Listening across Difference
Before they ever stepped onto a plane for Senegal, Dr. Jamie Tanner knew the team needed more than logistics. The work ahead of them was too difficult, too complex, and too human for that.
A group consisting of eight women and two men was preparing to partner in a project supporting women and children in Senegal who had experienced exploitation and displacement. Alongside local organizations, the coalition hoped to expand a farm outside Saint-Louis into something more -- create cottages, an infirmary, a schoolhouse, a place of worship, and a long-term community where healing and flourishing might take root. It was ambitious work. Tender work. The kind of work that would require trust long before anyone arrived on the ground.
But trust was not automatic within the team itself.
The group included therapists, agriculture specialists, mission workers, a Senegalese Muslim woman named Annie, African American clergy from the Church of God in Christ, and white Christians from Texas. They did not all know each other. They did not all agree with each other. But they did need to work together for the sake of this incredible work. So, Dr. Tanner gathered them in a Story Circle.
Week after week, the team sat together and engaged in the process. Everyone answered the same questions. Tell a story about a meal. Tell a story about loss. Tell a story about belonging. Each person was given the same space. No interruptions. No cross-talk. No debate. Just a simple rhythm: listen, receive, thank you. Even as some practiced Islam, the stories of Jesus led to important conversations.
The method opened communication and helped them see connections and commonalities that transcended their differences. The group learned each other’s stories before they ever learned how to travel together or work in a challenging environment. Therapists and farmers, pastors and nonprofit leaders, each discovered that whatever else divided them, everyone had a meaningful story.
By the time the team arrived in Senegal, they had already practiced what the work would demand of them. They had practiced listening without fixing. Holding space without agreement. Receiving another person’s story without needing to make it their own.
That practice mattered almost immediately.
When the team arrived in Senegal, they were met at the airport by three Senegalese Muslim men who would serve as their guides because the women would require male escorts wherever they went.
During the five-hour drive from Dakar to Saint-Louis, one of their Senegalese guides explained the cultural logic of polygamy in a very patriarchal society. Some women on the team were deeply triggered. But they recognized the moment for what it was. It was another invitation to practice holding space for a lived experience different from their own.
Each night, after hearing stories of trauma and witnessing the realities facing women and children in the region, the team gathered to debrief. The stories they encountered were heavy. Some were devastating. But they had already learned how to sit together in hard things.
The connection they built showed up in smaller moments, too. Their guides welcomed them into their homes, where the team sat cross-legged on the floor and ate from a shared bowl, the kind of intimate hospitality that turns strangers into guests. What had begun as a mission team was becoming something more like a community.
By the time they returned home, Dr. Tanner was convinced of something she had only hoped for before. Story Circle had not simply helped the team get to know one another. It had prepared them for the work itself. Because when people learn to honor one another’s stories before the mission begins, they arrive ready to honor the stories waiting for them there.
Dr. Jamie Tanner is the founder and director Simple Sparrow Care Farm in Hutto, Texas. Simple Sparrow is a trauma-informed care farm where animals, gardens, and therapeutic horticulture become part of the healing process. She holds the Doctorate in Educational Ministry from Dallas Theological Seminary and has served as a combat medic, a hospice chaplain, a church leader and teacher—and is the mother of four children.