Elizabeth and Amy’s conversations

Posted by Ir (Helen) on: 05.21.2008 /

Recently Josh has posted on here about a school project involving conversations with an atheist, Lawrence. Last week I was excited to discover that Elizabeth has been doing the same project with Amy and they’ve both blogged about it. (Josh helped Elizabeth find Amy - Amy was one of the people who responded to Josh and Karlene’s request for atheist conversation partners that we posted on Conversation at the Edge a few months ago)

I wrote to Elizabeth and Amy and asked if it would be ok for me to ask them questions about the project and post their answers here. They both said yes - here are my questions with their responses. As you’ll see, the project was a good experience for both of them.

I know this is a school project for Elizabeth. Elizabeth , can you tell us what this project is about? Amy, why you were interested in participating in Elizabeth ’s school project?

Amy: I was very excited when I heard there are Christians out there who actually want to talk to atheists in a nice, friendly, non-judgmental manner! Those are an endangered species in my part of the country.

Elizabeth: I was taking a class on Evanglism at George Fox Evangelical Seminary and one of the assignments was to use a book called Holy Conversation: Talking About God in Everyday Life which required that I have weekly conversations with a conversation partner about my faith with someone who is not a conscious follower of Jesus. One of my classmates put out an appeal for conversation partners on your website and got more responses than she needed and asked if anyone else in the class needed a conversation partner. I had a few friends in mind that I could have chosen as a conversation partner, but decided to take the opportunity available to talk with someone new. I wasn’t real excited about feeling like I had to have “programmed” conversations with my friends, so it was an easy choice for me.

Which conversation so far has been your favorite?

Amy: It’s a cross between Sharing Stories and What’s Wrong With the World.

Elizabeth: I enjoyed so many of our conversations it’s hard to pick one favorite. But, we had a conversation about believing that was very thought provoking. We talked about whether it is possible that some people are more predisposed to have faith based on their brain chemistry. It was quite an interesting conversation and we continued the topic into the next week.

What have you learned so far?

Amy: I’ve learned all about Elizabeth’s family and their lives. I also gained an appreciation for the Washington-Oregon area.

Elizabeth: I have learned that I really don’t like “programmed” conversations. I am a natural conversationalist and tend to talk about holy and sacred things easily, so while it was good to have topics to start the conversations, we often spent more time talking about others things and getting to know each other.

Have there been any awkward moments? If so how did you resolve them/get through them?

Amy: Elizabeth is a great conversationalist, so from the very beginning, our conversations flowed fairly easily and I was never offended by anything she said.

Elizabeth: I’m not sure if Amy felt awkward at times, if she did - she didn’t make a big deal about it. Sometimes it felt awkward to talk about the required topic when there were others topics of interest to us both. In those cases we would often talk through the topic and how we didn’t really want to talk much about that particular topic and then moved on to other topics.

Do you think you’ll stay in touch after the school project is over?

Amy: Oh yeah! I refer to Elizabeth as “my friend” now instead of “my Christian.” We still email, call and text each other about what’s going on in our lives.

Elizabeth: The project ended at the end of April and the topic of whether we would stay in touch was part of our last official conversation. We agreed to stay in touch and have talked, sent text messages, and emails since them. After getting to know someone for twelve weeks and enjoying each other we both felt that we wanted to continue the relationship.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Amy: This was a great experience! Besides covering the weekly topics, we connected on a deeper level by sharing our lives with each other and becoming friends.

Elizabeth: It has been great fun getting to know Amy. The sub-title of the book is: talking about God in everyday life and even though Amy is an Atheist, we were able to have great conversations about God. I blogged about one of our conversations and I got more responses than anything else I blog about ;-)

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