I remember when I was preaching at a good-sized church, I heard that some of our natives (the over-sixty crowd) were getting restless. I was in my forties and more than a decade younger than them. I decided to set out a question box for people to write out, anonymously, their questions. Granted, this was a calculated risk. Charles Siburt, church doctor and my old mentor, once said that anonymous letters are like emotional drive-by shootings. (They are impulsive acts designed to assassinate the character of an individual.) While invited questions offered anonymously are not in the same immediate family, they can be at least distant relatives. So, I had to handle this exercise with care.
What I and one of the group’s leaders decided to do was to:
1. call a meeting
2. gather all of the over-sixty age group in a room
3. and invite them to watch me pull out their questions one by one and answer them.
Was this engagement successful? Absolutely. One woman told me later that she had come prepared to stir up opposition against me. However, one question was so critical of me, so personal, and written in such poor taste; after hearing the tone of the question and the way I answered it, I won her loyalty.
Her response was symbolic of how the meeting went. It was a positive. If you find yourself in an adverse situation at your church or even one of conflict, consider deploying the question box.