This week we’re starting an exciting new series…The Ellen’s Pick Member Spotlight. Almost every week, we’ll be featuring guest blog posts from the inspiring women leaders of the Ellen’s Picks community! You can look forward to reading what these humble, impactful, faith-driven, and passionate women have to say about faith, leadership, family, ministry, and a wealth of other meaningful topics. I’m excited to learn from these women I get to call my friends, and I hope you will take the opportunity to appreciate them with me!

Over the many years of taking thousands of medical histories in the emergency room, I’ve become better equipped to ask good questions and foster meaningful conversations. In my field, I often have only a few minutes to ask crucial questions in order to make a diagnosis. This learned ability to lean in and listen, without bias, has trained me to hear and appreciate everything that someone is trying to communicate to me. And a perhaps unexpected application of this skill in my life, is that I feel better equipped to share my faith with others…not because the sharing is so important, but because the ‘listening’ is so important.

I think the most meaningful thing I can uniquely contribute towards sharing the Good News of Jesus is continuing to engage in non-judgmental, deep conversations with people of all walks of life about their faith perspective. Rob and I lead a small group through Connexus Church and I especially love that many of our members are new to church, exploring faith, or even anti-faith. It’s so important to intentionally create time and space for respectful exchange in our lives and then to have absolutely no agenda other than to lean in, listen, and learn.

I’ve also had the really cool opportunity to extend this passion for meaningful conversations into a podcast show, called “Intersection”. Each episode features a non-scripted, real-life conversation with someone who speaks about their life in the context of faith. Over the last year, guests on my show have shared about a variety of diverse experiences including mental illness, adoption, cancer, grief, transgenderism, atheism, and much more. Faith perspectives have spanned the spectrum and I have always appreciated the vulnerability and transparency of my guests and have also learned so much about them (and often, about myself, too)!

It is so important for us as Christians, to be actively developing meaningful relationships with non-Christians. Who are your friends who do NOT go to church? Who are your friends who do NOT believe in God? Who are your friends who actually think Christianity is NOT relevant for them at all? I hope you have several of them! I’ve heard it said that the most important first step in someone eventually placing their faith in Christ, is trusting a Christian. I challenge you to be that Christian. Do this by intentionally creating time and space for these conversations in your life. Be the Christian that a non-Christian can trust.

And if the chemistry is right and through those conversations you develop a friendship – don’t hold it to any timeline…AT ALL! The timing of someone coming to understand that God loves them, created them and wants to have a relationship with them is NOT on you – ever! Continue to invest in your friendship for the sheer purpose of caring for someone (and being cared for) and the rest is ALL GOD’S – always, even to the end of time. I have friends who have been in my life for the last 20, even 30, years, who have no apparent interest in my Christian faith…yet…

No big deal.

Not my deal.

That’s God’s.

Like a cool drink of water when you’re worn out and weary is a letter from a long lost friend.
~ Proverbs 25:25 MSG

…you must worship Christ as Lord of your life. And if someone asks about your Christian hope, always be ready to explain it.
~ 1 Peter 3:15 NLT

Dr. Rose Zacharias Meeder ~ Rose loves to share about her passion in Christian ministry and how she came to be where she is today as a result of God’s role in her life. She is a busy wife, mom to four, long distance runner (purely for mental health reasons 🙂 ), and has been an ER doctor in Orillia for the last 12 years.

More from Dr. Rose Zacharias Meeder:

“Having Meaningful Conversations About Your Faith” (Connexus Church)

Episode #123 on Carey Nieuwhof’s Leadership Podcast

Intersection Website and Blog (subscribe through iTunes)