A Time to be Silent

The power of listening in a noisy world

By Darryl Wootton

We all heard those words as a child. School teachers and librarians become quite proficient in their ability to give a quick Shh! to noisy students. I remember the overwhelming temptation to interact with fellow elementary students during quiet classroom time, especially when someone would get me laughing when silence was expected.

When loud interruptions broke silence, the teacher or librarian added an exclamation to their Shh! with an index finger raised to their already pursed lips. When we hear the universal sound of Shh!, we realize we have violated our teacher’s or leader’s expectations.

All parents know that children can quickly escalate the noise level of the family in times of excitement or during sibling quarrels. If everyone in the family is creating noise at the same time, no one is listening. During these loud family eruptions, parents instinctively blow air through their teeth and tongue, producing the hiss-like sound of Shh! that universally expresses to children, “BE QUIET.”

Why are librarians passionate about creating a quiet environment? Why do teachers structure quiet time within their classrooms? Why do parents desire moments of calm and silence in their homes? Why is it so challenging to get people to Shh?

The answer may be simpler and more devastating than we think. The average worker is interrupted every three minutes. Employees check email up to 36 times per hour. And here’s the devastating part: as Gloria Mark notes in her book Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity, it takes 23 minutes to fully refocus after each interruption. Do the math. Most leaders never reach deep focus at all. They are drowning in noise. We don’t struggle to Shh! because we lack discipline. We struggle because the noise has never been louder.

As a young child, I was raised in Oklahoma. My dad was raised in Arkansas and became an avid baseball fan. Interestingly, his favorite team was not geographically close to his home state. When my father was young, the Cleveland Indians’ roster included a player named Bob Feller, who played for Cleveland for 18 seasons. In his rookie season, he struck out 15 batters in his first start.

Bob was only 17 years old. His gifted pitching earned him the nicknames “Rapid Robert” and the “Heater from Van Meter.” He went on to have 266 career wins, all with the Cleveland Indians. His athleticism was impressive, but so was his patriotism. On December 8, 1941, the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Bob volunteered to serve his country by enlisting in the Navy.

Although his deep love for the United States compelled him to sacrifice four seasons of baseball in his prime, he was still inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Growing up, my dad would follow baseball in the papers and on the radio. He became an instant and devoted fan of Bob Feller and a lifetime fan of “The Tribe.”

When my dad had kids, he wanted to pass his love for the Cleveland Indians to the next generation. In my childhood days, MLB games were not broadcast on television in other markets. Our hometown was over 900 miles away from Cleveland, Ohio, where the Indians played. However, on long road trips in our station wagon, my dad would do his best to hear his beloved Indians play ball.

If the sky was clear, the car antenna was bent just right and Mars was aligned with Jupiter, my dad would occasionally get lucky enough to hear the crack of the bat in Cleveland’s Municipal stadium on the AM radio. If my childhood memory serves me correctly, 85% of every broadcast in our Chevrolet was pure static.

To this day, I can still remember the occasional clear reception of “WWWE 1100 AM, and this is Pete Franklin, the voice of the Cleveland Indians.” Of course, often, when the planets were not aligned, the road was bumpy and the Indians were losing, we would hear Shh! from my dad. He could not hear the score of his beloved team if the road noise, kid noise or static noise were too loud.

To this day, my dad loves baseball. In fact, with modern technology, he is able to watch all 162 of Cleveland’s games every season. With his DVR, sometimes he watches them multiple times! Times truly have changed. The Cleveland Indians are now called the Cleveland Guardians. The radio station WWWE is now WTAM. But after all these years, my dad is still an avid fan. Just ask my mom!

My father may still be in the denial stage of grief regarding the name change of his beloved Indians to today’s Guardians. He has quite a collection of Indians memorabilia. But occasionally, he is such a fan, that you can spot him in his new Guardians shirt or hat. And occasionally, if the score is close and the family is loud, you can still hear my dad saying, Shh!

Baseball was important to my dad. His family was more important. However, during those long road trips, he was teaching us that there are times in life when you need to carefully tune into the right frequency while tuning out distractions. Often, we miss out on important pieces of life because our surroundings are too loud.

More significant than our favorite sports team, leaders often need to tune in to listen to coworkers, team members or even their family. While physical geography between team members may be close, their situational and emotional geography are many miles away. Leaders must deliberately and frequently tune in to others with focus and simultaneously Shh! every distraction. The road noise of life’s journey, the static of society and the volume of distractions around us often prevent us from hearing what we need to hear the most.

As a leader, you must learn the fine art of Shh! Personally, you will not reach your maximum leadership potential unless you master the art of quiet. Corporately, you will not create healthy teams unless you demonstrate the kind of leadership that squelches out background noise; and personally, you won’t be able to focus on your mission and goals. Knowing when to Shh! yourself creates an atmosphere of listening and comradery that healthy families and teams always incorporate.

Librarians are passionate about creating a quiet environment so individuals can discover knowledge and wisdom in an undistracted environment. Loud distractions slow down the learning process. Teachers structure quiet time within their classrooms to give students opportunities to review and reflect upon a newly taught principle. Calculus or biomedical engineering has never been learned in the roar of a rock concert.

Parents desire moments of calm and silence in their homes so their children will grow to love peace. It is not difficult for children to enter into a loud sibling rivalry where “That’s mine,” “They’re touching me” or “He/she is stupid” are uttered at a loud, fevered pitch. It is very challenging to have regular moments of harmony and quiet in a large family. Quiet is important as it helps us focus, learn, reflect and prioritize what is important.

Elijah was not just tired; he was finished. Ironically, he had just come off the biggest leadership win of his life. In modern days, this story would have been on the front page, above the fold of any newspaper: “Elijah calls down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel.” The nation of Israel had wandered off, chasing false gods, and God sent Elijah to call them back. He challenged 450 prophets of Baal to a public showdown. Each side built an altar, placed a bull on it and agreed that whichever god answered by fire would be the true God.

All day the prophets of Baal yelled, danced and even cut themselves. Nothing happened. Then Elijah quietly prayed one short prayer. Fire fell from heaven! This fire consumed the entire sacrifice, the stones and even the water they had poured over everything. The people fell on their faces shouting, “The Lord, He is God!” (see 1 Kings 18:20-24). It was a supernatural revival. If social media had existed, Elijah would have been trending. Imagine how many reels this moment would have produced.

You would think that kind of victory would fill Elijah’s tank for years. Instead, the next chapter finds him collapsed in the wilderness saying, “Lord, I’ve had enough.” The loudest day of Elijah’s ministry had left him spiritually deaf. God sent him to Mount Horeb, one of the quietest places on earth. Mount Horeb sits in one of the most remote desert regions on the planet, the Sinai Peninsula. It is not just quiet; it is holy quiet. No traffic, no cities, no cell service, no “Hey, Siri.” The only soundtrack is wind brushing over rock and sand. It is the kind of place where even your thoughts echo.

That silence is intentional. God did not send Elijah to a conference or a crowded temple. God sent him to the middle of nowhere because sometimes the only way to hear heaven is to go where nothing else is making noise. Horeb had history, too. It is also called Mount Sinai. This is the same mountain where God met Moses in the burning bush and later gave the Ten Commandments. It is as if God said, “Elijah, come back to the mountain where I first taught My people to listen.”

Elijah was desperate to hear something from God. He stood on the mountain and waited for God to show up. First came a mighty wind that tore through the cliffs. Then an earthquake shook the ground. Then a blazing fire roared across the ridge. If Elijah were alive today, he might have thought, OK, I get it. God’s a fan of Earth, Wind, and Fire. But the text says God was not in any of those. Then came a gentle whisper.

That is when Elijah pulled his cloak over his face. He realized he had just tuned in to heaven’s frequency. God did not shout from the storm. God spoke through stillness. The Almighty turned the volume down so Elijah would have to lean in to hear. In that hush, Elijah’s mission was recalibrated.

God gave him new direction. God did not give Elijah a bigger platform, but He gave him a clearer path. Elijah was to go back the way he came, anoint new leaders and keep the mission moving. The whisper realigned the prophet’s calling. It was as if God said, “Elijah, you have been listening to all the wrong stations. You’ve been tuned to Earth, Wind, and Fire, but I broadcast on the frequency of Shh!” (see 1 Kings 19:9-18).

Leaders today have the same problem. We chase every gust of opportunity, every quake of crisis, every spark of success and then wonder why we cannot hear God. The static of accomplishment drowns out the signal of assignment. Sometimes the greatest miracle is not fire from heaven. Perhaps your greatest miracle will be finding the quiet to hear again.

The whisper was proof that God’s voice can still reach you after the crowd exits, the adrenaline fades and the noise dies down. Elijah learned an important leadership lesson. God occasionally shouts to get our attention, but He oftentimes whispers to see if we are still listening.

Leadership is loud in the world’s eyes, but some of the most powerful leadership happens in quiet. Without it, we risk reacting to every demand, chasing every crisis and losing sight of the vision God has placed before us. True influence does not come from constant motion or endless words. It comes from intentional stillness, from the leader who knows when to pause, when to observe and when to speak.

Quiet is not optional. It is where one’s soul is centered. The world may reward noise and busyness, but true leadership is born in the space of silence. When we tune into quiet, we discover that our thoughts are clearer and our hearts are steadier.

Yet the need for quiet is not a new struggle. From the earliest moments of human life, our souls have craved stillness, and yet the world has always been filled with noise. Over time, the noise has grown louder and more relentless. To understand why quiet is so rare and so valuable today, we must first look at the history of our world getting louder. The rise of busyness, distraction and constant motion are real.

Shh! is more than silence; it is sacred stillness with purpose. It’s the intentional discipline of quieting the noise around you (devices, demands, distractions) and within you (anxiety, ambition, arguments) so you can hear what matters most, God’s direction, your soul’s true condition and the needs of those you lead.

Shh! is not about becoming passive or withdrawn. It’s about becoming present. It’s learning to pause before reacting and listen before speaking. Shh! is how leaders move from chaos to clarity, how families move from frenzy to connection and how believers move from religious busyness to an authentic relationship with God. Shh! is having calm in a world addicted to volume.

Here is what Shh! looks like in action:

• Spiritual: Daily time with God before the noise begins
• Relational: Listening without interrupting or fixing
• Emotional: Pausing before reacting in anger or fear
• Physical: Turning off devices to be fully present
• Leadership: Creating space for others to think, speak and lead
• Rhythmic: Building patterns of rest, retreat and renewal into your life

Shh! is the choice to lead from peace rather than pressure, to respond from wisdom rather than emotion and to trust God’s timing rather than demand immediate answers.

As a baseball fan, my dad learned to Shh! distractions because the score of his favorite team was important to him. As a leader, you will need to learn to Shh! distractions because the status of your mission is vitally important. Elijah had to learn the same lesson. After the earthquakes and fire faded, he finally heard God’s whisper and realized heaven’s frequency does broadcast in chaos.

My dad found the right station by turning the dial. Elijah found it by turning down the noise. Before we learn how to lead ourselves into Shh! and before we learn to lead others with Shh! let us explore why we all long for it. It was easy to see why my dad longed for a few Shh! moments on those car trips. He wanted to know the latest baseball score. If someone was tuning in to your latest inning of life, what would your Shh! score be?

There is a time to speak.

There is a time to be quiet.

Few know how to tell time.

The clearest signal often comes through the softest frequency. The question is, are you ready to reach for the dial?

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Darryl Wootton serves as bishop of the Oklahoma Assemblies of God Network, overseeing 450 churches and 1,500 ministers. As a pastor for over 25 years, Dr. D understands the multifaceted challenges church leaders face. He has a passion for encouraging and developing pastors through preaching, coaching, and leader development. His new book is Shh!: Leading With Quiet in a World of Loud, from which this article is adapted.