are between two people. Perhaps two people just need to have a talk and see if they can take a step toward a measure of forgiveness and healing after a painful season. Perhaps, like John Woolman, we must confront a friend with what we consider to be the heart of God. But other times our tough talks address broader circles of relationship. 7 There is a breach in the unity of our local community. A large institution is violating some aspect of human 6 In the business world, the phrase “crucial conversation” is often used to describe these times. See Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Rom McMillan, and Al Switzler, Crucial Conversations: Tools for When Stakes Are High , 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012). 7 On these concentric circles (or pyramid) of relationship, see Hank Voss, ed. Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another (Wichita, KS: TUMI Press, 2022), 178–88