Here are some links to what's been written already:
Minds Change
Series Ends Prematurely [NOT]
There will be more to come. Rob's a great writer. So click on over to Dimestore Guru and read what he has to say.
By the way, here are some comments I left at Rob's site on the subject of how minds and lives are changed:
I believe that changing people's minds happens more at the personal level. This means that transformation usually goes hand-in-glove with relationships. It's an old saw, but I think it's probably true, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." You can lecture people about the need for changes in their lives and get absolutely nowhere. But if people know that you love or care for them, they're willing to listen to and will actually ask for our advice.UPDATE: Rob's newest piece on changing minds, written last night after I posted this, can be found here. His latest syndicated column, on the new Ridley Scott film, The Kingdom of Heaven, can be found here.
People who help others change without the benefit of personal relationships are rare. In American politics, the two recent figures who may have accomplished this were Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. But it's interesting to note how they did it. Somehow, whether in speeches before hundreds of people or on television or radio, each made a seemingly personal connection with their audiences, employing homely stories and modes of speech.
In spite of being a prodict of the upper crust, FDR made himself one with the little guy. I think of the speech he made advocating the Lend-Lease program in which he claimed this US attempt to provide weapons of war to Britain in its fight with Nazi Germany was a lot like a person providing a length of hose to a neighbor when the neighbor's house was on fire.
Reagan had a penchant for turning the memorable phrase, of course. But as with FDR, it was his demeanor that conveyed so much and created a seemingly personal connection. Reagan was a politician whose "aw-shucks" approach made people forget that he was a politician.
The reason the examples of distant leaders who incite change in others are rare is that the leader who becomes such a change-agent must accomplish a delicate balancing act. They must, on the one hand, convey some competence. People won't follow leaders who don't seem to know what they're doing. But they must also convey a sense of vulnerability, an aw-shucks acknowledgement of their own limitations. Otherwise, they will be deemed arrogant and unable to identify with ordinary people. Few leaders can pull this off, all tending to veer off in one direction or the other.
Reagan and Roosevelt though, really only accomplished systemic change that touched people at the personal level, enough to win the votes of those who might not agree with their politics overall.
Personal transformation is an altogether different proposition, though. That always happens within the context of personal relationships. It's in a bond of caring that people are persuaded to change their minds.
This is especially true in the realm of spiritual change called "Christian conversion" or being "made new in Christ." You cannot bludgeon people into submission to Christ. Conversion only comes when people, themselves surrendered to Christ and God's Spirit, gently, firmly, lovingly woo others with the Good News of the God Who changes (transforms) the lives of all who surrender to Christ.
No one has shared Christ with more people than Billy Graham. Many scratch their heads at the power he seems to have, in his simple sermons, to cause people to change their lives and follow Christ. But Graham is quick to say that he isn't the change agent. Two other things are going on:
(1) Something like 80% of the people who come forward to make first-time professions of faith at a Billy Graham mission have been prayed for, mentored, and invited to the event by a friend. Their friends, by their lives, have authenticated the truth that Graham proclaims. By the time Graham proclaims it to them again, they've been largely convinced by their friends. This, in fact, is a process that Graham's organization encourages, offering classes on 'Operation Andrew' and 'Christian Life and Witness' to thousands of people in the months before Billy Graham comes to their towns.
(2) The New Testament makes it quite clear that people only change when the Holy Spirit inspires them to do so. "No one says Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit," Paul says. That means that every Christian conversion is the result of prayer, invoking the power of God's Spirit in the lives of those prayed for.
I have a hunch that every positive change that happens in people's lives sees these two elements operating in one way or another. Over the past twenty-one years, I've seen them in evidence repeatedly: in the suicidal addict whose life turns around; in the impossibly prickly husband who comes to appreciate his wife; in the once-flighty woman who finds focus and purpose in her life; and so on. In each case, there were loving friends and family offering tough, authentic love and who, in the desperate realization of their own incompetence, offered prayer for their friend, putting that person in the hands of the premier Change Agent, God.
One other observation: The best human change agents are always changed themselves by reaching out to others in the way described above. When we, who are dust and less than omnicompetent ourselves, dare to help another--not with arrogance or holier-than-thou attitudes, we come up against our own limitations. Speaking for myself, I can say that as a pastor, the only times I've been able to really help people have been when I have come to the end of my rope, so to speak, and ackowledged the simple fact that Jesus once shared with His disciples: "Without Me, you can do nothing." That forces me to rely on Him and when I do that, I'm changed a bit more for the better, as are the people I seek to help.
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