Tag Archives: speak

Why Are We Here

Brad Abare has a great post up at Church Marketing Sucks about the importance of reminding people why we are here.

We’re involved in too many things. We’re in too many places at one time. We’re caught up in the swirl and whirl of life as we know it today. We’re spending more time communicating and connecting. We’re launching new things. We’re raising families. We’re meeting friends. We’re online, offline and out of line. We’re trying to follow Jesus.

As communicators, we would serve our audiences well to continually remind them why they’re here, why they’re involved and why they matter to this community.

It’s a great thought, a sobering thought, in a time when people are often curious about each other’s motives.

I’ve had friends who made their purpose pretty clear – they were about making money, getting famous, or some combination thereof. I’ve had other friends who weren’t sure about their purpose at all — sort of aimless drifting from one possibility to the next. Then there are those who know their purpose and live it to the “t”, like this kid who has a dream for a peace forest in the DMZ and got to actually visit North Korea to make his plea.

Likewise, churches and faith communities can seem to have pretty unclear agendas. Maybe it’s a reality of our human-ness, but churches can misplace their priorities and mistake their purpose. For anyone who has ever gotten hurt by a church with a misplaced purpose, please forgive us.

As for the Table, our purpose is clear – to help others find their place, nourish their souls, and change their world at God’s gracious welcome table. We still got to live that out and figure it out what it means day to day, Sunday to Sunday, but I believe we are a community that is up to the challenge.

Maybe you are too. Join us as we continue this experiment in living with a powerful purpose.


Love makes the world go round.

We are smack dab in the middle of a sermon series on love, and specifically, the Five Love Languages, a book written by Dr. Gary Chapman. It’s normally used as marriage help/advice, but we are using it as a lens to understand the different ways Jesus communicated love. For someone who might be on the fence about this whole Christianity thing, it’s pretty intriguing stuff.

Dr. Chapman’s observations and definitions about these different ways of communicating love comes from years of practical, counseling experience of different cultures, couples, and situations. And it does make a lot of sense.

For example, one love language is Words of Affirmation. Like when Jesus tells the story about a master saying to one of his servants – “Well done, good and faithful servant!” Or when he tells Peter, “You are the rock upon which I will build my church.”

Another example might be Quality Time, like the scripture we used on Sunday (Luke 19:1-10), where Jesus spends the day with Zaccheus and transformation comes to his house. Wherever Jesus goes, he knows the power of time and spending time with people to communicate love. Some of the people in the Gospels have never been treated in such a respectable, compassionate way before.

The three languages ahead, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch, continue to flesh out these different ways of speaking love effectively.

What’s the point? Jesus was a master orator of love. And he continues to be. As disciples, we are challenged to live like Christ, and that means speaking love, as best we can, in all we do. The world needs more compassionate people who speak love like no other.

Photo credit: alvimann from morguefile.com


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