How to Get People to Turn You Down

How You Ask

            “You probably wouldn’t want to being that it is such a tedious and time consuming job but I thought I would ask you anyway.” 

            “I don’t know much about what the job entails but you know it is important and only takes three years and you will probably be on the property committee.” 

            “Listen, we are really desperate because we are up against a deadline and five people have turned us down already.  Would you do it?” 

            Contrast the above with the knock at the door of the pastor’s study.  The little church was a four hour drive from Richmond, VA.  Pastor Mayes opened the door surprised to see the President of Union Seminary standing there.  “Jim, may I come in?”  What ensued was a story and a request and an invitation.  The man who was so busy had made time for a personal visit to convey that the faculty of the venerable institution had met and prayed for many weeks about the future of the seminary and particularly of the Old Testament department.  They had felt led through that process, and in a unanimous way, to ask Pastor Mayes to get a PhD at their expense and then become one of the seminary professors.  How is this “ask” different than the three above? 

            Sometimes it isn’t that good people turn us down as much as we asked in such a way as that it was almost bound to happen.  Don’t you want to know when asked to do something what the job entails, how much time it will take, who you will be doing it with, the grand themes of the leadership, the decision making process behind the request, why you are thought to be qualified?  Too often people have been asked to be an elder and what is in their mind is three hour meetings over the color of the carpet in fellowship hall and cantankerous church politics.  An unless you have a perverse penchant for that sort of thing, you guilt yourself into doing it or you say, “Please, shoot me instead.”