Devotional. Red-Letter Communication

  Throughout the Holy Bible, we are able to see ways in which Jesus demonstrated leadership principles that we today hold up as best practices. Throughout the class, we will look at this Red-Letter Leadership (in many Bibles the words of Jesus are printed in red) as it applies to communication. In past courses, your devotional reflection has been a 1/2 to 1-page interaction between you, the Bible text, and some provided prompts. For this course on communication, we are going to switch things up a bit. Instead of a written reflection, you will provide a 3-to-5-minute video reflection using the Video Note tool (like you have done for the course opening biographies). While you may want to make some notes or a basic outline of key ideas that you want to communicate in your video (in response to the Bible text and prompts), important values for the video reflection are authenticity and transparency. Often it can be helpful to think about three categories of response: 1. What are the key insights that occurred via your reflection? 2. What are some of the ideas, principles, or perspectives that really touched you deeply? 3. What are the questions you are grappling with as a result of the reflection? Consider your video note to be like a personal conversation you are having with a trusted friend or advisor in a quiet booth at the back of a restaurant over a cup of coffee or tea. Upon successful completion of this assignment, you will be able to: • Appraise a biblical perspective regarding communication. ________________________________________ While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.” When he said this, he called out, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” His disciples asked him what this parable meant. He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.’ This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.” Luke 8:4-15 (NIV) This is another great example of how Jesus took a principle he was trying to teach and turned it into a story. He used imagery that the people of his day would understand, that of planting crops. When you choose to tell a story with the purpose of communicating a principle or idea, you need to choose imagery that connects to the listener. If you always choose baseball metaphors but the person you are telling the story to doesn’t watch or understand baseball, the story will not fulfill its purpose. You may look at the verses that say “but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand’” and wonder if the parables Jesus taught were actually efficient. The words in italics are a quote of Isaiah 6:9. Isaiah was preaching to a nation that was not listening to God’s prophets. Jesus’ use of this verse is not to say that the people could not understand the parables, but rather that they would not take them to heart. Looking at the end of these verses, you can see that Jesus sometimes had to spell out what he meant in his parables. Again, this does not mean they were not effective. Once Jesus did explain the message, the story would have stuck in the listeners' minds. Don’t be afraid to sometimes spell out exactly what you mean.   1. Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade. 2. Review the information in the Getting Started and Background Information sections. 3. Record a 3- to 5-minute video response to the questions below using the Video Note tool. Additional assistance on the use of Video Note can be found in this article(new tab). a. Which of the six devotionals from this course connected with you the most? Why? b. Was there a personal impact that you experienced from the reflection on one (or more) of the parables? Was there a professional impact? What are those impacts and how might you be a little different than when you started the course?