At the core, what we desire to do in the communication part of these resources is give you a relational and conversational way of talking with your colleagues about the great things of the gospel! We have tried to do that in a principled way rather than through a stiff “how to” approach.
Many of you have the social skills where this comes intuitively and easily, so much of this won’t be anything completely new for you. As you get better and better at it you will develop a flexible basic skill of being able to talk in a relaxed and informative way about the things of gospel. That skill which is typically learned one on one and in small groups can be translated to large groups, too.
Treating people with dignity and respect even if they disagree with you (sometimes even vehemently) is a form of love. And we want to do all--in this case communicate--as a form of love for people made in God’s image (where they acknowledge that or not) and as an expression of our love for God.
Once a very, very prominent philosopher that I knew was giving a talk that I attended at the University of Minnesota to a large group of students and some faculty. He began his talk with his typical whit and charm and told a couple of innocuous jokes. Then he launched into his talk with the audience very attentively, when all of the sudden someone in the audience took issue. The man expressed his disdain for the speaker and for his topic and how he was handled and threatened to leave. The tone of voice and language he used was a paradigm example of non-rational objection.
The whole audience was stunned.
Politely the speaker said, “Be my guest”, pointed to the door and went on with his talk unruffled. I was amazed how he handled it. Instead of blazing back at the skeptical audience member, he diffused the whole thing with the polite and neutral tone of voice.
Take the skills you have or have learned; go and do likewise