What Tammy meant is this: When seeking to persuade people, we have to focus first and foremost on understanding the other person, on showing concern and compassion for the person’s feelings, emotions, and circumstances. We need to find the person’s “why.” Being relational means listening to her story, seeking common ground, and taking her seriously as an intrinsically valuable person, even if she never changes her mind. This is essential not just when people defend abortion with statements that have an obvious emotional component, such as rape or life-endangering pregnancy complications. It’s essential in every conversation about any argument for abortion. I think Tammy would respond with a chuckle, “It’s essential in every conversation about anything.”
Tammy isn’t implying being intellectual is unimportant. Tammy is trying to make sure you reach the heart of the person with whom you’re speaking so your arguments and reasons can have their proper effect. When does Tammy think we should do this relational work in the conversation? At the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. After re-reading her writing on this recently, here’s how I summarized her approach:
Be relational, and patiently continue to be relational even longer than you thought necessary, then be intellectual, but make sure to continue to be relational even while being intellectual.
This may represent only a small tweak to the approach you’ve used in the past. Yes, make arguments and respond with intellectually sound answers. But all the while, make relating to the person your greater priority because sometimes that relating is what makes the greater impact.
As a pro-life advocate just starting out in my mid-twenties, I cut my teeth at Justice For All outreach events. Just as it was for Tammy, these regular outreach engagements changed me from being focused mainly on the arguments and helped me to see how important it is to be relational even while being intellectual. (See jfaweb.org/RI to explore the “relational and intellectual” approach Tammy helped JFA develop.)
These outreach engagements that made such a big difference in my development as a pro-life advocate and Christian ambassador would never have happened at all, though, if it hadn’t been for Tammy’s work behind the scenes. God worked amazing logistical miracles in large part through Tammy’s efforts in
those days as she helped create the road system we still use decades later, with our staff and volunteers still aiming to eat meals with families and sleep in host homes rather than going to restaurants and purchasing hotel rooms. That road system has enabled us to have vibrant connections with pro-life advocates all over the country while also making the most of supporter dollars. It’s great, but it takes a lot of time and energy to make all those connections.
Tammy was one of JFA’s chief connections officers, spending long hours before, during, and after trips. For example, twice each year we would train 88 students from Focus on the Family Institute (later Focus Leadership Institute) for three days, and JFA shouldered the burden of finding a bed and a breakfast for each of those students in local homes near our campus outreach in four different Colorado cities on a two-year rotation cycle. Well, actually, Tammy shouldered much of that burden, and she loved every minute of it. For the better part of a decade during our tenure at the Institute, Tammy loved connecting with each host and student, getting to know each one, and making sure the students’ basic needs were taken care of so that they could make the most of the life-changing training they got to experience for two days during the JFA campus outreach event.
Back in the JFA office in between trips to Colorado, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Missouri, and other states, Tammy served at various times as HR Director, Secretary of the Corporation, Regional Team Lead for Wichita, and she also served as advisor to JFA’s founder, David Lee. She hosted a number of JFA’s interns in her home over the years, as well as many JFA staff meetings. Although short in stature, this spunky woman filled the room with her bright smile and joyful laughter. She often reminded the team we needed to not just do serious work, but also have fun together. As a member of a small team, she did many other jobs that needed to be done, including raising her own support team that was faithful through almost three decades. (Thank you!) Tammy did all of this while also parenting three children with her husband and chief supporter, Kevin.
Tammy’s favorite JFA work, however, was seeking to change hearts and minds about abortion. She loved speaking in our seminars and talking with pro-choice students on campus, and probably more than anything else, she loved training up the next generation of pro-life advocates as a mentor in our “Seat Work and Feet Work” program, beginning in our seminars in interactive small groups and moving out to our campus outreach events where she would model our training in real-time for the students and then give them support and encouragement as they followed in her footsteps. Many of those beautiful moments of training were only possible, though, because Tammy was willing to sustain brutal physical stress. I have many memories of our team putting in very late nights searching for a host home address with only the help of a myriad of MapQuest printouts Tammy had kindly placed in folders for each vehicle. (Yes, there was a time very few people had GPS!) I remember many meetings with supporters, very early mornings setting up campus outreach exhibits, and long outreach days in the bitter cold or the bright, hot sun. Tammy and our team weathered wind, rain, and even snow. Tammy maintained a joyful spirit through it all, for she loved the people we trained and the people whose minds and hearts we sought to change.
Finally, I must mention one other strength Tammy brought to our work. She trusted God implicitly, even through health challenges and other roadblocks she and our team experienced. She placed her faith well, and I believe God was pleased to work through that faith in many instances.
In early November, Tammy made the drive from Wichita to Manhattan to join our team for an outreach event at Kansas State University. We joked that now she would need to sign a volunteer agreement … for the first time in thirty years! I watched as Tammy eagerly stationed herself near the exhibit and began engaging students in conversation. A master was back at the work again. I even was able to snap a special picture of our free speech board with Tammy’s silhouette without disrupting her conversation. What a special momento!
Thank you, Tammy, for all of your work over the years. We miss you in the daily work here at JFA, but our team and supporters are praying for you as you continue to serve Jesus in a well-deserved retirement!
