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Expert Lists

Jimmy Akin

When I was in the process of becoming a Catholic, I ran into a roadblock. I had been researching the Catholic faith using books, but I had a problem: There was only so much that I could learn from them, and I was reaching that point. I needed someone to bounce questions off.

I needed an expert.

So here’s what I did: I called a friend of mine who is a Lutheran apologist and asked if he knew a Catholic who could help me out. He did and suggested I contact Catholic Answers.

As a result, I got to know a variety of Catholic apologists, who were a big help. They also served as early members of what I now refer to as my “expert list.”

This is a group of people who know more than I do about particular subjects and who don’t mind me asking them questions from time to time. Who I consult on a particular query depends on who has expertise in that area. If I don’t have someone on the list with the expertise I need, I find someone who does.

At the moment, my list includes people with expertise in philosophy, theology, canon law, liturgical law, biomedical ethics, religious life, history, biblical archaeology, linguistics, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Arabic, as well as other subjects.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you who these folks are lest they get bombarded with inquiries. But I can tell you how to build your own expert list. There are some tricks of the trade that I had to learn by trial and error.

Identifying Experts

The first step in cultivating an expert list is to start identifying potential experts. Where can you find such people?

Colleges are a good place to start. College professors are paid to be repositories of knowledge. That makes them good candidates for being on your expert list, at least within their own specialty. And, provided you follow the rules I’ll give you, they are usually willing to help you out with a question even if you aren’t one of their students.

They’re also easy to find. Just call a local college, ask to talk to a particular department, and then ask to speak with whoever teaches the subject you’re interested in. For example, if you have a question about medieval Church history, you’d call the history department and ask to speak to the medieval history professor.

College professors are also unusually easy to contact by e-mail at present. Many maintain faculty pages on the college web site with an e-mail link for their students and colleagues to use.

Another class of potential experts is authors. If someone has gone to the trouble to write a book on a particular subject, he (usually) knows a lot about it. To contact the author, look at the “About the Author” info on the book and then search the Internet to try to find him. If all else fails, send a snail mail to the book’s publisher, and they will forward the letter to him.

Since Catholic apologetics involves discussions with other religions, do not forget to consider professionals of other religions as experts to contact. If I had a question about Jewish theology that I couldn’t find the answer to, I wouldn’t hesitate to call a local rabbi or, better yet, a teacher at a Jewish seminary.

Even people of an intensely anti-Catholic religion should be consulted when the occasion calls for it. I have called the WatchTower in Brooklyn several times for clarification on particular points of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ doctrine.

Another place to locate experts is the various expert forums you can find on the Internet, such as the Q & A forum on www.ewtn.com. There are also expert services available, such as Catholic Answers’ correspondence department, which staffs apologists to handle phone calls and letters from people with questions.

Contacting Experts

There are certain rules that need to be observed when contacting experts. Failure to observe these rules means that it is much less likely you will get a response to your query, or at least that you will not get the kind of helpful response you were hoping for. If you don’t follow these rules, you can frustrate and annoy the expert.

Remember that experts aren’t being paid to answer your question. They are going out of their way to do you a favor, so you should make it as easy on them as possible.

Now the rules:

1) The most important rule is to be brief. This is even more important than being polite. Brevity is the key to getting your question answered. You want to get in, ask the question, and then get out as quickly as possible. If you load up your query with all kinds of background that the expert doesn’t need, then his eyes are likely to glaze over and he may hit the delete key before he even gets to your question.

It’s natural for us to want to give more background than is needed. We want to explain why we are asking our question to justify intruding on the expert’s time. Fight this tendency. It doesn’t help the expert answer the question any better, and it runs the risk of annoying him by making him read or listen to a lot of material he doesn’t need.

Don’t give all the history leading to the question. Just ask it.

Kids are great in this respect. They know what their question is and they leap in and ask it, without trying to explain or justify why they want to know it. They just want to know. As in the spiritual life, becoming like a little child on this point will help you get more and better answers from experts.

2) Be polite. Even if you’re consulting a person from a religion you despise (like the WatchTower), be unfailingly polite.

3) Avoid asking multiple questions. This beefs up the size of your query and makes it less likely that the expert will respond. You stand your best chance of getting an answer if you ask a single question and then sign off.

4) Frame the question so the expert doesn’t have to write you a whole essay to answer it. He’s going to give you a few sentences or paragraphs at most. Usually, this means you need to phrase your question as narrowly and specifically as possible so that he can give you a useful answer in a short space.

If you send really general questions like “Why should I believe this?” then you run the risk of getting really general answers like “Because it’s true.” Or you may get no answer at all.

If you have a broad question and there is no way to make it more specific, then ask the expert to recommend materials that you can read about it to learn more. That way you get the information you want and the expert doesn’t have to write an essay to answer your query.

5) It’s important that you ask for materials. Many people ask experts to recommend a book on a particular subject, but often no such book exists. Frequently, the subject they are asking about is narrow enough that it is more appropriately dealt with in an article or a chapter within a book, but not a whole book. If you ask for a book and there isn’t one, you may get an unhelpful response. But if you ask for materials, you are more likely to get pointed in the right direction.

6) Don’t ask the expert to review materials, either articles you have written or e-mail exchanges you have had with people or pages you’ve found on the Internet. This is too much to ask the expert to do. If an expert has made the transition to being a personal friend as well, then you can ask him to do things like this, but people who are not close friends cannot be expected to do this.

Instead, single out particular points in the materials that you have questions about and ask the questions. “I recently made the following [short!] argument to someone. Does it work?” This is an okay question for a normal expert. “Please read this series of letters and tell me what you think” is not.

7) Don’t send the query to multiple people at once. If the expert can see that you have sent your e-mail to ten different people, why should he take the time to answer you if someone else you’ve carboned may give you your answer first? He’d only waste his time.

8) Don’t ask for an ongoing relationship. Don’t say, “I was hoping I could bounce questions off you from time to time” or “I was wondering if we could dialogue on this subject.”

The expert is going out of his way to help you. Don’t ask him to commit to doing so on a regular basis. Just ask your question. If you have another question in the future, come back and ask it then.

Sometimes this will lead to an acquaintanceship or even a friendship with the expert, but don’t ask him to commit to such things up front. Asking for commitment will spook the expert and make him reluctant to help you.

Getting a Reply

There are also rules concerning getting replies from experts:

1) Be patient. The expert probably has a lot to do. If you’ve sent him a letter or e-mail, you may not hear from him immediately. If he’s a college professor, he may be grading finals, or on a trip, or away for summer vacation, or even on sabbatical.

If you don’t get an answer in a reasonable amount of time, send another polite query, and if an answer still isn’t forthcoming, ask a different expert.

2) Don’t get angry if you don’t get an answer. This is particularly important when it comes to e-mail. Some people get so many e-mails that they can’t read them all, much less reply to them.

I’ve e-mailed people from whom I’ve never gotten a response. But I realize that the person may be too busy, or that he meant to answer my query but it got lost among his other e-mail, or that he may have accidentally deleted it along with the tidal wave of spam in his inbox, and he never saw it.

3) Be aware that you may get a referral. Sometimes an expert wants to help you but isn’t able to do so himself. He may therefore refer you to someone else whom he trusts to give you the answer you need, such as a colleague in the field.

To save time, and depending on his relationship with the person he wants to refer you to, he may even forward your letter to this person so that you can get your reply as quickly as possible. That’s fine. It expedites you getting your answer.

4) Thank you’s and brief follow-ups are okay. If you got the answer you wanted, it never hurts to send back a brief note saying thanks. If you didn’t get quite the answer you wanted, it’s okay to send back a request for clarification. Just don’t try to engage the expert in an ongoing correspondence.

Cultivating Your List

Over time I’ve also developed rules for maintaining and cultivating my expert list:

1) Find out the expert’s preferred method of being contacted. Some experts prefer phone calls. Others like e-mail better. Some even favor snail mail. If you contact the expert the way he likes to be contacted, he’s more likely to help you in the future. Just don’t ask how he likes to be contacted; that suggests an ongoing relationship he’s not prepared for. Instead, look for clues to his preference.

2) Check one expert out against another. Not all experts are as knowledgeable as you may need. If you are suspicious of an answer you got from one expert, ask another. This is particularly important in matters of opinion.

3) Do not pit one expert against another. This is extremely important. It is one thing to check out an answer you got with another expert. It’s another to come back to the first expert and say, “Well, your colleague said this.” Experts really hate being placed in “Let’s you and him fight” situations, and most will avoid them like the plague.

If you get contradictory answers from experts, ask more experts, and see where the consensus lies. But don’t try to pit experts against each other or ask them to directly criticize their colleagues. After all, they have to work together in the same field. Ask your question as if you’d never asked it of anyone else before.

4) Be aware that experts’ situations can change with time. An expert who used to be able to answer your questions regularly may get so busy with a new job or project that he doesn’t have as much time. That’s okay. There are lots of experts out there, and expert lists are constantly growing and changing.

5) Ask the expert to suggest other experts. This is a great way to build and improve your list. Asking for referrals will put you in touch with much better experts than picking people out of the phonebook or off the Internet.

How to Get Jimmy Akin on Your List

Finally, if you want to use me for consultation on apologetic matters, that’s great! I love answering questions, though amid all my duties I have limited time. So let me tell you how to query me.

My preferred method of contact is by phone. I spend so much time writing that I prefer to just directly tell a person what they want to know. I even have time set aside each week to answer people’s questions.

Every Thursday between 3:00 and 4:00 P.M. Pacific Time, you can call me on Catholic Answers Live (888-31-TRUTH) and ask whatever you want, even if you can’t hear the radio show where you are. The best time to call is right at 3 P.M., or even a minute or two before. I’m there to answer your question, and I love doing it. So give me a call!

(Incidentally, the same technique works for getting Karl Keating on your expert list; you just have to call on Tuesdays instead of Thursdays.)

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