“Asking Better Questions” - Dean Nelson AlongTheWay 75

Yeah, I mean, facts matter, they clearly matter. And you can't you can't operate as adults without them. But there are so many beautiful stories of humanity behind the facts. And those were the stories I was drawn to, which I think closes the loop back to literature.

Welcome to along the way. I'm John Matarazzo, your host and fellow traveler, thank you for joining me along my way as I try to become more like Jesus every day. I am constantly trying to improve myself and one of the areas that I'm always looking for ways to get better is my interview and conversation skills. Another podcast or friend of mine recommended me the book, talk to me by Dean Nelson. It was exactly the type of book that I was looking for. Then he offered to connect me with Dean for an interview. I'm calling this episode asking better questions, because as Dean says, when you ask better questions, you get better answers. You were gonna enjoy hearing all about his journey in this episode. And hopefully, you will start to ask better questions to get to our conversation in just a moment. But as always, I want to thank you for listening to along the way. I hope that you like what you hear, and you'll subscribe, you can connect with me online as well. All of my socials and contact links are in the show notes. And you can check out all of my episodes and my website along the way dot media, join my email list and find out some more about me too. I hope you check it out and you connect with me, I would love to hear from you. I also have a Patreon page if you want to help me to continue to put up these along the way episodes. And if you'd like to become a Patreon supporter, simply go to patreon.com slash along the way and select the level. The link to become a Patreon supporter is also in my show notes. And now here's my along the way conversation with Dean Nelson. d. Nelson, thank you so much for allowing me to join you along your way as I'm trying to become more like Jesus. But I'm also trying to find out more about the people that God has put in my life and the things in their life that he's instilled. And through conversation, pulling those out. I first came in contact with you through a mutual friend who's another podcaster Sean tabet. And I was asking him, how can I become a better interviewer? and Dean, he referenced your book, talk to me. Oh, no. And you're the founding director of the journalism school at Point Loma Nazarene, in San Diego. And you have the writers symposium. And we'll talk about some of those things a little bit later. But I've been reading your book working my way through that. And I just want to thank you for just giving me some time to talk with you and to hopefully I'll become a better interviewer after this as well. So thank you for joining me. Yeah,

well, I appreciate your interest. And I'm honored to be part of your program, I think what you're doing is really valuable. So I want to be part of it.

I appreciate that. And you told me before we started here that you've listened to a few of my episodes already. So I kind of feel like, I'm honored that you actually did that. Because you're putting your own practices that you're saying, as you know, we need to prepare as interviewers, you're doing that as somebody that's being interviewed. And I really appreciate that. So I want to just talk with you about your journey, because that's kind of where these conversations kind of lead from. So I want to hear about your journey of how God has led you from where you felt like you were called into the ministry that you're in now or the the vocation, because you kind of took a couple different ways to get there.

Oh my god. Yeah,

I want to I want to hear about that story and share that with our listeners.

Yeah, not a straight line at all. But actually, I just love the the theme of your podcast, because I think all through Scripture, the good stuff that happens is after somebody is already in motion, you know, I think of Paul, Saul, actually, you know, it was while he was as he traveled is when he says he gets this amazing encounter with the living God. And the verses you cite in Luke about the road to him as it was while they were on their way. So I just think the premise of what you're doing is is so rich, and so kind of theologically apt, so good for you, thank you. It also I think bears out in how the most of us live our lives, you know, the idea that we're going to go sit in a cave and wonder what you know, God wants us to do next and we're gonna sit there until we get it. That works for some people, but it's not how it worked for me, and really, other than maybe growing up in a religious environment where it was so tied, Christian experience was so tied to your emotions that If you didn't get all worked up emotionally, then, you know clearly wasn't God. The church I went to didn't believe the God who whispered to Elijah, it had to be the God who made you cry real hard. So I was at a, I was actually at a youth gathering in Estes Park, Colorado, on a thing put together by the Church of the Nazarene there netsurion headquarters. And they had these morning devotional times that they call the walk and talk with God. And I remember just being on a mountain path in Colorado, not really thinking about anything other than knowing that I had this desire to be a Christian, where I just got this overwhelming sense while I was on this path from God, I mean, you can call it language, you can call it a spirit, you can, I don't know what it was. But if you had to kind of put a thought bubble over it, it was as if God was saying to me, it's time you got to know me better. That was so profound, I could take you to that very spot on that path in Colorado. And I just felt like, oh, there's so much more than these emotions. There's so much more than then the concept of God I had been introduced to, and it was God Himself saying, Oh, my, there's so much more. There's so much more. I just wanted to follow that. That's where it began.

Yeah. So what was your next step? I mean, that's great to have an experience. But I know in my life, those experiences, they might last for a little bit, and they're you kind of enjoy that. But it kind of wears off. And then you have to make the decision that you're going to continue to live off of that.

Yeah, no, that's it. That's a really good point, and different from other what I would consider to be maybe spiritual encounters, this one was not emotional. There was a profound, deep knowledge. And so it wasn't like, I needed to keep re experiencing that knowledge. It was like it got embedded. So I think my next step was finishing high school and going to college with it, you know, none of which were terribly memorable. I wasn't a very good student. But it was with that knowledge that there was more, there was more whatever I thought God was whatever I thought, a legitimate encounter with Jesus Christ, whatever I thought that was, I just kept knowing that it was more than what I had been experiencing. I didn't know how to follow that. I didn't really know what to do. If you're asking what's the next you know, I didn't have a plan. But it was in a philosophy class in college, where the professor had us reading Thomas Merton. And I started to read Thomas Merton. And it was like, okay, there it is. There it is. That's my guy. Because he was writing about the contemplative life he was talking about, the more he was talking about how everything in life was sacrament. And, you know, he loved, he loved the earthly things, too. He loved jazz he loved. He had a rich, rich inner life. And when I started reading Thomas Merton, I realized, okay, that's, that's what I want. That's what I want to follow. So I would say, those two things were not big emotional experiences. One was just a deep, profound presence of God. And the other was, oh, here's somebody who's done what I want to do. Not not in a vocational way. I didn't want to go become a hermit at get 70. But I wanted that deep, rich inner life. I knew there was something more And now, here was a guy who had experienced it.

I think that's, that's so key. Because sometimes, we need to really find somebody that is already doing what we feel that God is calling us to what that heart thing that is what our heart is longing for. Their God normally puts people in our path that are there to help us whether it be through books, or through a personal experience in a you know, personal relationship. Yeah. And that's awesome that you were able to have that with those with those books. And with those, right, yeah, yeah. So what were you studying in school there?

I started out as a pre med major. That was the my entire growing up years into well into college. The presumption was that I would be a medical doctor. And I was interested in science. I was interested in medicine, all of my jobs. Even in high school, I worked in an emergency room and downtown at a county General Hospital in downtown Minneapolis where I grew up all day. That was leading toward I was going to become a doctor. I'd even worked on an ambulance crew out in Oregon one summer. And I don't know, it's like I had a midlife experience where I think it was my junior year, we were getting ready to take the medical college admission test. And I was taking all these science classes and spending all my time in the labs. And it was this dawning on me that said, Is this really how you want to be spending all your time? Do you want to spend the next 10 years in a lab and in school, and in residencies and things like that? I was still interested in medicine, I was still interested in helping people. But I just came to this point that said, Actually, I don't, I just don't. So I went to my advisor, and said, I don't I don't think I want to do this. And so we looked at my transcript. And he said, Well, you have enough elective units that you've just taken on your own in literature, that you could be a jerk. You could be a literature major.

Really?

Yeah. So the last year of school, I changed my major and still graduated on time, and because basically, literature is about reading and writing and being immersed in great stories. And that's what I realized. Yeah, that's, that's a little more appealing.

So are you telling me that you graduated almost by accident with a different degree?

I graduated with that degree by? Yeah, I didn't graduate by accident. Yeah, I almost didn't graduate. But that's a different story, because that was a disciplinary issue. But ah, I, we can get into that if you want. I'm not ashamed of it. But it was the major that was sort of, I kind of backed into the literature major, just because it was the next more interesting thing from being pre med.

So how did literature lead you into what you're doing now,

in a roundabout way? I mean, so much, so many things, you know, you know, as a as a believer, or just as an adult, you realize, oh, looking back, this kind of makes sense. They don't make sense in the moment. But they they make sense in reflection, I was just attracted to great stories. literature is about great stories. And this is how civilization has always known who it was and what its values were by storytelling, right? It's all about storytelling. For us. We're a storytelling species. And I was just drawn into those stories and realizing there were big stories, really big stories that all these little stories kind of feed into naked look at the Bible that way. The Bible is one big story about God loving all of creation. And then everything else in there are the the smaller ways that point to that, right. So that's how a literature I wasn't wanting to study it. Like in grad school, it was just more a matter of I was just, I loved being immersed in great authors in Henry O'Connor. In Mark Twain, and William Faulkner, I just was Eudora Welty, just all these people. I just felt drawn into that bigger world. So completely different from pre med, but still resonated deeply.

So what do you think, looking back at this, your path was pre med for so long? And you kind of backed into this literary life, which eventually led to being a journalist and interviewing a lot of people and starting the school there? What do you think about whenever you look back and you say, What was this med school thing? Was this a detour? Or was this part of the plan?

That's a great question. I don't think anything's a detour. I mean, if, if you've got a podcast called along the way,

you know what I'm getting to, you know what

I do? Nothing's a detour, all paths lead to the big path. And I look at some of the experiences I had in emergency rooms and on an ambulance crew and with grieving for dying people, and realizing that there are a lot of similarities to what journalists do. They look at people in some of the more difficult spaces in their lives. And the difference with journalism is I'm trying to honor that by telling their story. And in medicine, it was I'm trying to honor it by saving your life for take you out of pain. Journalism, comes alongside you in the pain and helps you bear witness to the pain. So there's still I think some wonderful parallels, but some profound differences as well.

Yeah. So I really appreciate how you just phrase that because there is so many times where you think about a journalist as somebody that's just looking for the answers to the five W's, the who, what, where, when, why, how, yeah, why, when and how. But there's so much more to that there is always a deeper story. There's always a heartfelt meaning. And there needs to be that human connection. Yeah, we're not just conveying facts. There is a story behind that, because the facts just kind of boggle the mind. And you're not going to. I mean, there's very few people that are very brilliant, that are going to they'll focus on those numbers. But I think the vast majority of people want to get to the heart of the story. They want to know what the real deal is.

Yeah, I mean, facts matter. They clearly matter. And you can't you can't operate as adults without them. But there are so many beautiful stories of humanity behind the facts. And those were the stories I was drawn to, which I think closes the loop back to literature.

Right? It's all about great stories. And I think, for those, and as a journalist, you get to not just tell somebody else's story, but you get to help find and dig and cultivate that from somebody that you might not have expected.

Exactly. And you're on the you're on the front lines. I mean, you're you've got a front row seat to stories as they occur, as well as stories that you can just find and tell. I think it's it's part of how we part of how we learn what it means to be a human being. Yeah,

I love in your book, how you tell stories of interviews that you've that you've had throughout the years. And you include some transcripts of other interviews as well. That early on in the book, I found it was really, it was really interesting. You told a story about you went to to talk to a source that nobody else was going to go talk to and ended up talking to their neighbor. I believe that there was somebody that was murdered or something like that. Could you tell that story a little bit? I just I really

yeah, enjoy? Yeah, it's it's one of those deals where at first, I just thought, seriously, you want me to go do this story. I was freelancing for the Boston Globe at the time. And you know, I'm in California, and Southern California. And there was this, basically a domestic terrorist, somebody who had that they had nicknamed the nightstalker. Some of your older listeners will remember that moniker. But he would go into people's homes through unlocked windows or doors. And if there was a woman there, he would rape her and mutilate her maybe killer. If she was with a man he would, he killed the guy. And he often then drew pentagrams, from their blood on mirrors. And then he would leave. So he had been terrorizing Los Angeles and some other areas in Southern California for weeks, and everybody was just beside themselves in fear. And then it happened in a neighborhood just about an hour from where I live. And the woman survived. She ran across the street to a neighbor's house in the Boston Globe called me and said, the National desk and said, Hey, we want you to do a story about the nightstalker. And I just went Anyway, why? And they said, Well, we don't we're not interested in the actual facts, the damage is things like that we want the bigger picture. We want the bigger story of what happens to a neighborhood after the nightstalker invaded, and he's still on the loose. What is that neighborhood look like now. And their point was everybody can relate to that kind of fear. Right? And so I thought, okay, that's a that's actually a worthy story. In my opinion, you could do a real sensationalized kind of thing. And, but that isn't what I was interested in. I wanted, I really wanted to get that kind of human drama in the aftermath. So yeah, I went up to the neighborhood found it. A postal worker pointed out the house itself where the attack occurred. And so I knocked on the door of the next door neighbor, nobody answered. I went to the other side, and an elderly lady didn't want to talk to me. She was definitely afraid. And this guy was still on the loose, john.

Yeah,

but but I said before she shut the door. I said, Do you know who would talk to me? And she pointed this bony finger out through the gap, you know, in the the chain that was that was open there to the house across the street and she said, that person might talk to you. That's the house where the victim ran after she had been attacked. So I went over there and knocked on the door. And eventually, woman answered the door, identified myself. You know, I didn't want to spook out anybody, right? I said, you know, could we talk out here on the steps out in plain sight of everybody? And she said, No. She said, I don't have time to talk to you out here. But if you want to come in, while I'm making dinner, I've got dinner guests coming tonight, I got to be making dinner, if you want to come in and sit at my kitchen table, you can do that. I asked her for 15 minutes. And I was there for probably two or three hours. Wow. Because she just wanted to tell me everything. She wanted to tell me everything about the neighborhood about what had happened that night. She wanted, she wanted to tell her story. And I think that's what we do. We can do this as human beings. We can talk about it at that level. But this is what journalists in my opinion get to do, is we get to tell other people's stories. And where else was she going to go with that story? You know, and it just gave so much humanity to what was just a maybe a one paragraph or two paragraph otherwise awful story that people in Pittsburgh, whatever at about, right. Yeah. So it just made it it put a human touch on it.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Dean, there's a word that you've said now a few times, and it's honor, you've honored their story. You've honored the person. I love what you said that you're you are honoring her and saying, I don't want you to feel uncomfortable. Can we talk out here? Right? And I just love the fact that you're showing honor and honor opens up doors? It does. Could you talk about that and how you treat people?

Well, I,

what I tell students, I do interviewing workshops, all over the country. And one of the things I tell them is, your authenticity is your brand. Right, it's, that's, that's who you are. And you could even say your authenticity is your soul coming through. And people respect authenticity. So if, if you're a student who's just starting out, for instance, as a journalist, or as an interviewer, or or doing whatever, the more you just own the fact that you're a student getting started, as opposed to pretending you're bob woodward, or your you know, Christian emin poor, or Jonathan Swan, or whomever, instead of pretending you're that person. If you can be authentically you, not only are you coming across in a much more accessible way to somebody, they're going to be more authentic with you. I mean, that's just true, essentially, human to human anyway. But it's really true. When you're wanting to tell somebody story. And here's the example I use that, that I just keep coming back to, which is, I was writing a book about celebrating the sacred in everyday life. It's a book called God hides in plain sight. And while I was writing that book, you know, my kids were gone. My, my wife was at work. I'm in the house by myself, and I'm typing. And I typically if somebody knocks on the door, I just typically ignore it. Because I'm working. I'm in the zone, right? And there was something about this knock. That just got my attention, that it's listened for a second. That that well, I'm going to go look. So I look out the little people in my, in my door, and it's a kid, he looked like maybe he's 11. So I opened the door, and he's got these cardboard boxes of candy or something that nobody needs something that's going to shorten my life. And he's, he's just this pizza. He's this awkward looking kid with a bad haircut, with his t shirt tucked into his gym shorts that are too high on his waist. And he just, he just looks like this awkward kid. And he said, I come to the door and I just say what's up. And he says in this really awkward way. I'm going to try to sell you something. And as soon as he said that, I'm reaching for my wallet. I don't care what he's selling, I'm gonna buy it. I'm gonna buy what he's selling because he was just, he was so authentically him. And so I bought a bunch of terrible, terrible things in my body m&ms and all this stuff, simply because he just owned who he was. He owned his authenticity, and that's how In my opinion, you bring that out in somebody else. So when I say this to this woman who who received the victim of the nightstalker I wanted to tell her I know this is awkward that that dude still on the loose, I'm not him. But he's still on the loose. So maybe you would you feel safer out here. And she then was kind of given permission to be her authentic self and say I don't have time. But I trust you. So come into my home. I mean, john, she even made me lunch. She was a terrific cook. Yeah.

So if you're authentic, you might actually get a meal out of it as well. You might

get a free lunch out of the deal. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great. So just to kind of put a wrap up that story, whatever happened with the nightstalker,

he was caught days later, there hadn't been enough posters and things like that around that somebody recognized him. And he was actually chased down by a mob who tried to kill him. This is in Los Angeles. And it was the police, who intervened and saved his life. Which is ironic, right? Yeah. So they saved his life. He was convicted, he was put in jail, and then he died in jail.

Well, it's good to know that he's a justice was served. And he wasn't out doing more, it was so scary that it was such a scary time. Yeah, you know, Dean, as we're, we're talking about just authenticity. You know, this world is very fake. You know, we've got Facebook, and Instagram and all these things that are just out there, where everybody's trying to put a different view of themself out there. We're a curated view, exactly a curated view, where we're in control of what people see, as we are looking at people and talking with them. Because hopefully, as things are opening back up, and we're having more face to face interaction with people, I try to not let myself be inauthentic. I try to always be real, and I want to be authentic. And so as we're talking with people, what advice would you have just even if somebody is not having an interview? What are some tips that you can give people just to kind of be aware of as we're having real conversations with people to kind of bring out some of those moments?

I think it's a really, really important question that you raise of just how do we be authentic with one another, um, I'll say a few things that are probably just easier said than done. Probably. One of which is not to take yourself so seriously. You know, we all wear masks, john, you wear the mask as a podcaster, or as a television producer, or as a missionary, or whatever, I wear a mask of a of a journalist or a professor or, or whatever. And the more aware I am of the masks I'm wearing, the more I can let go of that's good. But if I'm not even aware of them, then it's hard to, to say, oh, there's there's that's not it. Right? This is where I think the Christian community is so helpful, because they could point this out in a loving way. In my case, it could be, it could be my wife, it could be my kids, it could be the Sunday school class that I teach. In San Diego, it could be my colleagues, at Point Loma, Nazarene, it could be my next door neighbor. But if they, if they smell a fake in a loving way, they're okay pointing that out. And I think that's what the I think that's what the Christian community needs to do, that we kind of sand off some of those, those those rough edges so that the image of God that is implanted in all of us, and I really believe it is gets to evolve and come forth. Over all of those barriers, we put over it, we try to define ourselves by our occupations by where we are our status, you know, whatever, our degrees. And at some point, we have to kind of let all that down. Yeah, I didn't even answer your question. I just went down this trail that I have no idea where I went,

in some ways. Yes, you did answer the question. And because it's a multi part question. I want to talk a little bit more about just being authentic and pulling the authenticity out of somebody else that we're talking with. You know, we don't want to be fake. I love what you said about identifying the masks that you're wearing yourself. And because once you identify that you can take those off and you can be right you can be who you really are. Right then as we've said earlier, that disarms other people, and they feel more comfortable to take off their masks. Oh, yeah. And so what are some questions that you like asking people to kind of get to the heart of the matter with them? I mean, it just get some general questions to kind of get the conversation started.

Yeah, one of my favorites. You don't want to start with this but one of my favorites, and I learned this from Listening to Ira Glass who has a podcast called This American Life. But he's got this great question. And I've stolen it 100 times where after you, you have this kind of get to know your time, a couple of easy questions, maybe asking somebody? Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out? Is this where you were headed? And regardless of their answer, it's gonna be awesome. Because if it's if it's Yes, then you get to hear about Yeah, I felt like this was what I was gonna do all along. If the answer's no, that's even more interesting. Right? Because then you get to hear about those bumps along the way you get to hear about the stuff that didn't turn out the way they thought, but that that may be one of my favorites.

Yeah. So could you say that question again? I like how he phrased it.

Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out? Is this how you thought it was gonna be? Yeah, I actually was asked this not by a fan of eyeglasses, but but by a woman who that I get together with a group of guys about once a year, and one of the guys wife was dying of cancer. And so we went over to his house one day, a couple of others were from out of town, and we went over to this guy's house, just to hang out with him and just kind of sit with the pain of it all. And we heard his wife come shuffling down the hallway with her Walker. And she came in, we all stood up and greeted her. And, you know, she was clearly not long for this world. And she sat on the couch, and we just kind of chit chatted for a little while. And she said to each of us, I got a question for you guys. Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out? Huh? Which, from a dying person? That's more profound. Yeah. Then if I were to ask this a view, john, or you were to ask this V. We're just a couple of guys talk. Right? This is a woman who is about to pass from this world to the next. And she said, Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out? And what was interesting about that gentleman's for every single one of us, the answer was no. The answer was no. Which led to some marvelous conversation. And then here's the sad part. She got too weak by the time we were all done, you know, I wanted to say that to her. She's dying.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So just as we're kind of going there, she started to cough real badly and couldn't continue and had to go back to her bed. And then she died a couple days later. But it was one of those really profound that this was a question from eternity. This wasn't just a question of a dying woman. This was a question from eternity. And so that's another reason why it's one of my favorite questions. Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out?

Yeah, that is definitely an open ended question. It is, even though it's a yes or no answer. It is an open ended question. Because there's definitely follow up with that if you're paying attention Exactly. If you're paying attention. And I know, you never really want to ask a closed, like a yes or no question. Because it really just kind of oftentimes shuts down the answer, and it kind of stops things from rolling. How do you reframe questions, so that there is an open end?

Yeah, it's actually a really important point, you're bringing up questions that begin with why and how, are always going to get better answers than what or when or where? Right. So that's one of the ways you can reframe it is how do you started? And if it's just a question, like, Where were you born? My point, as you've probably picked up from the talk to me, but my point is, you should already know the answer that question, you know, if you've done your homework, and then person is going to feel totally at ease with you, because they know they're in good hands. They know they're safe, because you've you've prepared yourself a question like, Where were you born? Unless it's a really tricky question. I can't imagine why that would be. That's one of those questions you should already know. So for instance, with me, instead of you're asking me, where were you born? And I say, Chicago. If you've done your homework, you would say, you know, I noticed you were born in Chicago. What do you remember about living in the Southside of Chicago? That's a that's an open ended question that is going to get me talking about my childhood. Yeah, right.

Yeah, absolutely. It will.

It was fine. By the way, my life in Chicago was fine.

And I know you moved up to Minneapolis or Minnesota.

We did Minneapolis, but

I just think the way that we reframe questions, if we're Thinking about the questions that we're asking people as opposed to just being a reactive question. It's more of a responsive question, then our conversations are going to go a little bit deeper than just your, your average run of the mill passing. Hi, how's it going? How's it going?

Good, fine.

That's how are you? And you know, sometimes our questions, we greet, we greet each other with questions, just like I said, there, you know, how's it going? Good. You know, it's just short. Like, yeah, it's not even a real question. It's more of a,

and we're not interested in the answer, either.

Yeah. But if you stop and you're actually interested in the answer, you're going to find something that really does puts a new spin on life. I actually had somebody years ago, who I did the, Hey, how's it going? He said, in a straight face, you don't really care.

And it is a true statement.

It was a very true statement. But I was like, why am I saying this? Why am I not being mean? I either need to change what I'm saying or actually care? Probably a bit of both, probably.

But here's another example of reframing a question. Parents always get really frustrated when they asked their kids How was school? Because the answer is always going to be fine, or awful. And that's the end of the conversation. So what my wife and I tried to do, and when our kids were little, and we would be putting them to bed at night. We just sit on the edge of their bed, my wife would be with one kid, I'd be with the other. And then we'd swap the next day. And we just sit on the bed and just have a conversation. And the question, though, and they they knew it was coming was what was the best part of your day today? Now that's different from how is your day? Right, right. And the thinking there was, we wanted to get a little deeper into how the day was, but we also wanted as they're going to sleep, to have that on their mind. As they're, as they're drifting off into the ether of Oh, yeah, that was the best part of my day. That's that's what wanted just kind of bathing them as they were as they're falling asleep. But that's just a much better question than how was school and then you get frustrated because you get one syllable answer.

Yeah, I totally agree. That's definitely making me think already, too. And I like how you you said, you know, it gets them thinking about that at the end of the day. So that's the last thing that they're thinking about. Yeah, I hope so. Which really will help them hopefully, sleep better hope so and go into the next day, you know, with a better mentality as well. So, Dean, I know that we said earlier on that you're a professor, you started the journalism school. How did God lead you to that? That opportunity? I do want to hear about that.

Yeah, it's it's a it's a great question. And it's just so convoluted in which I think is, is kind of how a lot of life is like, I was working as a business writer in Minneapolis, I had gone to graduate school in journalism, how I got into journalism, if it's okay, yeah, let's go back apart from that. So I, you know, I got this literature degree, and then I just, I was lost, I had no idea vocationally where I was headed. And I ended up working as a youth pastor at an urban church in Detroit. And they had a coffee house. This is back in the 70s. If I don't know how many of your listeners are my age or older, but they remember the Jesus movement. You know, in the 70s, there were coffee shops and stuff. And this church had one and so they hired me to be both the youth pastor and the manager of this coffee shop. And

how old are you at this time?

Like 22? Okay, I knew William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor far better than I knew the Gospels or the prophets. And yet, and yet, I was hired to be an associate pastor that should tell you, yes, I did that for three years, and I was completely lost. And this this goes back to the Christian community, you are the role of others in your life, as far as helping you find kind of who you are. I did this for three years, and I was miserable, and I was doing a terrible job at it. And finally, it was my wife's great uncle, who is a Bible scholar. He was an archaeologist he used to teach at Garrett seminary and at Yale Divinity School. I mean, this guy was a biblical scholar. he summons my wife and me to his place in Indiana, after he had retired, and he and I, he sends the women away, and he and I just sit in his study. And he says, How long are you going to do this? I have to do what he goes to this, this youth pastor thing. How long are you going to do this? I said, I have no idea. He said, What's your plan? I don't have a plan. You're presuming I've got a plan. I don't have a plan. He said, you know, your personality can carry you only so far. Eventually, you need to know something,

right?

I love this. I mean, I'm thinking, on the one hand, he's telling me that I'm pretty shallow. But on the other hand, he's saying, so let's get on it. And he said, so what are you good at? JOHN, no one had ever asked me that question before. What are you good at? I said, I think I'm a pretty good writer. He goes, Okay, let's start there. Where can somebody go, who's got some skills as a writer to get developed as a writer? So we talked about MFA programs. And then he said, Well, what about journalism? Isn't journalism you have to do it every day, they'll train you to be a writer and and you get a job telling stories. So let's think about maybe journalism school. So that's what I did night, I started looking into journalism schools around the country, got in at the University of Missouri. And seriously, it was like, Oh, this is what I'm supposed to do. So now I'm like, 26. So I, once I left that pre med thing till the time I was in, like, first class in journalism school. I'm serious, john, I was lost. I was absolutely lost.

So you know, like you were lost youth pastor.

I was, I was, that's six years of just wandering in my own spiritual and vocational desert. Yeah. So I went into journalism, so got a job as a business writer, then in back in Minneapolis, and Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, contacted me, I'd never been in San Diego, I'd never been to that school. And they said, Hey, we understand your you know, something about journalism, you have a degree in it. I had some friends who were on the faculty. Okay. And, and, and you know, something about the Church of the Nazareth, because I was raised in the church. Right, right. And so they said, We are starting a journalism program, could you just do some consulting with us and help us develop the curriculum? Because, you know, you know, what a good journalism program is because I went to the University of Missouri, you know, what journalists should know? And you know, the Nazarene world, you know, the Nazarene educational system. So can you help us consult on how to put a program together? So I did, I helped him I gave him some advice. I pulled some stuff together. A few months later, they called and said, Okay, now we're doing interviews for who should run this program? Can you come out and interview with us? Let's just start a trip to San Diego. Are you kidding me? Of course. But keep in mind, I've never taught anything before. So I went out there and just gave a sample lecture, ironically, on conducting great interviews. And then they called back a few months later and said, okay, we want you

so you were you were going to be the one trying to help figure out who is going to lead this school? Yeah. And you ended up leading it, you're you ended up being the guy?

Yeah. No, weird. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. So so that's how I ended up in San Diego. And starting this journalism program, they had already approved it, they just needed somebody to kind of put it together and put it in motion. And then I was able, they were smart enough to let me keep my writing world alive. So that's when I was freelancing for the New York Times and for the Boston Globe, and for a bunch of magazines and stuff, which I still do. Wow,

it worked out. That's really cool. So what is your favorite part of teaching young journalists?

Um, I think initially, it's when they see that journalism is so much more than what their parents or what their pastors warned them

about. Okay. There's

a lot of students come in with a sense that it's all about politics, and that we all hate America, and we're all enemies of the people. So that's what they're that's what many students come in with. But they they suspect that might not be true, because they've already declared journalism as amazing. Or maybe that's their way of just getting back at their parents. But to realize No, it's it's actually fundamentally about storytelling. That's what journalism is. It's just fundamentally about storytelling. So seeing the lights come on, with those students to realize, Oh, we we learn things we understand the world better by telling really good, powerful, true, verifiable, factually accurate stories. You can accomplish a lot with a well told story. So I think when students kind of get that that's when I sit back and say, Okay, good, good. We got hope for the future.

That's good. We need hope for the future. Because do we do there's a lot of stuff out there that we need more people that are in the kingdom of God to be newsmakers News Teller, storytellers and I, my personal feeling is that that the church in general has kind of pulled away and left have left a vacuum. And, you know, we need to be the ones now telling stories and be involved with that we can't just point the finger and say, That's wrong. They're saying this wrong. It's fake news, fake news all the time. Now, granted, granted, you're gonna have some of that. But in general, there always has been, there always has been, there always will be. But if Christians are just pointing the finger instead of saying, Here I am, Lord, send me right, then we're going to be in, we're going to continue to be in problems. And so I appreciate that you are teaching young people how to do this, and how to ask good questions and find good stories and tell good stories too.

Well, and the whole concept in Scripture of being salt and light, how can you do that from a distance? You can't? Exactly, exactly. You simply can't you have to engage. And that's what I think we're trying to do. Yeah. You know,

Dean, as we're, we're wrapping up here. I've enjoyed our conversation, for sure.

Yeah. And but

I, I love asking these questions of people, and we've kind of touched on it a little bit. But if you look back at your life, and you know, just like the disciples were walking with Jesus on the mass road, but didn't realize that it was him. You've kind of made mention of this in a few different times. But as you look back at your life, where do you look back and see now that Jesus was walking with you, but you just didn't recognize it in that moment?

I love the question. I don't, I'm going to end I'm going to answer it maybe a little bit differently from saying, Oh, yes, Jesus was walking with me on that path. Believe it or not, it was as I got a clearer understanding of Psalm 139. So stay with me here for a second. I'm with you. All right. All right. So there are some wonderful statements in Psalm 139. Where can I go from your presence? Where can I flee from your spirit, if I go up to the heavens, you're there, if I go, if I make my bed, in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there, that's the key, even there, your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast. So understanding that wherever I was, I had I was always in the presence of God. That as that verse just sort of internalized, I realized, even when I was in urban Detroit, trying to run a coffee house and doing it badly, even there is and was on me, and his right hand was holding me fast. That that's, it's it's sort of the slow dawning that I was never away from. Yeah, the presence of God. And that's, that's only something I've come come to terms with in recent years. And it's been profound it just in recent years. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I think I think I was looking more for signs and wonders, okay. Along the way, instead of realizing, oh, no, it's always been like this. The presence of God that this is the phrase I keep coming back to, there is no place where God is not. And that's, that's just where I've been kind of living. And I just wasn't ready to receive that, I think, until recent years.

And so how did that change your perspective?

It made me look less for signs that I'm on the right path. And it made me more aware of presence. That, okay, I'm on this path. That must be the right path. I mean, look at the 23rd Psalm. He leaves me on the right pads for the sake of his reputation. And then that very next one, the very next line and the 23rd Psalm says, even when I must walk through the darkest valleys, so look at that juxtaposition. Yeah, I'm being led down these paths, including the dark ones. Wow, that's good. Yeah, that's true. You know, then I don't have to be afraid.

That's really good, Dean. That's very good.

So but that's that's a slow dawning. That's only happened in recent years. I know. My 23 year old youth pastor self was not sophisticated enough to think that way.

Well, that kind of leads me into my next question that I always love to ask if you could go back in time and talk to that 23 year old youth pastor version of yourself or even a different time if you'd like. What advice would you give yourself?

A relax, quit trying so hard. There is no place for God is not. wherever you are. You are God's is guiding you and holding you fast. If I I mean, I'd like to tell that to my 20 something year old self, but I know my 20 year old self, well enough to know that I probably wouldn't have gotten it.

Yeah, I think any 20 year old, looking back at my 20 year old self too, I kind of needed to go through some hard moments and gain that experience in a in a personal way, as opposed to just hearing it from somebody else. But I like to think that just by talking with other people that I can gain wisdom from them. And hopefully, I don't make those same mistakes that they might have made, or I would have made we gain wisdom from each other. Absolutely. So would you say right now that that Psalm 139? is like a life verse for you?

Yeah, I think the entire Psalm is and so I do this every now and then, where if, if I take out the pronouns that are in that song, and either put my own name in there, or I put your name in there, and I say, Where can john run from your presence? Where can john flee from your spirit? If john goes up to the heavens, you're there. So if I do that, and kind of personalize it like that, it's so much more profound. And that's when that it starts to really sink in. So I think, life verse maybe for this season in my life, I would say probably Psalm 139, is what grounds me. That's so

good. I love Psalm 139. And just knowing that God has a purpose and a plan for us that he's, you know, knit us together in our mother's womb, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. And, you know, there's so many times in life where it just feels like, nothing's going right where it feels like, I'm off that path. And there's nothing that I can do to get back on it. It's good to be reminded that God is always there, even through those dark, dark valleys.

He may be leading you in Yeah,

yeah, that's, that's, that's, that's actually a good reminder too. Because if I stumble upon those, those dark valleys, that kind of makes more sense. But sometimes, if God's leading you through that, he's leading you through it. It's not

just a word. That is the key word it is through.

Yeah. So Dean, I love the concept of or the name of your book that you said that God has hidden in plain sight. God hidden that plain sight?

Yeah, yeah. So the title of the book is God hides in plain sight, God

hides in plain sight.

And the subtitle is how to see the sacred in a chaotic world. I love that Baker publishing published it a few years ago, but I was not raised in a Catholic tradition. But I took again, this is the Thomas Merton influence. I took the seven sacraments of the of the ancient Catholic and Orthodox Church. And I took those seven sacraments and applied them to everyday life. So if you want to look at our conversation today, we could actually look at that as the sacrament of confession, because we're bearing witness to one another. And we're bearing one another's stories. That's a type of confession. And I do that with all seven sacraments in the evangelical Protestant tradition, I was raised in the only taught thought about baptism, you only thought about communion, but there's some there's some rich, rich traditions when you think about vocation. And you think about ordination, that the ordination that comes up being a believer, or what does it mean to be part of a family? So the sacrament of marriage, the sacrament of, of last rites, extreme unction, you know, what does it mean to go from this world to the next? And so it was just a more what I considered to be a more accessible way of looking at how does God interact with us in the little things throughout our everyday lives? And I'll tell you, john, I was most fearful of what Catholic audiences would think of this interloper dipping into their territory and writing about the sacraments. It was the Catholics who were the most receptive to this book, because they thought, Oh, my gosh, there's so much more to these sacraments than just what we're experiencing in math.

Yeah, there is so much more sacred out there than we give credit for there is and sometimes, you know, I know we can be so guilty of just doing our Christian thing and checking off the box, going to church, praying, reading the Bible every day, different things like that, but the sacraments and there's great prayers that have been written for so many different different areas of life. Actually, one of the Christmas gifts that I gave my sister this last year, was a book full of prayers, for like the prayer for changing a baby's diaper, the love of your case, your daily cup of coffee. Yeah, and I love that concept of it. Because we need to make sure that we are realizing that God hides in plain sight, and we just need to see him there. Yeah, and let him reveal himself in that process along the way as our hearts are burning. And we're journeying with him.

So nice. Nice little segue there.

Yeah, I work on those. I work on those. But yeah, Dean, I just want to thank you so much for this conversation that we've had. And then my pleasure, man, thank you so much for allowing me to join you along your way.

I enjoyed it. And I I loved being part of part of being your way as well, and I look forward to hearing more of your broadcasts.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Dean Nelson. Honestly, interviewing the guy who literally wrote a book about doing interviews made me a little bit nervous. But once my nerves Calm down, we had a great conversation and I know that I am better from it. Today, ask someone what was the best part of their day? Or maybe even ask, Is this how you thought your life was gonna turn out and make sure that you really listen to their responses, I'll be providing a link to Dean's website in the show notes. Thank you for listening to along the way. If you've enjoyed joining me along my way, please share this with a friend who you think will be encouraged by this podcast. Also, please rate and review along the way on iTunes. That helps more people discover along the way and subscribe to this podcast wherever you're listening. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and through my website along the way dot media. I hope that you've enjoyed this part of my journey and may you realize when Jesus is walking with you along your way. Along the way is honored to be part of the charisma Podcast Network. You can find tons of spirit filled content from their vast catalogue of podcasts including my Monday through Friday news stories for the charisma news podcast. Go to CPN shows to see the full list and latest episodes.