Words From the Heart: a conversation with Dr. Kenny Embry

This episode is the fourth installment in a ten-part series on learning to love with all our heart, part of a broader goal this year to study the greatest commandments – to love the Lord (and our neighbor) with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. In every account of the gospels, the command to love always begins with the heart… and today I’d like to introduce an audience I love to a friend I love… a friend that is an expert on heart-to-heart communication.

I’d like you to meet Kenny Embry. He runs the Balancing the Christian Life podcast, which is absolutely excellent (https://www.balancingthechristianlife.com/),but more importantly for our purposes today, Kenny is a communications professor for St. Leo's University. Dr. Embry is a bona fide expert on how to effectively communicate ideas and why that doesn’t always happen.

As we talk about loving from the heart, I think communication is, by and large, a heart issue. Or, maybe another way to put that is, when we miscommunicate, we tend to miss each other's heart. I thought I'd talk to Kenny and see if I had gotten anywhere near the right mark with that hypothesis. Kenny’s insights were useful for me, and I suspect they will be the same for you.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Words from the Heart: an interview with Kenny Embry, communications professor at St. Leo University

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

I’d like you to meet Kenny Embry. He runs the Balancing the Christian Life podcast, which is absolutely excellent (I’ll put a link to it in the show notes),but more importantly for our purposes, Kenny is a communications professor for St. Leo's University. Dr. Embry is a bona fide expert on how to effectively communicate ideas and why that doesn’t always happen.

In this ten-part series, as we talk about loving from the heart, I think communication is, by and large, a heart issue. Or, maybe another way to put that is, when we miscommunicate, we tend to miss each other's heart. I thought I'd talk to Kenny and see if I had gotten anywhere near the right mark with that hypothesis. Kenny’s insights were useful for me, and I suspect they will be the same for you.

Scott: Kenny, just explain to me, like you needed a job, why does the world need communications professors? We know how to talk, you're not teaching us how to talk, why do we need communications professors?

Kenny: In some ways we do know how to talk, but we don't know how to say the right things. I think one of the things that happens, and I'm not trying to argue for my job, although I do like my job a lot. The fact of the matter is, when you look at what communication is and how it functions in our lives, the more responsibility you have.

The more important it is that you communicate well. And one of the things that I talk to with my students, in any job you take, let's say that you're going to be a software engineer. And a software engineer is about as far away from talking to people as I can think of. But there's a terrible thing that happens when you're a software engineer.

You get so good at the job that they think, we need you to tell other people how to be software engineers. So what we're going to do is we're going to get you and put some software engineers under you. And suddenly that becomes not a computer to person job. It becomes a person to person job. And the more responsibility that you have, the more power that you have, really, the more important communication is.

And it doesn't, you give me the most technical job you have and the higher up you go in the bureaucracy or in the hierarchy, the more important it is that you don't understand things but that you understand people. And so one of the things that I would argue is communication is one of those. skills, and I do think it is a skill set, and I do think it can be learned.

Likewise, I also think of communication as a tool. We can talk about, and I'm sure we will talk about how perception is reality for a lot of people, but I'm going to argue with you on that as well, which is sometimes reality is not perception. That things are different than what you think they are.

Your perception does dictate what you can see, but if you will only take off the blinders. Of the things that you're not looking at, you'll probably have a better objective view of what's going on. And really, in some ways, you need to use the tool of communication to get outside of your perception, to figure out what the blinders are of somebody else.

Communication is about relationships. And if you learn how to get along better with other people, whatever it is that you're doing, That's communication.

Scott: One of the things that I'm hearing from you is that Communication is a leadership skill. So if you're going to be in any position where you are rising in the ranks, you're going to need to be better at communicating because you're going to be dealing with people and people are relationships.

Kenny: You say it's a leadership skill, and I completely agree that it is. It's also a really good followership skill as well. Your child needs to learn how to communicate with you in a way that makes sense to you.

Your child is not the leader of your home, but the better he or she can communicate to you what they need and what they want, the better a leader you are if you hear what they have to say.

Scott: point. Okay, so if we clarify that we're not really talking about communication in the sense of talking to large masses of people, public speaking. We're talking about interpersonal communication, one on one or a couple of people talking at once. If you were to break down interpersonal communication into its most basic parts so that you're going to teach me how to talk to other people in a way that I communicate and listen effectively, what would that be?

Okay,

Kenny: of communication. And the argument that I make about the model of communication, and there are nine parts to the model, I'm not going to give them all to you but one of the, one of them that I tell the students in every textbook that I've ever had, there's a drawing, it says the model of communication and the question that I ask my students all the time is this, why are we studying this?

Why do you need to know, have a graphic representation of what communication is? And if you've ever been somebody who likes to tinker with their car or something like that, you might recognize something called the Chilton Guide to Cars and, or something like that. And what it does is it takes your engine and it explodes it so that you see all the parts.

And the only reason that you know that maybe this piston is bent is because the piston that you see in the Chilton Guide isn't bent. And the one that you have is. And so maybe that's a broken part in your car because the model says it doesn't need to look like that. So the parts of communication as we look at it are two different people, two different individuals at least. And then both of them have a frame of reference. And when it comes to a frame of reference, I give a very technical definition to my class, and then I give them an example. The technical definition I give them is the sum of their past experiences that shape their current perceptions. The sum of their past experiences that shape their current perceptions.

And what that does for them is, one of the things that I talk about is, in the class I talk about dog. And I say, what do you think of when I say the word dog? And they'll say a poodle, a miniature schnauzer, and then I'll just look all around them and I'll say, you're all wrong. You're absolutely wrong. 100 percent wrong.

No, the right answer is my golden retriever. His name was Buddy. That's Dog. No, it's not, Dr. Embry. Yeah, I know, because your problem is you brought a different dog to class, and I did too. So your perception, your frame of reference, is something that you need to unpack pretty carefully.

And by the way, sometimes the people that you're in a room with can't unpack their perceptions very well for you. So you might have to help them unpack that as well. Let's say you're talking about Christianity. Some people have a very negative view of Christianity. Why? I guarantee you it's something that they have in their past, and you're going to have to unpack.

Why they believe what they believe about Christianity. By the way, you do too. You have something that's packed away in your past about what you think about Christianity. That's only one part of the communication paradigm. The other thing that we talk about, I talk about encoding and decoding.

Encoding is taking a lot of abstract ideas and giving it a symbol. And most of the times those symbols are words. But also symbols can be not the words that you use, But how you say the words. When my wife and I were dating, I would text her, and one of the things when we got together, she would say, why are you yelling at me? And I was like, yelling? I wasn't yelling at you. You were angry. No, I wasn't. She said it was in all caps. I said, Oh, I don't know how to turn off the caps lock. The thing about it is, I was encoding the message in a way that she was decoding it. And the problem was, not the words that I was saying, but the way that the words were represented on the screen. One of the things that you need to understand is, sometimes the breakdown, you're using the wrong words. You're using the wrong tone of voice. You're doing this in the wrong timing. That's all encoding. Decoding. You're looking at those messages and you're giving them some of the very worst possible ways of interpreting.

So there you've got encoding, decoding, frame of reference, and then right in the middle of all this there's noise. And noise can be anything that gets in your way. It's anything that's interfering with, how you're going to understand what's going on.

Maybe it's a loud room. I think of one student who just always had really bad B. O. And I could not listen to this student because I smelled this student it's that idea of noise that gets in the way and it might be something that's cultural. Maybe there's just too much noise in a third century text that you don't understand what's going on in the context. is changing the way that you interpret what you're seeing, what you're reading, and how you're understanding it.

Scott: So there's so much I feel like I've got to unpack from what you just said, because each of those deserves its own amount of time to talk about. Noise, I'll start at the end and work my way back and noise and then decoding and encoding and then frame of reference. But, in the case of noise, that's something I notice as a preacher, is that I've got to make sure that when I'm talking publicly, little distractions, even things down to my PowerPoint's hard to read, or there's a lot of noise in the background.

I'll give it an extra beat if a parent is taking a kid out because they're crying or thrown a fit, I might give it a beat to say, Because I know that people are going to miss it. So that has nothing to do with the two people involved in the communication, but it is just part of the world that we live in is that there are things that are distractors.

Is that a fair way to talk about noise?

Kenny: Absolutely. It's something that comes outside of you or inside of you that distracts from the message. Another noise that I would say is the interpretation of the book of Romans. Look we, there's some guys that I know that teach the book of Romans. And basically what they do is they teach the error first so they can counteract the error.

Why? Because it's noise. And one of the things that I would say is, and I've told a couple guys this, stop teaching the noise, start just teaching the book. Because sometimes you pay too much attention to the sideshow, the distraction, the noise, and you never

Scott: the fly buzzing around your head.

Kenny: That's right.

And if you pay too much attention to the fly, you're never going to see what's going on.

Scott: Okay. Okay. So now when we talk about decoding, one of the things that you said was that we decode things with the worst possible interpretation of something. So somebody says something to you, it's in all caps over text and you assume they're yelling at you. They just are struggling with technology.

Why do we do that? What is it about our heart? As people that, that makes us find the worst possible option to decode information.

Kenny: Most of us in most of our relationships are fairly insecure. We want to be reassured that somebody loves us, somebody accepts us for who we are, and that we're not behind, that we're not inadequate and really what you're doing is you're defaulting to, if there's a way to interpret this two ways, what's the worst way to interpret this?

And I will say this, that's, generally that's not true. it's not accurate that, that somebody is thinking that you are in some way less than. Likewise, it almost never helps you. When you start off, most people, not just men, but mostly men are scared of rejection because we are put in positions where we have to be rejected on a fairly regular basis.

Likewise, especially in romantic situations, Women don't like to give rejection either. They will often be ambiguous in how they reject. So that there's a, there's an opportunity to interpret this in such a way that you're not actually getting rejected. One of the things that I do in classes is, as I will talk about, would you rather just know, or would you rather have a lot of ambiguities where you don't know?

And most people say that they would rather know. without a shred of doubt. And yet, that's not where we are.

Scott: So one thing with communication you're saying is it is valuable. There is an act of kindness in being clear.

Kenny: It is kind to be clear. It's not always nice to be clear. The thing about it is if my wife, I'm wearing a shirt today, your audience cannot see it. I'm wearing a yellow shirt.

My wife hates this shirt. And I will, I put this shirt on because it's a new shirt. And and I said, you're not going to see me for the most of the day, so I'm just going to wear this shirt. Look, the thing about it is I understand her position on that. I understand her feeling about that. And I am unambiguously wearing the shirt anyway, but not in a situation where she's actually going to experience it. So is that nice that she told me she hates my shirt? No. Is it kind? Yes. Because now I can make better decisions about when to use it. Does that make sense? You see what that means, what that

Scott: Yeah, it does. We don't like living in ambiguity. Of course everybody would rather have acceptance than rejection, but don't quietly reject me. That's I'd rather know what the problem is so that then I can either address it or move on. And that, I, that's a fair point. Don't leave me to guess.

Kenny: most of us don't want to feel uncomfortable, but my argument to you would be, ultimately, you're going to feel better, you're going to be better off if you're uncomfortable, but fix things. Rather than be comfortable and broken.

Scott: I think that's what Jesus taught. Realistically, when you connect things to the biblical model of Jesus as the communicator, Jesus communicated clearly, and it upset people. It polarized people. But it left them to make a decision. What are they going to do about it? He didn't put them in a position where they were forced to live in the murky middle.

Kenny: We don't grow in comfort. We grow in discomfort.

Scott: That should Exist as its own podcast in and of itself. We don't grow in comfort. We grow in discomfort. Okay, with decoding you're saying with that is that's really me, my insecurities, and I need to check that bias of insecurity. You're saying that I have, I interpret the worst version of you Actually, because that's the version I expect from me because I'm insecure.

I'm the problem.

Kenny: Sometimes you are. And sometimes you're a little bit too generous with yourself. Sometimes what you do is you decode things in such a way that everything's fine. They're happy with me. Look, you know this, and you've had this experience, Beyer, where you get home and you ask your wife how was that?

How are things today? And she says, fine. You can listen to the word and you can be blissfully unaware that things were not fine. Or you can instead decide to go ahead and unpack the fine because you understand there's just something behind that. Which one are you going to choose you to do?

Because she has given you enough ambiguity that you can take either route. So I, my argument to you is you better unpack that.

Scott: So how do I do that? How do I do that thing that you just said? That's a great example of it. You come home, your spouse says, fine. You can tell there's more to fine than the words that were just used. How do you go about unpacking that? Especially if sometimes the person doesn't necessarily want to unpack it.

Like they're trying to keep it fine. They're saying fine, not just to you, but to themselves as well.

Kenny: maybe they are. Look, my wife, when she says, Fine, I know what I need to do is I need to ask a couple questions and then I need to shut up. I need to listen for a long time. And I need to listen to the stories that I may or may not be able to help with.

Scott: Okay, so we've talked about decoding. How about encoding? So that's the part where I'm sending out the message. I'm communicating. How do I make sure that the symbols I'm using, the way that I'm talking, properly conveys to the other person so that they're most likely to decode it well?

Kenny: The easy way to put that is, is choose the right words, say it in the right way, use the right tone, and use it with the right timing.

Scott: Oh thanks for that. That's not useful at all.

Kenny: But that's the answer. And the thing about it is that's hard. Everybody knows that's hard and that's not easy. People in relationships, you understand real quickly, there are times to talk about things and there are times not to talk about things.

And you have to figure that out. Encoding is basically like you said, taking the ideas and putting words or symbols to it. And you want to be very careful about how you put those words and symbols and the timing but with which you actually put those out there. One of the things that I've used in class is there's a letter that I constructed a long time ago it's a letter that's from a child to their parents and they say.

Dear mom and dad, having such a great time at College. I am learning so many things. I am so excited to see you guys during the holidays. I cannot wait to see even my brothers and sisters, which I never thought I would. Can I get a hundred dollars? I am so excited about coming back home. I just appreciate the parents that you are and I love you so much.

I will see you very shortly. Love, John. The problem with it is everybody understands what that letter is about. And it's the shortest sentence in that letter.

Scott: Yep.

Kenny: Yeah. It's a letter asking. Yeah it's a letter asking for money. But that's a child that, that has learned how to encode the right message in the right way.

That's smart. When we want to do it well, we usually know how to do it well.

Scott: So that's an interesting idea there. Just that thought that actually we're pretty good at encoding when we put the effort in. When we realize it's important, we do a pretty decent job. What is it about everyday communication then that causes us to not encode? Are we just lazy most of the time with our communication?

Kenny: The short answer is yes but we're also busy that we've got other things going on. That in the list of the 12 things that you have to do today, you did not recognize that one of those was a booby trap. That one of those was going to mean more than the other 11 things put together. And, so for example, one of the, one of the traps that I have stepped into, I don't know, a dozen times, maybe more, is when my wife tells me, don't get me anything for my birthday this year.

That's a trap because one of the things that, that my wife wants is she wants a thoughtful gift and she doesn't want to have to ask for it. So she tells me in words that contradict what she means. And if I'm a smart husband, I figured that out, which is no, she really does want something that's thoughtful.

She just doesn't want to have to be the one that articulates what it is. wants me to come up with that. So and then I'll go ahead and tell you, that's hard. That's really difficult. If I take her at face value, if I take the words that she says, if I take the meanings behind those words and decode them as they have been encoded, I will miss the meaning of the message.

Scott: So you have mentioned. At multiple stages of this process, the emotional state of people when they're talking or what they desire, right? Your wife desires something, but she doesn't want to have to ask for it and part of the gift is that she didn't have to ask for it. Is it fair to say our emotions impact the quality of communication that we have within our relationships?

Kenny: Number one. Yes. Number two, it's our expectations too. What are you trying to invest into the relationships that you have, and what are you expecting out of those relationships, and is it fair to expect those things?

Scott: When you are teaching, what are some of the common misconceptions regarding emotions and expectations that you find that your students have?

Kenny: Everybody comes into any relationship with an understanding that they will not articulate about what that relationship is. Probably because they don't know that they need to articulate it, that they need to define it, that they need to come to some sort of this is what this is going to be like.

You talk about romantic relationships and our problem with romantic relationships is they bear almost no resemblance to what we've been taught, especially in the cinema. There's a difference between a Hallmark movie relationship and the relationship you currently have. There's a difference in almost all relationships.

The relationship that we have with God has been as closely articulated as it can be. And , what God tells us is, I expect you and want you to be holy. I want your character to be just like mine. Here are the fruit of the spirit that I want you to manifest.

Kenny: This is how I want you to act. And when you don't, here's what I need you to do. Because I already know you're going to fall far short. of what I expect. I already know as well that you're going to be somebody who's going to mess up all the things and you're going to miscommunicate and you're going to come into this with the wrong expectations.

And what should you do when you disappoint God? Should you run away from God or should you talk to him more? You know the answer to that, which is talk to him more.

What do we often do? We often run away from. And what God says is, and again, this is where communication and Christianity merge so nicely.

The most important relationship that you have is with God. And that entire relationship is communication. There's a, there's an M. C. Escher picture that I show my students every once in a while. It's something that I learned from somebody else. But it's two faces that are basically constructed with a ribbon.

And the ribbon goes between those two faces. And I ask the students, if you take the ribbon out, what are you left with? And they say I don't guess you're left with anything. Consider that communication is that ribbon. And if you take communication out of your relationships, what are you left with? You're not left with anything. The relationship that we have with God, the relationship that you have with your spouse, the relationship that you have with every meaningful person in your life is only held together with communication. And if you stop communicating, that's when you're going to start having problems.

By the way, also. Sometimes when you over communicate, you start having problems as well,

Scott: is that fair to say that overcommunication can sometimes, lead to shutting down communication on the other person, right? So if the other person feels like you're doing all the communicating, they shut down, which is, communication is always meant to be a two way street. So if it's only one way, you've effectively shut it down by overcommunicating.

Kenny: Yes. I think about it this way. I work at a university and one of the things that they, their major form of communication. at my university is email. And in a day, I can get between 80 and 90 email just from the university. Do you know what happens with most of those email with the people who get them?

Scott: I'm sure they hit delete.

Kenny: exactly right. This was information that was so important that the university decided they would communicate it to everyone. And that's that's the paradox of if you send it to everyone, nobody reads it.

Scott: Mm

Kenny: send it to a few people, they will probably read it.

That makes sense.

Scott: Oh, yeah, it makes total sense. And now you start talking about other things that the Bible says a lot about. Things like discretion, right? Discretion is knowing when to say something and when not to say it, who to say it to, who not to say it to. Even things like gossip and slander run into that category, right?

Oh, that's an over, it's a form of overcommunication that we tend to generally all understand is a bad type, right? You're telling, spreading bad news to all the wrong. people about it. I think about Ecclesiastes and it says the words of a wise man are like well driven nails. That's good communication, right?

Is it fair to say with your encoding, is to make sure that it's the right nail driven in the right spot, which is just another way of saying choosing the right words to say in the right way, at the right

Kenny: Yes. The answer to that is yes. The other thing that I would say, just adding on to the point that you're making right there is you also need to, sometimes over communicating what you're doing is you're looking for ways to blame somebody else when you don't understand something. And I think one of the things that God is asking us to do is have courage.

Basically within the parable of the talents, he says here's the money that I'm going to give you. Parable of the mean is the same way. Here's the money I'm going to give you. Go do something with it. What do you want me to do with it? I don't know. Go do something with it. Make more. What do you want me to do?

Go make more. How? Go make more. And I think one of the things that as Christians we need to do is realize that God has sometimes given us freedom and discretion to go out and do something. It's not like you're going to surprise Him. He knows what you're going to do. But you need to have the courage. To go out and live your convictions.

Scott: Okay, we've got decoding, encoding, noise, frame of reference. That's what we're left with. You already mentioned it, that you believe a Christian worldview has some very positive things regarding your frame of reference. Are there any disadvantages though? You are a expert in the field of communication, but also a religious person who's around a lot of religious people, right?

Do you find that there are disadvantages that sometimes that frame of reference gives them? Not necessarily biblical, Disadvantages, but just hey, I'm a religious person I either had a religious upbringing or I have a that at least that frame of reference and I'm now communicating with other religious people or non religious people Are there any disadvantages I should look out for from a frame of reference standpoint?

Kenny: absolutely. I think one of the things that all of us recognize is that we hate being classified, especially when it's the group that can be classified that way, but we are the exception to that group. Okay, let me tell you about all Church of Christ people for a second. And what, let me go ahead and tell you where your mind is going immediately, which is let me see where you're going to be wrong.

You're not going to be looking for where I'm right. You're going to be looking for the exception to the rule. And so one of the things that you. You have to generalize about people. You just have to. When I go into my class full of 18 to 22 year olds, I'm not going to lead off with a discussion about social security.

Why? It doesn't exist for them. They don't care about it. They don't know anything about it. So that frame of reference, they're too young for that to be on their radar.

Scott: Even though realistically you may run into one student who is 19 year old and avidly focused on social security, but they are such an outlier that they don't exist within the generalization.

Kenny: time I bring up this example, there's one student that wants to be the exception, and sometimes he or she is, and it's mostly a he but most of the time they're not. And so the fact of the matter is you do have to generalize groups of people just so you have a starting place to, to actually have a start having a conversation.

But realize again, and you know this about Jenna, your wife, I know this about my wife Katie. There's some places where she is absolutely the stereotypical woman. And then there's some places where she is absolutely not. There's some things that make her real weepy, that I would expect most women to be weepy.

But there's some things where she laughs rather than cries. And, some people might think she's horrible for that, but that's just my wife. I get where she strays from the norm. And that is a, an important thing for you to know. Because if you're trying to get somebody to do something, you need to know what the exceptions are.

Look, most people are not violent. Most people, pretty good. But the most violent people are almost all male.

Is that stereotyping? Yeah, it is. Are there some violent women? There are, but there's not many of them. If I were going to stereotype basically who are violent people, I would say most of them are male.

Because statistically speaking, I'm right. But when it comes to that frame of reference, Understanding where your audience is and what makes them different from a stereotypical audience is important for you to do. And the downside, the disadvantage, the danger, is when you assume that this group of people is like every other group of people that's just like that as well.

That all these Christians believe exactly this. All atheists believe this. All Muslims believe this. And in an age where We have better communication devices than ever before and not you don't have to guess what a Muslim believes ask a Muslim and ask him if they would be offended if you Stereotype them this way.

Scott: So a part of the frame of reference is You have to view it as a starting point, and then dive in past the generalization to the individual that you're talking with. Is that a fair way to put it? It's okay to start with a stereotype, because you have to have some sort of starting point, but Learn the exceptions about that individual as quickly as possible.

Is that fair?

Kenny: Yes, the answer that is yes But have you ever read the book how to win friends and influence people by Dale

Scott: Yes,

Kenny: look Dale Carnegie basically has a bunch of truisms in that book. And one of the things that he says in this is, most people are awfully interested in themselves. And that's not necessarily because they're selfish. It might be because they're just really insecure. But most people like thinking that they're okay.

And that's not a bad place to to start off. So being relatable to other people if you're going to try to talk to them. Talk about your wife. Talk about your kids. Talk about what makes you all the same. How you can relate to them. And that's a good place to start. But the other thing that almost never backfires is to be grateful, to show appreciation, to ask questions where you generally want to know the answers.

And to fess up to the mistakes that you made along the way. Those strategies almost never backfire. Because basically what it does is it communicates to the other person, you're important, I'm glad to be here, I'm happy to be here, and boy sometimes I'm an idiot. Those are all things we can relate to.

And allowing the other people to save face. Of course they've made mistakes, of course they've done something dumb in front of you, but don't call them out on that, especially if you don't know them that well. When you get to know them a lot better than sometimes by threatening face, in other words, talking about what a big idiot buyer is, that for us is a way to forge the relationship to become better friends,

Scott: And guys do that sort of thing stereotypically. We do that a lot to forge relationships, but you don't do it too early.

Kenny: No, that's exactly right. By the way, another thing that you can do, this is somewhat manipulative, but I think it's a good manipulation, which is talk about what a great person the other person is, and you know how well that they will react.

Scott: You're right. All of us like to be told good things about us sincerely, right? We're very much aware as people of insincere stuff as well, but sincere compliments, I think, it's a benefit to every relationship. It's greases the skids a little bit.

Kenny: Give people something to live up to, not something to live down. So if you give them a goal that they can rise to meet versus, oh man, I don't know why you'd ask Beyer. You just cannot count on him. Now there's something that you're going to have to live down. Inspire, deride, and the problem is with derision is it almost always, backfires for the person you're trying to get to do something, but also the person who's telling you about it.

Because by talking badly about other people, will think worse of you as well.

Scott: thing that we've talked around, but I keep hearing the word in my head as you talk is grace. We haven't really talked about grace, but we have, right? You've talked about this idea of letting people save face and everybody makes mistakes and sometimes we communicate and we're super busy and so there were 12 things to talk about and we didn't realize one of them was more important than the others and so we, we just stepped on a landmine.

How do you incorporate grace into your communication?

Kenny: The definition that we love to use about grace is unmerited favor. And I'll go ahead and say that I'm not. Wild about that definition. I, Edwin Crozier said, I asked him to define it without using unmerited favor. So he said, why don't you just take away unmerited then? Why don't you just, why don't you just say that grace is favor?

And I'd say, okay, what's the difference? He said, a favor is something that you do for somebody without much expectation. And I said, okay that's not a bad way of thinking about it at all. When you think about the grace that you're wanting to extend to other people through your communication, allow other people to become the best that they can be. realizing that they're probably going to disappoint you at some point. And then when and if they mess up and apologize, accept that. I've learned a lot about grace within the last two or three years because I'm somebody who's needed it so much.

Grace is the restoration of a relationship. And really, if all communication is relational, and I think it is, then grace is what you have in relationships. It's basically the glue that keeps us together, really, no matter what you do.

Josh Creel, who's another buddy of mine, talked about the difference between perfection and devotion. And nobody is ever perfect in a relationship, but you understand you understand devoted relationships. Devoted relationships are the ones, when you screw up, You go back and say, man, I'm sorry about that.

I need to fix that. Will you help me? And that's the relationship that you end up being devoted to. Not perfect in, devoted to. And really when I think about what grace is that devotion. Does that make any sense, Beyer?

Scott: It does, because when you have miscommunication, which you are likely to have, the more intimate the relationship is, the more likely you are to miscommunicate at some point. I can have a two second communication with somebody as I get on the bus and it's not very deep, but we properly articulated everything and then we moved on with the life.

But if you start talking about important things with important people the likelihood that you are going to have a different frame of reference or you're going to decode wrong or that there's going to be some noise in the conversation is much higher, right? Grace is devotion to working through

Kenny: Yeah. There's an example that I use in class sometimes. And I'll ask about, okay, talk to me about these two people. There's a guy you cannot stand that you hate to their very core. And he gets up, and he gives just an amazing speech, but he gets some of the facts wrong. Just one or two of the facts. Versus your mom, who is terribly nervous about this speech.

Gets about 30 percent of the speech wrong. And then sits down. And then I ask my students who did a better job.

Scott: Always

Kenny: It's always mom.

Scott: It better be

Kenny: it is because that's the way you feel.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely.

Kenny: because the person who had very minor mistakes, you're never going to forgive them of those mistakes because you hate them.

Because you're not devoted to them. Your mom, it didn't make any difference how many mistakes, because it's not what she said, it's what she meant to say. It's what she knew she meant to say. Most of us have won or lost audiences before we stand up. And the way you win or lose an audience is how did you treat them?

And if you treated them well, if you are loved in the community, it makes practically no difference what you say in the pulpit. If on the other hand, it's very divisive, most people hate you. Likewise, it makes very little difference what you say in the pulpit. Because you can't say the right thing.

Scott: We started this out by clarifying we're not really talking about public speaking. We're talking about one on one. But I will say this, from a preacher standpoint, ironically, I am convinced that public speaking is just one on one conversation. And it's You're absolutely right, who you are the rest of the time, who they know you to be, you're going to make mistakes in a public speech, for sure.

People have come up to me afterwards and said, do you know you said this? And I'm like, nope, but you could listen to a recording. Absolutely did. And. It was just a faux pa, just a mistake along the way. But when people feel like you love them and they love

you, they'll ride out the rest of that message with you and it's just a little bump in the road.

And you should try and get rid of those bumps, but they're gonna, they're gonna come up. I think about our relationships with our kids. With your spouse, you at least knew the person you were getting married to, right? They've changed and there were probably some things you didn't know and time has uncovered, but you had some inkling of what you were getting into.

Kids, though, I have kids who, their personalities are so wildly different than mine. How do you get through that? I think you've given me the answer to that, and that's grace and devotion. which in some respects are exactly the same thing. And I love that.

Kenny: I do too. I, again I will tell you in my classroom. Let me tell you what I call my kids. I call them idiots. I call them ridiculous. I call them children. And you know the reason I'm able to get away with that? If you were to ask any one of my students if I love them, what would all of them say? Look, I love my kids. Yeah, I love all my kids. I love my kids. And one of the, I've told them this a thousand times, which is, if, I'll bring in guest speakers in my classroom and I say, if you guys do not get a business card from this person, you're all idiots and you need to kick yourselves from here to the cafeteria.

Why do you think I'm telling them that? It's because I love those kids. I want them to get something out of this that actually helps them. If you communicate love, really what comes out of your mouth is almost irrelevant. Can you sever relationships with what you say? Absolutely. I'm not saying that at all.

But what I am saying is if your motivation is to love them and they understand that motivation, then What you say and how you say it is far less impactful. While you were telling them something, did you communicate to them that I love you and I'm looking out for you, and that's why I want you to shape up, or, I'm looking for you to be perfect. You are so falling so far from perfection that I can't waste my time with you anymore. And the sad part is some people will think of God as the second. And not as the first. I think, and this is my opinion, Matthew 23, when Jesus is just lambasting the Pharisees, I think he loved them that much. I think he's trying to tell them, look guys, I really love you guys, but you guys are just messing this up.

Scott: So that chapter is sometimes referred to as the eight woes, the woe unto you scribes and Pharisees. And one of the things that when I preach on that subject, I always tell people, what does the word woe mean? It's mournful. It's woe is sorrow. And so Jesus isn't saying, I hate you. He's saying, I'm really sad.

When I think about you and what you've done with your life and that communicates love Ephesians 4 15 says that we should speak the truth in love I think you've done a really great job of articulating how important that is that it's not just Saying the truth in a loving way. All truth has to be couched within the relationship of love.

If you know that I love you, I can speak truth to you.

Kenny: Yeah. And especially when it comes through disagreements that you have with people that you love the most. I don't know about you, but let me go ahead and tell on myself. Sometimes I fight because I want to be right. Sometimes I fight because I don't want to lose. And that's the wrong motivation. That doesn't work.

Scott: I'm guilty of the exact same thing.

Kenny: But sometimes I have to ask myself this, how much do I love Katie? Am I okay with being wrong on this? Am I okay being shown up, no, you're an idiot on this. You were absolutely wrong on this. If I'm okay with that, then maybe what I'm fighting for is the right thing.

I'm not okay with being wrong. Then I better check myself really fast. I need to make sure that I'm actually fighting for Katie and not fighting to win.

Scott: Yeah, that's a great point. Just asking yourself. Am I okay being wrong in this conversation if that's true? If I'm wrong, would I be okay with it? And if the answer is no, then you're fighting for the wrong thing. You're not fighting for the relationship.

Kenny: And that doesn't mean you're wrong. Look, if my fight, if I'm fighting with my kids who are five about, about, about playing in the street. So maybe I need to have this fight and maybe I need to win this fight. Not for me, for them. I

Scott: Yeah. Who are you trying to help? Kenny, thank you so much. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I've only got one more question for you and then I'll let you go. Cause I know you're a busy guy, but if someone wanted to learn to love people better. in the way they communicate, what would you have them start with?

Kenny: That's hard. Get interested in other people. And get over yourself. You're going to have to get to the point where you're okay with who you are and what you do. And you can't be motivated by fear. You can't be motivated by I'm not good enough. You can't be motivated, no, forget yourself. Just stop thinking about yourself entirely and focus your attention on someone else and how you can make them better.

That when you are indebted to others, When you, and this is God's words, not mine, when you learn how to serve others, when you make other people more important than yourself, suddenly you become a lot more important to other people. Don't do it for that reason, but do get interested in what other people are doing and how you can be an active agent for good in their lives.

Scott: Thank you, my friend.

Kenny: Thanks, Beyer. I appreciate this, man.

If you've listened this far, hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better. Would you mind returning the favor and helping us by subscribing to the podcast through your favorite platform?

By sharing with others or leaving a review on Apple Podcast, you help us reach more people. Also, if you want more information about the work I'm doing at Eastland, visit us at eastlandchristians.org or my personal Bible site, Biblegrad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Biblebites and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes, or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year.

And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”

Love Better

Words From the Heart: a conversation with Dr. Kenny Embry

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