Very important for all Christians, and particularly those doing full-time paid ministry, to have good conversation skills.

Lifehacker provides us with the top 10 conversation hacks.

It may just be me, but I’d replace number 10, “Feign Sincerity”, with “Try Hard to be Sincerely Interested”.

The rest are very good and someone could write a Christian version, while we’re all still pumped about Driscoll’s visit.

Maybe we could speak about the science of conversations, since it’s so fundamental to who we are as people – we communicate. It makes me think of the lesson on free trade and speech writing Toby Ziegler gives in an episode of The West Wing. Why is free trade a good thing:

”Food is cheaper. Clothes are cheaper. Steel is cheaper. Cars are cheaper. Phone service is cheaper. You feel me building a rhythm here? That’s because I’m a speech writer, I know how to make a point. It lowers prices and raises income. Do you see what I did with ‘lowers’ and ‘raises’ there? It’s called the science of listener attention. We did repetition, we did floating opposites, and here comes the one that’s not like the others. Ready? Free trade stops wars … and we figure out how to fix the rest.”

What conversation techniques can we use?

UPDATE: The ‘pace and lead’ technique seems like a good example of the science of conversation.

And Four Rules to Understand What Makes People Tick is fascinating reading. What can this tell us about reaching out to people?