There is no one-size-fits-all way to communicate with people and that is even more important when it comes to something as controversial as faith. In order to relate to those we minister to, we need to employ effective communication skills. Sharing our faith is as much how we say it as what we say. There no right way to communicate to everyone, but there are many wrong ways and in today's anti-Christian culture, it's even more important that we avoid those. Over the next year, I will be giving you in-depth information about the best ways to share our faith as well as how to respond to anti-Christian bias and even how to handle conflicts within the Christian community. My...
I touched on this briefly in my post a couple weeks ago, Communication Lessons from Fairy Tales, but here is a more in depth look at this phenomenon. Words like awesome, fabulous, I’m STARVING, DEAD TIRED… everyone says them, but most don’t truly mean them. Are we desensitized to them so much now that these words don’t mean anything anymore? When someone with thyroid disease or fibro says I’m exhausted. Most think tired. When someone is truly in pain and says it’s excruciating. Most think it hurts. When someone is clinically depressed or has had a death in the family and says depressed, most think sad. What's the danger in this? 1. Using inflammatory words too often will give the impression...
There are communication lessons for us in just about every area of life. That's because communication affects every aspect of our lives from birth to death and from relationships to business and ministry. I'm starting a new segment on the Art of Eloquence blog each month called, Communication Lessons from Fairy Tales and this month I start with the most obvious: Lessons from "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" Everyone knows the story. A boy cries wolf so often people no longer respond to his pleas and then, when a real wolf threatens him, nobody believes him enough to help when he really needs it. We see this played out differently in the technological age where car alarms go off day...
There is a new trend in advertising to sound as IF you are cursing, but aren’t actually using those words. This greatly bothers me. For example, here is a booking.com commercial. Here’s another one from Fresh and Easy Market: They can't think of a better creative way to market their products without using obvious substitutes for curse words? This commercial is on during family time. What is this teaching our children? Do they think they don’t get it? Shame on them! Now, I’m not one who says all words that take the place of swear words are bad. Most of those words don’t bring the image of swear words. They are creative and fun alternatives to saying whoops! Like oh...
