Building Deeper Relationships through Wholehearted Everyday Conversations

Most of us want deeper relationships. We say it, we mean it, but somewhere between wanting it and actually getting there, we get stuck. We default to surface level conversations where we try so hard to be helpful that we miss the person right in front of us. Jason Orm knows that tension well. Jason's a longtime participant and facilitator of Wellspring retreats.

And he's someone who's always been drawn to building relationships. It's a natural gift for him. But he tell you that wanting deep connection and knowing how to get there are two very different things. So we wanted to have him on the podcast to share how he learned to stop performing connection and start living it. He talks about the shift from trying to teach people what he's learned to simply being present with them.

What I love about this conversation is how practical it is. Jason shares useful advice to build deeper connections with people that you care about. He talks about real moments with friends, with neighbors, with his wife and kids. We're showing up differently, creating more meaningful, relationally rich moments. And he's honest about the times that he got it wrong along the way.

If you've ever wondered what it actually looks like to go deeper with the people in your life, this one's for you. I'm very excited to be able to talk with Jason Orm and share a little bit about his background. He's joining us from Atlanta where he lives with his wife, Mallory, and their three kids, Maddie, Max, and Keller. He came to his first battle in January 2019. And in that that experience, he encountered God breaking through years of hardheartedness and started on a path of the deep transformation of living in wholehearted community.

He has a longing to disciple people into a deeper knowing of God's love and their own glory to reveal him to the world. Jason, thank you for joining us today. It's good to be with you.

Absolutely. Honored to get to be here and see some friendly faces and new folks that I haven't met. And so, yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah. Well, to start us off, you you've had six or more years now of the Wellspring experience. And you you mentioned in the bio, we we I mentioned that you've had some transformation come out of that. Describe the moment that you realized that you were no longer practicing the skills. You know, we're we're so instructed with these helpful frameworks, and we refer to them in our small battle groups.

Mhmm. We we can use them, feelings charged, the elevator model, the deep desires list, and we can feel kinda awkward as we go through them and pick off the little things that we wanna say and structure certain questions in a certain way. But describe the moment where you no longer felt like you were rehearsing the Wellspring toolkit or practicing it with your with your group, but actually living it. What was going on in that moment?

Yeah. Great question. I think one of the things that's been so resonant to me about Wellspring is because in some of my story, relationships have always been something that I've wanted to cultivate and wanted to and and and God's given me giftedness to pursue relationships and build relationships really deeply. And so I think that one of the things that was so special about finding Wellspring was, oh, it's giving me language and tools for that, which I already want to do. And so a lot of it actually came very intuitively and it was more about getting out of the way some of my behaviors beforehand.

Maybe out of a desire to connect, I would be hijacking the conversation or cutting somebody off. Or so it was a lot about, like, yeah, getting some of those tools and scripts to to help super like, pour fuel on something that was already a desire of mine and relationship. So yeah.

Yeah. That that that rings true for me as well from my own experience too. It was such an enabler for me to take what I was already attracted to and then to help me do it better. Can you think back to one of those early experiences perhaps with someone outside of the Wellspring ecosystem, where you tried a script that maybe kept you from hijacking a conversation? And what was it like what was it like to do that?

What did that feel like, and what was the result that the person you might have been engaging with?

Yeah. This wasn't early on, but not yeah. It was still a while ago. I remember engaging a brother who is very faithful person, very God honoring person and wanting to live out the gospel in his life. And he was feeling a great sense of distance from the Lord, a sense of being left alone.

And without him knowing anything about Wellspring, I just said, Hey, if you just had a chance right now to hear, like, from the Lord, is there a movie scene or a quote or a song lyric that comes to mind that maybe like, and he immediately before I finished my question was just in tears and told me about this Avengers scene where Captain America is alone. And then he hears, hey, we're on your left cap. And all of the Avengers come to to the rescue and he just, like I'm getting emotional thinking about him because he heard the voice of God very audibly through this tool that he was not alone and that God hadn't abandoned him. And out of love for him, was like, yes, this is so powerful to as a way of connecting with the Lord and hearing from him. So very as an example, somebody outside of.

Yeah,

what a beautiful example. And it's it's also honoring to see how it touches your desire even now to talk about it. Mhmm. As we've been trained to know that tears are a sign often of a desire being touched, and it seems like that's certainly the case with you. It's just really enabled you to root in deep desires to be able to do that, and that's just so awesome of an experience.

I also have to say, I've never used the tactic of can you equate your experience to a movie scene, and I'm absolutely gonna put that into practice in within the next twenty four hours. That's that seems like a beautiful way to get someone out of the the tough vocabulary of trying to figure out how they're feeling.

Yeah.

What are you know, thinking that's that's a good example of a success, but it can be challenging to to to live this way and to get outside of our Wellspring ecosystem and to talk to others. What are some of the obstacles that you've experienced when taking these techniques and this mindset of wholeheartedness outside of your your into your domain?

Yeah. This is something I was just talking to the guys about my great breakout couple minutes of heart checks, but I think that there's a few things that come to mind. One is sometimes I get caught up in wanting to teach it rather than just engaging the other person. And so, because I want them to come along for the ride of the conversation or come down the elevator with me, I need to tell them that there's an elevator. Or else they won't know how, what button to press.

And so, but I find that sometimes when I'm, when I'm doing that, I forsake the ability to actually just engage them and be present with them. And it's not always necessarily like right or wrong to do that, but I've found that sometimes my, I've missed opportunities to just love somebody well because I'm trying to love them completely and, like, give them the whole picture when it

Teach a man to fish. Right?

Yeah. It could have been helpful to just try the bite size, just engage whatever's actually going on right there.

Yeah. That that's interesting. And like you say, there's no right or wrong here. I mean, there's a time to teach, and there's a time just to relate. It sounds like what you're saying is you've shifted to a default of I'm not gonna teach it.

I'm gonna engage it. But there's always a time to teach as well. What what have you found has been helpful of when to to pull out the elevator model?

Yeah. I think in deep friendships and conversations, it's much easier to say, hey. Can I show you something? Or, like, hey. Because I know your story and I know that thing that you always wrestle with that, you know, that that lie or message that you're always hearing about yourself or, like, that I can read their story back to them, then it's helpful to just map what we know to be true about can I can I just share this framework with you?

And so if I'm in if I'm in-depth and length of conversation with people, I don't mind. I actually am just going to share it with them because I know that as I track with them over months and years, that's just gonna be a foundational element.

So teaching is a function of relational equity.

Mhmm. Yeah. I think so. I think it Yeah. I think it helps to just lay lay some foundational kind of models.

One of my favorite quotes is all models are wrong and some are helpful. So the the elevator is wrong, but it's super helpful. And so I can just hopefully give somebody that as a handlebar to to hang on to as I engage them so that they can kind of have a map of what what's happening.

Excellent. When you think about the groups, you've done multiple groups. When you look across that, you know, sort of retrospectively here, what two or three practices have you found

are really helpful to make

a group thrive and really come together?

Yeah. So the more successful groups that I've had have been those personal connections and relationship where, you know, my initial experience going through battle was like, oh, why doesn't every church center around this and why doesn't everybody know about this? And like, I've got to get it to everybody that I know. And so that's been the last six years just trying to pull together different little discrete pockets of teams. And I think what's most successful, some of the principles there is like, one, ask them to come with me.

I've found less, way less success in saying, hey, you need to do this, so grab a few people and go versus, hey, I'm going to do this. Will you come with me as a part of my group? So I think that's a really big one. And yeah, just having having that equity that's already a baseline to grab people that that have seen me change and to see me grow and have seen me step into freedom where they're like, well, yeah, of course, I I trust you and I see the change that's taking place. So it's an easy yes for a lot of people.

You mentioned that a lot of people have seen you change and grow. What if what kind of feedback have you gotten from people who've known you pre Wellspring to post transformation?

I think there's people that were already exposed to Wellspring could probably have words to say like, you know, I'm thankful for like I'm able to savor that. Freedom with you and that growth and that unlock. I've had a lot of interactions where people that are very close to me, my sister being one of them who is her and her husband are deeply involved with Wellspring as well, where she could call out, yes, this is really true of you. And yes, we do delight in this new way that you're walking. My wife in particular, I didn't do a great job of getting home from battle, and I was, again, just trying to, like, boil the ocean and tell her all the things.

And I think it was really hard for her to hear a lot of stuff when I first got home. And so but over time, she would say that it's just been so that I'm a different person because of it, and that's I'm engaging her and engaging the kids in such a different way That's more free, less clamoring for my identity and more giving of love.

So what what an awesome shift in perspective from trying to get to focus on giving. That's amazing. That's such a great testament to what it means to follow Jesus and Wellspring's ability to align and equip along those lines. I can ask you probably another 100 questions, but in fairness to the folks on the on the call, I'd like to open it up. Mandy, are there any questions coming in from anybody or do you have any questions that you would add into this conversation?

Well, had put just in the chat that I was curious about how you come up with your questions. The question that you asked in your example about movies was just so fluid and I was just curious about how you come up with these questions.

Yeah. I think that most of them end up being the same one. So it's like once I have a good one, then it's just like the spirit prompting those things. Long before I think it might have been in Wellspring, but not from Wellspring. One of my battle team, original battle team guys had asked or kind of had that experiment on hand of, hey, go if you're struggling with your identity or with the way God's seeing you or with some sort of connection to God, like ask him for a movie clip, a memory, a verse, a quote, like ask him, how do you view me?

How do you see me? And that experiment stuck with me. And so that's sort of probably where some of that's coming from. But I think other questions that stick with me a lot is, you know, the magic question of, hey, how are you experiencing this? So pulling other people in is a really helpful one.

One that I ask a ton is that I think I've gotten from maybe some of the Heath brothers work is if everything you just told me was something that I told you, what would you tell me? Or if everything you just said was something that somebody you deeply cared about shared with you, what would you tell them? So kind of that side door where somebody, I think we all probably, most of us have a tendency to give less grace to ourselves than we will to other people or less, we'll put up with a lot more for myself than I would for something that's going on with my wife or my kids. And so if you can help give a third party perspective to that person, help them see like what they're going through. So that was a question I asked last night to a couple that me and my wife were engaging was like, hey, if everything that you're going through, your fiance was going through, how much would you put up with it the same way that you're putting up with it yourself?

So that's sort of another.

It's a great question.

And I love, I also love just like, if you could hear the Lord say something to you right now, what would you want it to be? Do you hear him saying anything, or what would you want him to say to you? Which I think is something I've picked up along the way from Wellspring somewhere, but those are one of the mind.

And and to clarify these are these questions that you will just pull out with anyone you have a relationship with, or do you restrict them to Wellspring?

No. Anybody, I think, would yeah. I think anybody I would ask those things too if I'm in relationship with. And yeah.

Yeah. If anyone has any question, you can just type it in the chat and we'll have Mandy ask Jason for it. Mandy, do you have any other questions there?

I do. I do. I have a question about just how you would describe the wholehearted series to someone that's totally new.

Yeah, the series, would say the way I talk about them is if they don't know about the Wholehearted community and the whole battle process, I would say, hey, there's some most of the people I know or I've already told them about Wellspring. I'm usually like, well, hey, there's also this entry level six week small group experiences that help to give some of the foundational framing for the larger battle process. And so as a way to start to try on some of these things or get some of the basics and fundamentals, those can be a nice place to start.

Great. Also have a question about transitioning people who've been through the wholehearted series to the full battle. Is that usually a difficult transition or is that one that's easy to sort of help them bridge?

Yeah, I've done that only one time and it was actually back before the Wholehearted series was there. It was sort of the precursor and the heart of a leader in crisis, which was developed in COVID. And so I did that with a group that then we took a battle team through, and I think it felt very natural. And I'm assuming that these would as well as like, as you get some of those fundamentals down together and experience and taste and see what wholehearted community starts to look and feel like, then a natural transition into, well, yeah, of course we'd wanna do more further up and further in. I find that usually the the sticking points are more logistics to get battle team, like people that I'm very close to, not just anybody off the street, but people that I'm close to, it's usually, yes, I want to do it, but I'm having a baby or scheduling conflicts and logistics and things.

Sure. I love, can you say that again that Further, like deeper. I don't know. You have that little phrase.

Yeah. This the CS Lewis, like further up and further in, like, it's sort of this idea of, like, once you start to get I've found once people start to get a taste of that wholehearted community that people are wanting to go deeper.

Yeah, even just that phrase made me a little hungry. Like I wanted to lean in, you know, it made me think of the person who asked the question about the wholehearted series to newcomers about that wholehearted community. I feel like it's that hungry spot.

Yes, and I think that was the initial framing of my friend that asked our original battle team to come together. We were already in community and friendship with one another and had been doing some like dad play dates on Saturday morning that were just so life giving and started to lean in with each other. And his sort of framing was very much that same thing, Mandy, of, hey, would y'all like to take the next step? Like, would y'all like to go a little bit deeper? I know of this resource that could, like, even level up where we're at because we're already kind of on this journey.

And so we're, yeah, all very hungry, of of course. Yeah.

That's so simple. It really is so it's so simple. It's not over complicated. You do wanna go deeper. That's it.

You know?

I see Laura's question about how long have you been in Wellspring. Is it tough to break into your own language way of engaging? I think so I've been around it since 2019, but had some, like, precursor. Like I said, my sister and her husband have been involved in a long way, like for a long time. There were some previous relationships that were connected to Wellspring, so I kind of had a few ties.

But yeah, I've been around for five or six years and I think that probably like most of you have experienced, another one of my favorite quotes is, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. And I think our battle team all just kind of agreed like, hey, this is mechanical. These are training wheels. It's not the real thing. So let's just be okay with it being mechanical and try it on.

And I think that the truth that all of us have heard about when you do those mechanical things and those scripts in love, it's okay. The other person's not gonna see it as you're doing something to them. And so that's how we experienced it in terms of just like the mechanics wearing off and it just becoming second nature, if that answers your the question

a lot. Well, we we'll take one more question and then move to our next segment. It's been really rich, Jason. So thanks for this. Yeah.

Glenn Glenn asked whether you've ever had seekers in a wholehearted Mhmm. Group or a battle group and what that experience has been like.

That's a great question. I haven't I haven't ever had anyone that's that's more of a a seeker in a group, in a formal group. We have neighbors that we're really close to, and I find myself just openly sharing about some of these things, just almost like couching it in a worldview of, hey, I believe that we were all created to love and be loved. And so as I hear you, neighbor, unbelieving neighbor talking about things you're struggling with your mom or identity or ways that you're insecure, I'm able to couch it in sort of this worldview language of, and and even start to kinda frame up the elevator almost without it being overly something that's gonna be polarizing to them. Yeah.

So I don't know if that helps as an adjacent kinda answer, Glenn, to your question.

That's great, Jason. Well, thanks again for sharing some of your experience with this. It's been really helpful to hear your perspective. I've learned a lot from hearing from you, and I'm sure others have as well. Thank you for watching or listening.

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