Winsome Conviction
Winsome Conviction
Be An Ambassador for Christ: Statecraft and Shrewdness
In 2 Corinthians 5:20, the Apostle Paul tells Christians they are “ambassadors for Christ.” Ambassadorship is part of our Christian identity. Paul wrote these words a long time ago, so what does it look like to be an ambassador today? On this episode, communication theorist Tim Downs returns to the podcast to discuss this question with Tim and Rick. They discuss the difference between citizenship and statecraft, the nature of statecraft, including its practices and temperament, and consider what ambassadorship would look like when discussions turn to contentious issues such as gender pronouns and transgenderism. They highlight the importance of what C.S. Lewis called “the sense of the center” and the need for more Christians to be shrewd, especially in a culture that prizes audacity.
Rick Langer:
Welcome to the Winsome Conviction podcast. My name's Rick Langer. I'm a professor here at Biola in the Biblical Studies and Theology Department. And I'm also the Director of the Office of Faith and Learning and the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project with my good friend Tim Muehlhoff.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Well, it's great to be with you, Rick. One of our past podcasts, we had kind of one of our heroes on the show, a person who's really influenced our thinking about communication. He's one of the top people that has influenced how I approach communication and he's quoted a ton of my books and we loved having him on. And Rick, he made a tactical mistake though at the end of that.
Rick Langer:
What was that?
Tim Muehlhoff:
He offered to come back and talk about what does it mean to be an ambassador today? And of course, those of us who know the Winsome Conviction Podcast or our books, we know, we quote Paul in 2 Corinthians 5:20 when he says, "We are ambassadors for Christ as though God we're making his appeal through us." That's really powerful.
Rick Langer:
Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff:
And so today, being an ambassador in today's shifting argument culture is going to take a lot of nuance, wisdom, discernment, shrewdness, and we are so thankful that Tim Downs, and I encourage you to go back and listen to that podcast where we talked about indirect communication, we talked about the arts, we talked about his book Finding Common Ground, the creation of something called the Communication Center that I was part of, and we took him up on it.
Rick Langer:
That's good.
Tim Muehlhoff:
We said doggone it. We want to hear his thoughts about being an ambassador and then we're going to throw it to him and honestly ask his advice of some of the situations we are currently dealing with and would just love to get his take on it.
Rick Langer:
That sounds great. I'm glad I'm here.
Tim Muehlhoff:
All right, Tim Downs. Watch, he's going to pretend he's not there. We're going to hear dead silence on the other end. Tim Downs, welcome back to the Winsome Conviction Podcast.
Tim Downs:
Now I'm sorry I said anything.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Well listen, we both love this metaphor. We have talked about it a ton, that Paul would use the metaphor of an ambassador, and with that comes so much implication of what an ambassador does. So can you give us your quick riff on how you interpret Paul's use of saying we're ambassadors for Christ and what would that mean in today's context?
Tim Downs:
Yeah, in Paul's other epistles, he makes the point that when a person receives Christ, he becomes a citizen of another country. He says, we changed citizenship. Normally, when somebody applies for citizenship in another country, it's because you want to go there, you want to move there. But what Paul is saying to us is, "No, no, you are now a citizen of heaven but you're not leaving. You're staying here because you've been assigned a job." And that's what you mentioned in 2 Corinthians 5. The job is we are ambassadors and an ambassador is a representative of one country who maintains a residence in another country and their job is to represent the wishes of the home country to the culture that they're living in. If we could think of ourselves that way, it would solve a lot of the things that we struggle with as Christians.
So guys, I've met a couple of people who were former US ambassadors. And it's very interesting, they told me there are two kinds of ambassadors. There's one kind that's the political appointee. Ambassadorships are sometimes given out by the incoming president as a reward for political favors done. The other way to become an ambassador is by rising up through the ranks of the State Department. Those are not political appointees. Those are people who learned statecraft and they make the best ambassadors because they know what to do. They know the skills of being an ambassador.
If you ask me what we're short of today, as Christians, I think we're short of thinking of ourselves as citizens of another country. I only live here, but we are ambassadors. God himself is entreating through us. And an ambassador told me one time, "The hardest lesson I had to learn is when I speak my voice is the voice of the United States of America." And what they were saying is, "I can't get insulted, I can't get offended, I can't get enraged because whatever I say and do next, that's the voice of all of America."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Wow.
Tim Downs:
And this is what I think we have to recognize as Christians. I can't take personal offense. Think of the offense Jesus took all the time. I can't do that because my job is to represent the wishes of the home country.
Rick Langer:
Now that you mentioned that, let me just throw out a thing that Tim and I bump into fairly regularly. I've given a talk several times on gentleness. I kind of went crazy one time, discovered gentleness was a fruit of the spirit.
Tim Downs:
Yeah.
Rick Langer:
And from there just the whole world began to unravel. And I suddenly thought, well gee, if it's the fruit of the spirit, maybe we should exercise it. So anyhow, I'm processing my own pain here. But every time I talk about that, people will say, "Well yeah, but Jesus turned over to the tables in the temple." What do you say in response to that? You just talked about the kind of ambassador he was for heaven and how we should imitate him. What do you make of a thing? What do you say to people who just said, "Well, because Jesus turned over to the temple's tables, I should be able to dump on them libs," or whatever it is that their favorite pet peeve is?
Tim Downs:
Yes, yes. First of all, it's a rare situation for Jesus, let's face it.
Rick Langer:
Yeah.
Tim Downs:
Second of all, he was filled with grace and truth and that is a balance hard to strike. But Jesus certainly at times did speak truth. He called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs, broods of vipers. So yes, there were times that he was harsh even, but at the next moment, he could be gentle and kind. So when it comes to the actual overturning of the tables, I tell people what it illustrates is Jesus didn't like tables.
Rick Langer:
That makes sense. I'll try that and see how it works.
Tim Downs:
Yeah, I know it's a joke, but I'm pointing out this, what the text actually says is that he made a whip and he drove people out, then he flipped over the tables. So if you make a whip, a whip is a perfect symbol of I want you to move. I remember reading an article once about lion tamers, remember the old days of the circus with the guy cracking the whip and the lion backs up and jumps up on the stand. This article said the number one rule for a lion tamer is never hit the lion with a whip because that makes for a mad lion. So the text never says Jesus beat people up with a whip. I think he just created a symbol. You created a symbol of a whip, put some cords together, hold it over your head and people know, "Oh, I'm supposed to move. Let's clear out." Now. He flips over the tapes absolutely saying, "My father's house is a house of prayer."
Rick Langer:
Right.
Tim Downs:
And that was him making a very bold and very strong statement. So for people who want to call down fire and be harsh, I want to say show me your kindness, show me your gentleness because it's supposed to be an equal balance here. You want to speak the truth, show me how you do it in love because truth can just be a camouflage for cruelty. So strike the balance that Jesus did. If you can do that, okay, I'll allow you to be bold and be direct.
Rick Langer:
Yeah, that's great. And I do appreciate your imagery on that of you don't use the whip on the lion, that's just going to end badly.
Tim Downs:
No, yes.
Rick Langer:
And I do feel that way a lot of times with our culture, when we speak up in these ways, we're just like the culture will bite back. And it may be really bad for the Church or for you as an individual or an individual institution, to run with your lion metaphor. But just in general, it's like, yeah, you're not going to get the response, but it is the thing to raise this sense of authority or something needs to move, something needs to change kind of a message that I think is both powerful and needed.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay, we have another ambassador question we want your input on. So it seems to me that practicing statecraft is you're going to have conversations that you want to gain momentum and allow the conversation to develop. So with that being in mind, a big debate has arisen on preferred gender pronouns. We have some outspoken Christians on both sides. One says, "No, you're saying a falsehood. It is clear to me that you are not a man, but you want to be referred to as a man. And I refuse to do that because that's a falsehood and I will not tell a lie." Where you have others who are saying, "Well maybe this is linguistic hospitality and my goal is to get the conversation to a place that I can talk about God's view of sexuality and gender. But if I don't give this concession in the front end, this conversation may not continue." As an ambassador, what do you do in today's context where these gender pronouns are becoming a significant issue for Christian communicators?
Tim Downs:
Well, let me say something first before that about statecraft. If you're going to be an ambassador, here's the beginning of statecraft. You must be immersed in the wishes of your home country, not just the wishes, but the style of communication. And now recognize that when you speak, you are the voice of your country. The other obligation is I must engage the culture that I am trying to communicate to, the place where I am an ambassador. And that requires doing your homework. So I better learn the language. I better know the customs. I better know what is sacred to their communities. I better know what toes not to step on. I better know what will shut doors and what will open them. And that takes work. I think Christians resent the idea that we should have to go to that much trouble or do that much homework. I think it's part of our assignment.
Now, directly address this one. Here's a strange passage of scripture to apply here, but I think it's relevant. It's 1 Corinthians 12 when Paul is talking to the Corinthians about spiritual gifts and the messiness in their church that everybody's speaking in tongues and it's chaos. Well, how do you sort out a messy thing like that? Well, Paul says, "Okay, to sort this out, you've got to establish a criteria, a greatest good." And what he says is the greatest good is edification. Whatever happens in the Church should build everybody up, even outsiders who come in. And he says that that happens through understanding, edification through understanding. That's my summum bonum and that allows him to conclude, "So I'd rather that you spoke one word with understanding than a thousand words in tongues." And the way that makes sense is when you realize that's what his criteria is. He thinks that's what's most important. I think as an ambassador, my summum bonum, my highest good with people in the culture is to connect with them, is to allow ongoing conversation, to engage with them.
So I can refuse to use their preferred pronouns, but if I do that, I've slammed the door in their face. That's what's offensive to their culture and I have no further engagement with them. What did I win by doing that? And Tim, I think we talked about this once, if I was a missionary to some obscure South Pacific island and I said, "Take me to your chief," and they said, "Okay, but you can't talk to the chief unless you call him most exalted one," I would call him most exalted one, I don't believe he is, but otherwise I can't talk to the chief. So to me, I'm like, "You can call yourself anything you want, I don't believe by using your preferred form of address I'm agreeing with anything, I'm opening a door," and then we can have further conversation.
Rick Langer:
Boy.
Tim Downs:
And that's one of the big considerations in any interaction you have with a non-Christian. This interaction, what is the influence it will have on the next? Is it increasingly odds, there will be an ongoing conversation or is it absolutely eliminating it?
Tim Muehlhoff:
It's interesting in Act 16 where Paul's going on his second missionary journey, he's taking Timothy with him who has a Greek father. Right, Rick?
Tim Downs:
Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Greek father. So he makes the decision to have Timothy circumcised because he knows he's going to go into Jewish synagogues. And it literally-
Rick Langer:
Notice that Timothy didn't wake up that morning and say, "Hey, I think," anyhow, go ahead.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Hey. But remember what it says in the text is, "In deference to the Jews, he had Timothy circumcised." What I just heard you say with this chieftain in deference to the chieftain, I will call him his most excellency, by the way, that's what my students call me regularly in my classes.
Tim Downs:
Oh yeah, I bet.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yes, thank you. But you know what I mean? Interesting he uses the word deference. And again, he was in danger of giving the wrong message about circumcision when they learned that Timothy is circumcised, he's going to have to unpack that, "Hey, hey, don't read too much into that because I actually have a disagreement about how you're using circumcision without it being enlightened by the gospel." But I love that idea of could preferred pronouns be seen as giving deference in order to let God entreat through me to get to important issues like sexuality and gender?
Tim Downs:
Yeah, I think absolutely so. And again, you're right. Paul is a great model of this. What's been powerful to me is 1 Corinthians 9, and that's where Paul really gives his philosophy of communication and his philosophy of ministry. He said, "I have become all things to all people that by all means I might save some." I think that's an incredibly powerful sentence. All things, all people, all means. All things means that's the greatest personal adaptability. All people means the widest, most diverse range of peoples and types. All means means the greatest knowledge of approaches, strategies, tactics. Paul was saying, "I am infinitely adaptable." And you notice he doesn't say so that I can win everybody, he says so that I might save some. So he knows this is no guarantee that your conversations are always going to work out or lead to another positive one, but this is the best approach that you can take.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay, so I want you to be a moderator real quick. You have two Christians that just flat out disagree with each other. One Christian says, "I'm going to be bold enough to say it's sin to use preferred pronouns because you are speaking falsehood to that person," and you have another person who takes what we'll call the ambassador position is I'm giving deference now. What would be your advice to the two of how they should talk to each other as literally the Church is listening to these two theologians disagree with each other? What would you say to them should be the communication ground rules as they have this disagreement?
Tim Downs:
Oh golly. Yeah. Ask me a hard question.
Tim Muehlhoff:
No, no, no. And we're going to write this down every word. What would you say to them? What would be the ground rules?
Tim Downs:
Number one, when we're having conversations within the camp, and these are intramural discussions, I think we need to abound in grace toward one another and we just don't these days. The polarization that's within the Christian world, even the theologically conservative Christian world, it's just shameful and it's just sad that we can't just recognize we're after the same thing, but we see it in different ways. We ought to be able to pat each other on the back and say, "I just can't see that yet. I just can't agree with you yet, but God bless you. You keep going, I'll keep learning. Let's come back and visit this again." There's just got to be, what do I say, it's a filling of the spirit basically so that we can show grace to one another. If we can't do it with each other within our own intramural discussions, we're never going to do it with the rest of the culture.
Rick Langer:
So a couple of things, as long as we're running down this road, let's keep running a little bit.
Tim Downs:
Yeah.
Rick Langer:
With the example of Timothy going ahead and being circumcised. You also have the example of Titus exactly not being circumcised in Galatians 2, kind of explicitly pointed out he was not. It seems to me like this is one of these interesting times where you say, not only is there room for two different people to see the issues differently, but in the case of Paul, he might be seeing the same issue differently in two different contexts.
Tim Downs:
Yes.
Rick Langer:
Which does lead me to think, I wonder how much of our problem is soundbites. So Tim said, "Yeah, we should do the pronoun," use preferred pronouns. That becomes an entire soundbite and whole concept. This must be the way you do it. And so you think you apply that in every context or in every setting.
Tim Downs:
Yes.
Rick Langer:
I think about this, so I'm kind of 50, Tim and I have talked about this before. So if we want to have a disagreement, we could drum it up here with Tim at least on part of what I think he sometimes says about these things. But the other thing that I noticed is that these issues have an incredible way of creeping. So it isn't just an individual person's gender pronoun, but it's trying to redo the entire conceptualization of, for example, a notion like the connection between being pregnant and being a woman.
So Time Magazine has a cover story back in 2016 that the headline reads, "My brother's pregnant." And they have a picture. You open it up, read the story. You'll see this picture of this person who is a transgendered man, she was born a woman, but she knew she was a man, but she also knew she always wanted to give birth to a baby and breastfeed the baby. And so if you open up the cover of Time, or open up the magazine, you'll see a picture of this man lying on a bed with a brand new baby that he has just born and he is breastfeeding the baby.
And at some point, I'm like, "So if I am being asked not to associate being pregnant with being a woman, to say, of course men can be pregnant too," I'm wondering at some point, what am I losing in this that I'm just like we are creating chaos, back to your analogy with Paul talking about, I think this is actually in 1 Corinthians 14, not in 12, but wherever it is where he talks about unless the trumpet gives a clear signal, no one will respond and answer the call. I worry that we're degenerating to the point where we can't have coherent conversations because the meanings of the words have become infinitely plastic. And if one word means everything, then I would argue that one word means nothing.
Tim Downs:
Yes, yes.
Rick Langer:
Anyhow, I feel this tension when I hear these discussions.
Tim Downs:
Yeah. Boy, Rick, I don't blame you. I feel the same things. I remember what C.S. Lewis talked about when he talked about addressing any issue, approaching it, he said, "What we need as Christians is a sense of the center." So what is the center of all this? Because the chaos you described, we didn't make it. It's just out there already and it's only going to increase in a number of different spheres. So what we have to ask is how do you go after this? I don't have the ability to just say, "I shut the door on all of this. It's crazy." I heard a sermon by a guy a while ago, I listened to it because of the way it was promoted. He is going to address the issue of gender pronouns and all these other things and I thought, "Oh my gosh, I'd love this."
Rick Langer:
I got to get this.
Tim Downs:
Yeah, I got to get this. So I'm listening to the sermon. Obviously, he's got a big audience out there and he would describe some like a thing you've just described. And then he would say, 'That's crazy." And everybody applauded. Then he'd go on to the next issue and he'd say, "That's crazy." And I thought to myself, "Okay, here's the takeaway from his sermon. That's crazy." Which enables me to do what?
Rick Langer:
Yeah.
Tim Downs:
I can't talk to anybody. I can't raise a question with anybody. And that's why I feel like that doesn't do me any good. What we need to help each other with is thoughtful explanations of where this went off the rails and why it's it goofy. And Rick, this is where we need help from guys like you, guys with philosophical backgrounds to say, "Here's one of the problems." So do we want to start talking about essentialism where we lost that idea that there is some sort of essential human self or even some sort of essential connection between biology and gender, like the early feminists all talked about.
That's the sense of the center. Lewis would say figure the center out and figure the point that not only is the essence of it where it started, but that will give you a connection with the person that's out there. Because you can't just say that's crazy. You've got to be able to say, "Let's talk about the idea of the essential self and whether the true self is something you discover from within." By the way, Tim Keller was big on this. You don't discover yourself by looking in you, you discover who you are through community. Powerful idea, and you might be able to talk with people about that.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah, no, that's so good. Okay, one last one, Tim. We had the opportunity to go to Capitol Hill and speak to some staffers, both Republican and Democrat staffers, as well as some political leaders on Capitol Hill. We actually fixed Capitol Hill. It just didn't stick. We were a little bit disappointed that by the time we landed back in California, things had reverted back.
Rick Langer:
By the time we got off the elevator.
Tim Muehlhoff:
But here was, now let's set aside the staffers, they were wonderfully optimistic. Let's talk about the leaders. Here was the universal response to us and most of these leaders were self-identified Christians. They would say The house is on fire. You don't understand that. You don't believe it's on fire. And when the house is on fire, there is not time for winsomeness, gentleness. And sometimes an ambassador has to lay down the law. And guess what? That time is now because we are fighting for the soul of this country. And by the way, we're going back, we're gluttons for punishment. Rick and I have accepted, your plane ticket will be arriving soon via FedEx, you're going with us. The fire analogy, the house is on fire is what we literally heard from these, and again, I don't want to minimize that. I don't want to minimize the angst. And when I spoke to a conservative friend of mine, his response was, "Well, how do you know it's not?" And so I thought that was an interesting response. So what's your response to the house on fire rebuttal?
Tim Downs:
Well, the first time I heard an illustration like that was back in 2016 and somebody said, "Look, the current situation is like your house is on fire, so you call the fire department. And to put out your fire, they have to break down your door and maybe destroy some of your possessions because of all the water they're spraying in there. But sometimes that's what has to happen to put out the fire." And I said, "Okay, suppose the fireman breaks down the door, steals all the jewelry and takes my flat screen TV and assaults my sister. Is that part of the price I had to pay to put up the fire? How much damage is being done by the firemen here?" If you're going to fight fire with fire, ask the Canadian fire guys, the guys that are fighting the wildfires, fighting fire with fire is a dangerous thing to do.
And we have to remember that the scriptures are not only telling us what we need to represent, the message of reconciliation we need to communicate, but a style, "Yet with gentleness and reverence." Sometimes it just says respect, but one translation, "Yet with gentleness and reverence," it's the style. And people say, "That's not fair that we have to do that." Yeah, welcome to Jesus world. We have to use the tools of God to communicate for God. Our temperament and style are as important as the content. Now let me jump to another one that's associated. Guys, when we're talking about politics or the media, you are talking about the most extremely polarized parts of the entire culture. And every time you turn on the TV, it's about nonstop outrage. And the most extreme example of anything will be represented in the form of "Aren't the people on the other side idiots? Aren't they stupid?"
The problem is we can make the assumption that that represents everybody in the United States and it doesn't. We have spheres that are extremely polarized and I think they're just going to remain that way. But our contact is with so many just people in the middle thinking, "Why is everybody so crazy?" And I think we want to be careful not to assume that everybody is so hostile and so polarized that we have to just always be fighting fire with fire. Otherwise, we take on a war mentality. We're trying to defeat the other side. We want to beat them, we want to overcome so that we are the winners. And Christians talk about this kind of thing all the time. I don't think that's the goal. We're not trying to defeat anybody. There is no such thing as a permanent victory. So that's why we have to be careful of. Otherwise, we take on a war mentality that really it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rick Langer:
That's good. One other thing that comes to mind as you mentioned some of that, Tim, is that I think we don't always know when we're voting, so to speak. So we think we only vote when we go to the ballot box and put in our ballot. The bottom line is we vote every time we click, every time there's a social media thing, everything is incentivized by the number of clicks it gets. And that's what sells advertising, that's what generates money. So when we click on things that are inflammatory, that are polarized, that are giving only one side of a story and giving that badly, we're voting for it.
Tim Downs:
Yeah.
Rick Langer:
And that becomes the guys who end up as our representatives, the men and women who are our congresspeople and our senators, they are elected basically on the basis of the dynamic equivalent of cliques. That's how they got enough attention to be able to get on that silly ballot that you actually do in November. So I worry that sometimes our consumption patterns, we think we're passive and have no influence. Well, as a single individual, it is a lot like your vote. Your one vote doesn't, but when your whole ethos is oriented towards those things and your own Facebook page promotes those things and that leads your folks to do that, you suddenly realize, "Dang, because I posted and reposted this, there's suddenly a thousand posts and reposts as I trace down through my tiny little Facebook chain."
Tim Downs:
Yes.
Rick Langer:
So I worry that we're not stewarding a responsibility we don't even know we have very well.
Tim Downs:
That's very good. That's very well said. And I couldn't agree more. And I think I'll read almost anything, but when I get a few lines in, the first time there's a reference to those morons on the other side, I'm done, I'm done. Because it just told me I'm not going to get any kind of a nuanced evaluation of this issue here. I'm not going to get any fair treatment of the person who opposes them. And the truth is going to end up being in the middle. Guys, let me add this. I think this is a powerful thought as we're wrapping things up here.
One of my concerns starting 25 years ago is that we have elevated courage to be the supreme virtue. Like for a Christian to say, "I am not afraid to say this," and we say some of the most audacious and hurtful and inflammatory things justifying on the grounds that we're not afraid. I think that's insanity. C.S. Lewis once said, "The courage isn't really even a virtue on its own. That courage is your willingness to uphold all the other virtues at the breaking point. But if you separate it off and just make it a virtue, you will do whatever is the most outlandish thing to do."
Rick Langer:
Yeah.
Tim Downs:
This is where we have to remember when Jesus sent his disciples out to have communication with real non-believers on their own for the first time, he said, "You've got to be as shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves." Nobody missed that metaphor, no Jew. He was saying, "You got to be as innocent as heaven and shrewd as hell." And we are supposed to do exactly that. And sometimes the shrewd thing to do is not the most audacious. And our politicians now are like, "I'm not afraid to say this. I'm not afraid to."
Rick Langer:
Right.
Tim Downs:
Okay, fine, but you're also not shrewd. You're just not shrewd.
Rick Langer:
Yeah.
Tim Downs:
So I would like to start a movement of shrewdness out there. I think that's where we'll end.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Winsome Shrewdness, our new podcast.
Tim Downs:
I just named your next book.
Rick Langer:
I love that.
Tim Muehlhoff:
That is cool. All right. As we wrap this up, we started a segment on our podcast called Reports from the Front. And these are people doing it right, that we just applaud that. And so from this came the Pomona Dialogue. We are part of this group called Bridging the Gap, where Simon Greer pairs up schools, liberal schools and conservative schools. And so we were paired up with Pomona, a very liberal, liberal arts school. And part of us was like, "This is not going to go well. What in the world are we doing? Why did we say yes to this?" And it couldn't have been further from the truth. That over laughter dinner, going to each other's campuses, students walked away overwhelmingly saying that was fun and we broke a lot of stereotypes on both sides. And I think we got to remember they're not idiots on the other side, we've got to have compassion, perspective taking.
Tim Downs:
Amen to that. And Tim, if I could add one more thing to that. I love that you are holding up examples of how this can work on an organizational level, but I would encourage you to see if you could look for models of how it's working on an individual to individual level. We have to round up our people who are shrewd ambassadors. We got to find them and demonstrate what they do. How do you talk? How do you introduce topics? What would you say if somebody said this?
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah.
Tim Downs:
What would your goal be in this kind of a conversation? Because the truth is we don't want everybody waiting around for organizations to do this for this, people out there are all interacting with their neighbors without a clue of what to say anymore. People are afraid to even open their mouths because of the culture they think we're living in.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah. Well, when we're in Capitol Hill together, let's flesh this out. Three of us. We'll take you out to dinner.
Rick Langer:
[inaudible 00:33:23].
Tim Muehlhoff:
Hey, thank you so much for being with us, Tim. Seriously, we have looked to you for guidance and even the vision for this whole thing really does come from your work with the Communication Center and the books that you've written and the ambassador heart that you have. So we sincerely say thank you. We're building off of what you have done.
Tim Downs:
I'm very grateful, guys, thank you for that. And I'll talk to you guys anytime. I love what you do.
Rick Langer:
All right. And I want to thank all of our listeners as well for joining us here at the Winsome Conviction Podcast. We'd love to have you become a regular listener. Sign up at Spotify, Apple Play, wherever, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. And we also would encourage you to check out the winsomeconviction.com website. We have a lot of resources there on any variety of things you related to communication, conviction forming and how we can do that in a healthy winsome, but faithful ways. So join us in that, we ask. And thanks again for joining us for this podcast.
