Don't swing for the bleachers

When I was growing up in Philadelphia, the lead-off batter for the Phillies was Richie Ashburn, uniform #1. His job, and his skill, was to get on base, somehow - walk, get a solid hit, dribble a ball between the shortstop and third baseman, bunt, whatever. Wikipedia says, "Ashburn was a singles hitter rather than a slugger, accumulating over 2,500 hits in 15 years against only 29 home runs." After he was on base, other players would advance him. Of course in general the fourth batter in a line-up was a power hitter, the clean-up batter, whose job was to get a multi-base hit, sending previous batters across home plate.

When I went on a short-term mission to Tanzania, one of the catch phrases I grabbed onto was, "You don't convert people, the Holy Spirit converts people."

That slogan, using "convert" in a wider sense, is the starting point for this rhetoric. The Richie Ashburn version of the slogan is: "Don't try for the home run. Get on base, somehow. Leave further progress to the batters following you, especially the clean-up batter, the Holy Spirit."

Your job is to create space for the Holy Spirit to work in.

How do the Fremen on Dune control the huge "worms" that live in the desert there? They pull back the protective edge on a worm's segment ring, which creates a kind of itch or vulnerability, and the worm rotates itself or changes direction to protect that vulnerability.

You want to put a burr under your opponent's saddle. (Yes, I know, it's the poor horse that actually feels the irritation. But in Plato's chariot analogy, the horses represent part of the person's own soul.)

You want to avoid provoking your opponent into buttoning up, clamping down, walling up.

What response does normal online discussion behavior provoke?