The team I worked with in Mexico, after experiencing the power of the “Barnabas questions,” quickly recognized that they could use these questions in their work with community organizing. They regularly come alongside people to help them with community problems and issues, and by using these questions they see how they can become more intentional.
Now the questions are a tool for their social work. They go out into the community with an intentional plan for listening, helping, supporting and empowering the change that needs to happen. Each of their community workers are aiming to have 6 to 8 of these types of conversations per day.
In this context, their community workers come across as being helpful people who care, not someone coming in from the outside and telling them what to do. Sometimes a short-term intense practice of an approach like this can lead to remarkable results.