October | 2016 | On Q Blog

The power of showing up

Posted on October 31, 2016
/Under Evangelism

Influence. It’s something everyone wants, right? But how does someone become a person of influence? According to Reggie Joiner, influence comes when you decide to become “a consistent presence in someone else’s life so you can earn their trust.” He’d contend that it all boils down to showing up. If you’d ask him how he developed his view on this subject, he’d tell you he learned it from Geneva Bray. Influence Begins with Empathy Geneva Bray was born in 1893. She grew up in rural Georgia and lived most of her life without indoor plumbing. She never drove, and her...Read more …

5 Simple Tools to improve listening

Posted on October 28, 2016
/Under Listening

Give yourself permission to take just seven and a half minutes to listen to this TED talk given by Julian Treasure, who says right off the top that we’re “losing our listening.” A man who “lives to listen,” because sound is his passion, Treasure wraps up his short education on the art of listening, saying it’s a skill we can all master, leaving us with 5 ways we can all improve our conscious listening. Silence Spend 3 minutes of the day in total silence. Can’t find that anywhere? Settle for quiet. Silence and quiet can “reset” our ears. The Mixer In an environment where lots of...Read more …

On the radio this week–Walk the Way

Posted on October 26, 2016
/Under Listening

This is Walk the Way, brought to you by Q Place, I’m Jeff Klein. And I’m Pam Klein. Someone who I consider a really good listener recently told me that asking questions and listening weren’t always intuitive for her. But a college class in journalism unlocked a whole new world where she learned that people actually want to talk, even when they think they don’t. Every person has a story worth listening to, but getting the teller to share it, just requires: asking open-ended questions. asking follow-up questions. and requesting more explanations. Good interviews require that the question-asker gives the...Read more …

What love means

Posted on October 24, 2016
/Under Loving

Shannan Martin grew up in a quiet, rural part of Ohio—“God’s country,” the residents called it. Never in her wildest childhood dream would she have imagined that her definition of “God’s country” would be redefined when she and her family sold their own piece of land in the country and moved to the “wrong side of the tracks” in Goshen, IN. While loving used to look a lot more self-absorbed and self-protective, today we welcome Shannan to Q Place to share what that word means to her and her family now in their daily life. ___________________________ Here’s what I know today...Read more …

Leaning in: Haiti

Posted on October 21, 2016
/Under Evangelism

When Ann Voskamp shared her conversation with her husband about her indecision about how to respond to the enormous humanitarian crisis in Haiti, I leaned in and listened closely. With her question—“How do you know how to best invest your life? How do you know what’s wisest, and where’s wisest, and who’s neediest, and is any of this even the point?”—she took the words I’ve been wrestling with for weeks now right out of my mouth. There they were, on the proverbial table, for deliberation. I was so relieved to know someone else was struggling too. Like Ann, I feel...Read more …

On the radio this week–Walk the Way

Posted on October 19, 2016
/Under Praying

This is Walk the Way. Brought to you by Q Place. I’m Jeff Klein. And I’m Pam Klein. RA Torrey, a turn-of-the-century pastor and evangelist wrote the following: “The most important human factor in effective evangelism is PRAYER, Every great awakening in the history of the Church from the time of the Apostles until today has been the result of prayer. There have been great awakenings without much preaching, and there have been great awakenings with absolutely no organization, but there has never been a true awakening without much prayer.” Torrey goes on to point out the Awakenings in history...Read more …

I see you.

Posted on October 17, 2016
/Under Noticing

I recently watched the movie Avatar again with my family. You remember the story of Jake Sully—he’s a disabled ex-marine assigned to duty on beautiful Pandora, a planet full of exotic nature-loving natives called Avatars. Jake’s assignment is unusual; although he is paralyzed and no longer able to use his lower extremities, he will become one of the Avatars with the aid of scientific technology and “take over” the able-bodied body of an Avatar native. This way, he can better build relationships, win the creatures over, and complete his mission. Along the way, he meets Neytiri, who’s assigned to Jake by the tribal...Read more …

Recommended for your bookshelf or Kindle!

Posted on October 14, 2016
/Under Noticing

“Noticing is a prerequisite to caring about others and serving them in tangible ways that smuggle the Gospel into their hearts.” ~ Doug Pollock “If we want to live in grace, we must develop eyes that see. We must learn what might be called the discipline of noticing. To notice something–to truly pay attention–is a powerful thing….The practice of noticing is a skill. It involves learning to pay attention to gifts we have otherwise taken for granted….They are precious gifts. And what’s even more amazing is that their Giver is lovingly present with you even as you are experiencing them.”...Read more …

On the radio this week–Walk the Way

Posted on October 12, 2016
/Under Noticing

This is Walk the Way. Brought to you by Q Place. I’m Jeff Klein. Have you ever wondered why you live where you live? Did you ever wonder if there was a bigger reason that you live where you do, next to the people do? Did you ever think that God might have a larger purpose for putting you there? I have a friend in the inner city of Chicago who says “God–He don’t make no mistakes.” Acts 17 pretty much tells us the same thing when it comes to where each one of us live. What does knowing and believing...Read more …

Aha! Where can you end up if you follow a trail of curiosity?

Posted on October 10, 2016
/Under Noticing

For a bit of time in 2015, Robert Krulwich and Aatish Bhatia authored a blog called “Noticing,” saying that it was for folks who “like to look around. Who can’t not. Who find it hard to get anywhere on time because there’s always something—an oddly behaving raindrop (is it going up? How can it go up?)—that we can’t not notice, not puzzle over.” They called themselves badly over-puzzled. Hmmmm…Woah! Huh? Aha! Their notion was that observation and curiosities—those little things that “catch the eye”—can put us in a state of They invited every reader to join them on a journey “to...Read more …

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