A new year is upon us—2021! What practical changes can we make to be a little more charitable, civil and compassionate in our approach to others? Tim and Rick consider six challenging yet doable resolutions we can take toward cultivating winsome conviction this year. Even if you commit to one of these, you're on the way to deepening personal convictions and engaging others with gentleness and respect.


Transcript

Rick Langer: We'd like to welcome you to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Rick Langer, and I'm one of your co-hosts here along with my colleague and friend, Tim Muehlhoff. And we've been thinking a little bit in the last few weeks and months about the issue of how we talk to one another, how we deal with the issues of convictions, how we communicate them to one another, how we can understand them better, and also how we can be able to communicate those convictions without resulting in divisions within the body or the communities that we're a part of. So, that's what we're all about here. New year for us, and we are ready for 2020 to be in the rear view mirror.

Tim Muehlhoff: Goodbye by 2020.

Rick Langer: Yeah. It's been quite a season. So, new year coming, what do you do, Tim, with new year's resolutions?

Tim Muehlhoff: You know what? I do them. I do them every year, and I don't have a great track record [crosstalk 00:00:52].

Rick Langer: I was going to ask, do you do them, or do you talk about them and then fail to do them?

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, last year, my new year's resolution was to grow hair [crosstalk 00:00:01:01].

Rick Langer: That didn't go well.

Tim Muehlhoff: It did not. It did not.

Rick Langer: So, you guys can see Tim, but I can verify this, that it did not go well.

Tim Muehlhoff: If you go to our website, you'll see my picture. It did not go well. And my goal was to get back to 5'10". I went for a checkup, and the woman looked at me and said, "You're 5'9"." I said, "Excuse me. I beg to differ. I am 5'10"." She goes, "I have a scale that says otherwise." I go, "Come on. You know those are inaccurate." So. What about you? Do you do a new year's resolution?

Rick Langer: I usually don't, actually. I will do new year's journaling, reflecting on the past year, what are lessons to learn. I like to do that kind of processing. I'm suspicious that my track record on keeping new year's resolutions led me to absolve myself of the obligation to create them because they didn't seem to make that much difference. But on the other hand, there's something good about stopping to think, just like I mentioned, you do the journaling process, how do I do in this? And at the very least to stop and think, "What would my resolutions look like for these areas that I've identified, as I look back through the year, that I might want to do better at?"

Tim Muehlhoff: And after a tumultuous 2020, my goodness, remember we mention this statistic a ton, but 68% of Americans feel like we're at crisis levels of incivility today. And we just went through a very ugly election, and so if there ever was a time to say, "Let's do some civility or at least cordial conversation new year's resolutions," this might be a really good time to do it.

Rick Langer: And with that to say, as we look at the past year to say, "We need to do things differently, and if I want the world to be a little different, maybe it should start right here at home." So. Let's have some new year's resolutions regarding civility and how we communicate with one another.

Tim Muehlhoff: Okay, I'll go first. And I'm going to go with my most convicting one, Rick. I'm just going to get this out on the floor right away. So, I read a story from John Ortberg, who is really good friends with the late Dallas Willard, who is one of our most revered Christian writers when it came to not only Christian philosophy, but spiritual formation. So, in this article, Ortberg tells this amazing story, Rick, and again, they've been lifelong friends. So, here's the great Dallas Willard at USC in a freshmen philosophy class, introduction to philosophy. Can you imagine taking an introduction to philosophy class from Dallas Willard?

Rick Langer: That that would be great.

Tim Muehlhoff: That'd be amazing. That'd be amazing. Okay. So, Ortberg is going to take them out for lunch afterwards. Okay? So, he actually is sitting in the class. A freshman is really pushing back on Dallas Willard, really disagreeing with them. And when it's done, they're walking out to the parking lot, Ortberg and Dallas Willard, and Ortberg says to Dallas Willard, "Dallas, you could have put that kid in his place any time you wanted to. What was going on?" And here's what Dallas Willard said. This is my first new year's resolution. Willard said, "I'm practicing the discipline of not always having to have the last word."

Rick Langer: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, Rick. I always get the last word. I was on the debate team in college.

Rick Langer: And you still haven't gotten over it.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, I have never gotten over it, Rick. I don't know about you, but it's just like this game of tag. I have to be the last person to get the last piece of evidence, the last quote in, and then we can stop. When I read that quote. I thought, "Man, I need to really think long and hard about that."

Rick Langer: That's great. I'm planning on holding you to that.

Tim Muehlhoff: No. No, no, no, no.

Rick Langer: No, no, that's very handy in a working relationship like ours. I'm writing that down, in fact, under the category of Tim's new year's resolutions.

Tim Muehlhoff: Take it back. I'm revoking that one. But isn't that convicted, Rick?

Rick Langer: That is. That is, and that is also... So, what I love about that, and this, I think, really speaks to the issue of the kinds of resolutions we're thinking about here, is that these are things that we do ourselves to make ourselves better at this. This isn't a thing that we have to say everybody else is doing. We're saying, "No, I've seen some things on my own that I need to work on." And of course they're relevant to other people, too, but the focus here is saying is Dallas Willard [inaudible 00:05:24] this is a bit of a spiritual discipline. So, here-

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, let me just add one thing to that, Rick, and let me just...

Rick Langer: You couldn't help yourself, could you?

Tim Muehlhoff: I couldn't.

Rick Langer: No, I didn't... So, minus one on Tim's new year's resolutions. Okay. So, here's my first one. In 2021, I would like to be a chimp and not a rhino. Now, that may not mean a whole lot to you, so let me explain. I've noticed that if somebody else's convictions don't quite make sense, I tend to think what's wrong them, and I rarely think that there might be something wrong with me. Or perhaps a better way to put it, I might not have actually understood them or perhaps not their backstory, the reasons behind their conviction. So, I want the first goal that I bring to be a goal of understanding, and that means for me that in some sense, I need to be a chimp and not a rhino. Here's what I mean by that.

Rick Langer: A rhinoceros is notoriously short-sighted. It's said that they can't tell the difference between a tree and a human being from 50 feet away, and that explains their aggressive behavior. If they don't recognize it, they ram it. It's a very simple philosophy of life. Unfortunately, it's hard both on the trees and the humans. In fact, it isn't even that great for the rhino. Right? It just everybody loses on that. It's bad news all around. Chimps are different. When they see something they don't recognize, they pick it up, they grab it, they put it on their heads, they lick it, they play with it. They do all kinds of interesting things. They prod it, they see what it does. They'll sit down, and if it doesn't seem very useful, they'll go play with something else. But they don't ram it.

Rick Langer: And I think what I would like to do when I meet a brother or sister in Christ this year, who has a profoundly different conviction than I do, is to say, "Let me first try it on. Let me play with it a little bit. Talk to me about this. Tell me the story of this. How do you use, how does it serve you?" and create a sense of curiosity, interest, and openness, as opposed to an immediate sense of rhino-like ramming of any conviction that I don't happen to share.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's good, Rick. I love that. Be a chimp, not a rhino. That's good. I like that.

Rick Langer: It's a good life policy.

Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, it's a good life policy.

Rick Langer: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: Okay. I'll do another one. So, I do martial arts training. I'm doing Krav Maga right now, which is an Israeli form of self-defense, and the instructor says, "Hey, watch how you hit people because it can actually hurt." So, just be aware that these punches, you may not know how much-

Rick Langer: That's a pretty keen insight coming from a black belt in Kung Fu and Krav Maga.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.

Rick Langer: Okay. That's good to know. They can hurt.

Tim Muehlhoff: But that got me thinking, because that's true, right? I mean, when you're punching a white belt, you just need to remember, "Oh, you know what? I'm kind of used to punching black belts. I need to dial this way back." It made me really think, not only can my fist do damage, my words can do damage. And sometimes I've forgotten the damage that my words can do. Listen to these verses, Rick, from the Book of Proverbs, "Reckless words are presented as a piercing sword," Proverbs 12:18. "A word spoken in the wrong way can break a bone," Proverbs 25, verse 15. "A person's spirit is easily crushed by a deceitful tongue, and a scoundrel speech is like a scorching fire," Proverbs 16:27. I forget that.

Tim Muehlhoff: So, let me mention one person who's... and we're actually going to do a whole podcast on this, so I'm going to back off just a little bit. But let me mention one person, his name is David Roman. He is a theater critic, but he specializes in one form of theater and that is AIDS theater. So, AIDS theater is particularly... It started in San Francisco. Imagine people with AIDS giving the last year of their life putting on a theater production. I mean, the playbill is really important when you go to theater because sometimes they'll say the second person is now performing the lead role-

Rick Langer: Oh, right.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Because the person says they just need to rest. Well, the play, though, becomes really important in AIDS theater because it will literally say, "Yeah, this role is being performed by this person because the two previous people have passed away from AIDS." So, now, imagine you're David Roman and you go and you're going to critique AIDS theater. Right? What loser is going to say, "Yeah. You know, I didn't think [crosstalk 00:09:56]"?

Rick Langer: I could have done a little better in the second act.

Tim Muehlhoff: So, David Roman came up with this idea. I just love it. It's called critical generosity, which is this. Listen, I am a theater critic, so I am going to talk about the good and the bad, but my goodness, I'm going to start this by saying you all have my admiration. I mean, it is remarkable what you have done to give you a life to put on this production, so please know you have my utmost respect. And here's what I love what you're doing, but I did have an issue with act three. I felt like this. Right? So, I love that, Rick, to say, "Can I critique what's really important to a person?" Yeah. But remember, your words are going to hurt, so maybe a little bit of work needs to be done before that, some critical generosity to say, "Listen, I admire your passion. I admire that you've given your life to this cause. So, listen, you have my respect, but I do have an issue with this." So, I think my new year's resolution is I need to remember not just fists hurt, but our words can inflict life or death.

Rick Langer: That's great. Here's another one for me. In 2021, I want to care. And I don't know if you've stopped to think at all about the way we talk about caring. Sometimes we have these wonderful sayings like, "Why should I care? Who cares? I couldn't care less." And we use those a lot of times when we're talking with other people to convey, well back to my rhino them, in effect to convey our thick-skinnedness. In other words, that, "Hey, you can't hurt me. It doesn't matter if you agree." And the way we resolve our conflicting convictions is by choosing not to care. And I would like to argue that's actually a bad way to solve the problem. At least it feels like that for me as I think about this.

Rick Langer: And so, what I would like to do is just say, "Hey, that phrase, I don't care, even when I speak to myself when another person's talking, is a phrase that starts digging a gulf as opposed to building a bridge, and I would like to start working on caring more." When talking to somebody about a contentious issue, I'd like to have my first thought not be how I can make my point or win the argument, but rather, that I simply want to care about the person I'm talking to and conveyed the fact that I actually care about them. They're a person, and that should be enough to make me care. Right? Just in and of itself. And then they're talking about something of importance to them, as well as to me, so I should care twice over. Right? And I'd love to have the people walk away from the conversation with me this year and have their first impression be not, "Wow, he's really smart," or, "Wow, he made a really good point," but rather, "Wow, he really cared what I think."

Rick Langer: So, it's a way of saying to another person, "I love you." It's a way of thinking first of others, looking not only your own interests, but also the interest of others, as Paul describes in Philippians two. One of the most valuable gifts we can give another person is the gift of our attention, and the reason I say that is because it's so rarely given, there must be a shortage and supply and demand must require that attention is extremely costly because it's given so very rarely.

Rick Langer: So, how do you do that? Here's a couple of thoughts I had as I was thinking about this on my own, is to just build some kind of stock phrases into my mind that I can use to express care. For example, "Wow, you've thought about this or you care a lot about this. Tell me more." That stops me from talking, and it invites them to talk. And it's a way that presses me to attend to what they say when they do talk. Another thing, sometimes people are coming at you about things you really disagree about to just say, "Hey, we disagree about this, but I'm wondering if it's just because I've misunderstood some of the things that you think about this. Could you explain a little bit more? Why is it that you care so deeply about this issue?" And here's another one. "Tell me about the influences or experiences that have helped shaped your views on this matter. This is a big thing to you. Tell me, how did it come to be that way? What got you going on this?" People love to talk about themselves. Invite them to do it.

Rick Langer: And by the way, just hot tip from Langer here, caring is a great conversational jiu jitsu technique. In other words, if someone's coming at you, they're overwhelming you with their side of the argument, and you may not even know how to argue back and you're feeling a little intimidated, one of the really interesting things you can do is simply acknowledge the fact that they seem to thought a lot about it, and then ask them to tell the story. How did you get so... And suddenly, instead of talking at you, they're talking about themselves, and you can almost feel the climate in the conversation cool down when that happens. So, bottom line is, I want to care more in 2021.

Tim Muehlhoff: Two thoughts came to mind when you said that. One, leave the martial arts references to me. Okay?

Rick Langer: Fair enough.

Tim Muehlhoff: No jiu jitsu, and I'll stay away from philosophy.

Rick Langer: Fair enough.

Tim Muehlhoff: Second, you really made me think of M Scott Peck. Remember, The Road Less Traveled?

Rick Langer: Yeah.

Tim Muehlhoff: He said the number one way to love a person is to listen to them.

Rick Langer: Yep.

Tim Muehlhoff: So, man, we need to remember that quote. Right. I'm going to live out my new year's resolution, I'm going to live out a thing that I've said 10 million times. And it's not me, it comes from a great communication scholar named John Gottman who says this, "How the conversation begins is how it's going to end. How it begins," Gottman says, "is how it's going to end." So, he talks about the critical start-up. That is, in his estimation, the first 30 seconds of a conversation will set the tone, and that's how it's going to end.

Tim Muehlhoff: So, you present something to me, Rick, first 30 seconds, I laugh at it, I'm sarcastic towards it, or I just flat out disagree and I jumped in right away. So, I need to remember that critical startup, the most important part when this change how we do conversations, Rick, if I think the most important part of this conversation is going to be the first 30 seconds. How am I going to start this thing? And I'll be honest with you, a lot of times, I'm so fast to jump in. Not only was I on the debate team, Rick, I did stand up comedy in college, so I'm very quick to either be sarcastic or to poke fun. But I need to really think about those first 30 seconds of what to do.

Rick Langer: Yeah. That's actually kind of striking to me. When you think of how long these conversations often go on, if you have a 30 minute conversation and 30 seconds is what sets the entire tone, boy, you better be careful at that moment.

Tim Muehlhoff: And go back to the presidential debates. Right? The vice presidential one, as well as the presidential one. What was the first reaction from all of them, all four? Whenever a person said something, it was a literal scoff or a roll of the eye or, "That's not true."

Rick Langer: Yeah. You can see their head begin to shake back and forth.

Tim Muehlhoff: I mean, imagine what that would have sounded like, that presidential debate, if one would have said, "Wait a minute, unpack that for me. I like that"?

Rick Langer: What if did they did my caring things like, "Hey, that's really interesting. Tell me more about that, President Trump. I hadn't heard that thought before"?

Tim Muehlhoff: Now, here's why they don't do that, Rick. We're going to do a whole podcast on this concept we've explored in a brand new book we have coming out called Winsome Conviction: Disagreeing Without Dividing the Church. We do a whole chapter on group think. Because, Rick, here's why they couldn't do what we're advocating. The minute that debate was over, could you imagine what the Republican Party would do or the Democrat Party would do if Biden or Trump did that? Oh my word they would have-

Rick Langer: It's perceived as disloyalty [inaudible 00:18:00] it's betrayal to the group, to the clan. And of course, you can't go there.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's right. So, that's one. I have one left. Do you have more?

Rick Langer: Yeah. I do have another one. So, a lot of these have come from conversations that we have been having over the past several months with churches, with Christian schools, with other people here at Biola, about difficult issues, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about the way we talk about these things and how we enter into it. And I think this is actually a little bit like the Gottman idea. You can let me know, this may or may not be true, but here's my metaphor on this, is I'd like to make the church or the conversations we have more like an art gallery and less like a county fair.

Rick Langer: So, here's the deal. I like county fairs. I'm fine with them. I grew up in Colorado. They had a big county fair in Boulder County that was just up the road in Longmont, and we'd go up there. Sometimes it was all great. But I did notice it everywhere you look at a county fair, there's another ribbon, red, white, blue, yellow for honorable mention. Everything is graded and placed. It seems almost unavoidable [inaudible 00:00:19:15]. They judge the pigs. They judge the pies. They judge everything. And you have the feeling like if you show up at a county fair, you're showing up exactly for the sake of being judged, ranked, and either being able to throw it in the face of the guy who got the red ribbon after you got the blue, or go home crying because you only got the white ribbon, and that's really pretty grim.

Rick Langer: Yeah. Everything at the county fair is judged. It's interestingly different at an art museum, or an art gallery. If you go to an art gallery, there's all kinds of pieces of art there. They've all been made with great intention. People have thought a lot about them. They worked very hard on that. Sometimes they're labeled, they'll tell you what this is a painting of. Sometimes they are not. But you almost never see a little ribbon hanging on the corner of the painting saying, "This is the best painting of a beach made in the 17th century." We just don't do that kind of ranking there. We put them on display in order to reflect, to admire them. Sometimes we don't like the art piece, but even then I've found many times some reflection actually can make it be valuable even if you don't like the aesthetics of it, so to speak.

Rick Langer: So, my thought about this, it would be nice if we could let the convictions in our church be a little bit more like the paintings in an art gallery, that there're simply things that are shown to others and we can reflect on what we see. There's nothing wrong with asking about it. You might even offer some critique. But the goal at the end of the day isn't to make sure everyone has been properly judged, but everyone has an opportunity to put it on display. And I think this is partly why we have been so concerned about the idea of cultivating convictions, not regulating them, but actually feeling like part of the problem that we're having in the church is a lack of convictions. And I think it's partly because when you begin to form on your word that it'll get judged, clubbed, or dismissed, and to just say, "Hey, cultivate this conviction."

Rick Langer: And when you bring it out for display in a church or a Bible study group or in the discussion over coffee, my first goal won't be to tear it apart, but to refine it, make it better, to celebrate it, to be interested and intrigued in it. And so, just bringing a completely different mindset to how we communicate about these things would be very helpful, the mindset of the art gallery, rather than the county fair.

Tim Muehlhoff: That's really good.

Rick Langer: And I find this even happening, particularly with election season, I found this happening with good friends who had different political opinions, and they would say something and I would have almost this compulsive feeling that I need to put a little label on it and tell you, "Why, that's only 85% on the truth scale. You got to be on that, on the Langer truth scale, has awarded you that grade." And I'm like, "Wow, Rick, let it go. Let it go."

Tim Muehlhoff: That's good. Oh, I love that. All right. I have one last one.

Rick Langer: Okay.

Tim Muehlhoff: Do you know what the Utne Reader is? I'm familiar with the Utne Reader?

Rick Langer: No.

Tim Muehlhoff: It's a progressive, New Age-Ish magazine that I used to read all the time. If you go into my office right now, you would find a shelf of Utne Readers, but you wouldn't find one for the last two years. I let my subscription run out. It is a walk on the other side, Rick. It is so good to expose myself to people who see the world in very, very different ways. Now, in grad school, I didn't need the Utne Reader. I was living the Utne Reader in grad school. Right? You and I both did our grad education at secular universities. Right?

Rick Langer: Yep.

Tim Muehlhoff: Where was yours?

Rick Langer: University of California.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, mine was UNC Chapel Hill. And it was great. It was so good to just remind yourself, "I'm not the only kid in the sandbox. There's a lot of other really, really smart people in the sandbox." So, when I graduated, I just wanted to keep that with me, so I did a subscription to the Utne Reader. And it is infuriating and motivating and exhilarating all at the same time, and I've gotten out of the habit of doing it. So, one of my new year's pledges is for Christmas, I'm asking for another subscription to the Utne Reader.

Rick Langer: Oh, wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. And Rick, it is... I mean, just looking at the book advertisements, I want to get away from just shaking my head, like shaking my head and going, "You've got to be... Are you kidding me?" But some of those articles that I read once was, one, this was about, I don't know, 10 years ago, was on how to create your own God. Utne Reader.

Rick Langer: Wow.

Tim Muehlhoff: But you know what? When you read it, it was tongue in cheek. They ultimately said this, and I couldn't believe the Utne Reader, and I was like, "I totally agree with this." They said, "You would never build your own computer. What makes you think you could build your own religion?" Their advice is I'd go with an established one.

Rick Langer: How about that?

Tim Muehlhoff: And I thought, "Man, that is absolutely perfect." So, one of my Christmas presents is the Utne Reader, and I'm going to start just remembering, "I'm not the only voice out there. And there's some really sharp people who we care about the same things, but often, we go about it in very different ways."

Rick Langer: Yeah. And I suppose that's one of the issues that is hardest for us to get over when we know the person's coming from the opposite direction, to be able to hear all of the common ground you actually have, despite the fact that at the end of the day, they may end up on the other side of the issue that you're having your contention over.

Tim Muehlhoff: [inaudible 00:25:01] it reminds me of a quote we actually put in the book, Winsome Conviction, "A Baptist said of an Episcopalian, 'I can't listen to you because of what I think you're about to say.'" Isn't that a great quote?

Rick Langer: There you go.

Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. I love that. All right, you get the last one [crosstalk 00:25:16]. This is it.

Rick Langer: Okay. So, the last one for me is I want to look out for unattended baggage. So, here's an interesting thing I've noticed in groups. There's a phenomenon we often talk about of the elephant in the room, and it's the thing that nobody's talking about but everybody's super aware of it. In fact, we're scrupulously aware of it so that we don't have to actually talk about the "elephant in the room." And that's because everybody in the group knows about it, everyone's aware, they realize it's a touchy... whatever the thing is, but you all walk around it. So, fair and good. And by the way, we generally think it's probably good to go ahead and address those elephants, and I'm all good with that too.

Rick Langer: But I'd like to make an analogy with that, too, another thing that sometimes lurks in a group, and that is the unintended baggage. You know when you're sitting in an airport, they have these announcements that say, "Watch out for unattended... Please report unattended baggage." And of course, they're worried about a bomb. Well, there's other things that might be in that baggage, though, right? I've left my laptop computer before going through TSA, and I hear this weird announcement coming over the airport. Usually that's all blah, blah, blah, but somehow you can pick up your own name, and suddenly I'm like, "Wait a minute." And lo and behold, here in this unattended bag that I had left was my laptop. And I'm glad they went ahead and looked at it and I was able to find it because I was on a trip that I needed that for.

Rick Langer: One of the things I've noticed in small groups is that sometimes you'll notice a person is not talking. There's something that's keeping them from participating. Everyone else is laughing at a joke. They didn't laugh. Everyone else is leaning in on the conversation. They have their arms closed and they're leaning back. And suddenly you're going, "I wonder what's going on." And my suspicion is they have a piece of what you might call unattended baggage. There's some things going on in their own heart, things they brought to the thing that they don't feel like they can bring out in this context. And to say, "Let me be sensitive to the person who seems to be missing in this conversation, even when I'm in my in-group, even when I'm feeling at home in my Bible study group or something," to look around and say, "We have 12, 14 people sitting here, but somebody isn't really participating, and I wonder why." And to be the person who builds a bridge, opens the door, invites them in.

Rick Langer: Of course, sometimes people don't want to talk about it, and we don't have to go invading their baggage. But on the other hand, we care enough to look and ask and think because, oftentimes, what's happening is somebody's getting run roughshod over. You've hit a sensitive issue for them that you don't even know about. And at that point, you need to stop and think, "Wait a minute, what's going on?" I heard a story about this, about a person who had gone to a Holocaust remembrance thing in Poland, they were Jewish, and a coworker happened to be of Polish extraction. I don't know if the two even knew that fact about each other. They were pretty intimate working relationship, had worked a lot to get her on this very effective team.

Rick Langer: But the person was sharing their experiences going to these Holocaust remembrance march, and the person who is Polish just made the comment, says, "One of the things that really bothers me is that everybody blames the Poles for all of this, and it was the Poles weren't doing Auschwitz and all this until the Germans occupied Poland." Well, the Jewish person came back and said, "The Poles were eager to support them." And before you knew it, the whole thing spun out of control. But part of it was people hadn't tended what was hidden in the [inaudible 00:28:46]. They didn't probe in to say, "Hey John, what are you feeling about this?" They just sallied forth, and suddenly, they were stepping on some really, really sensitive areas. So, it's really good sometimes to find out, look at the group you're part of, say, "Hmm, who's not feeling a part? Who's feeling not included?" And just be the eyes that look for those souls and help them tend their baggage, so to speak.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, Rick, these are great ideas. Way too convicting. Wow [crosstalk 00:29:15].

Rick Langer: We'll check back and see how you're doing because you're the one who makes new year's resolutions. I just talk about it. So, I'm really looking forward to 2021, and I can't wait to touch base on how you've done.

Tim Muehlhoff: Well, we are looking forward to going through 2021 with you all. And how we talk is important. It makes a difference in our marriages, our relationships with roommates, family members, coworkers. It's going to make a difference in how we approach each other politically, how Christians talk to each other, how we talk to people outside the Christian community. Communication's not going anywhere, and life and death really is in the power of the tongue. So, the Winsome Conviction Project, we are looking forward to 2021. We've got some really cool things planned. We will bring you along in the journey. So, Rick, why don't you tell them a little bit about where they can find more information about us?

Rick Langer: Yeah. So, we'd love to have you subscribe to the Winsome Conviction Podcasts. You can find it at Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever you happen to like to get your podcasts. We'd love to have you become a regular listener. We'd also invite you to come and join us at the winsomeconviction.com website. It's winsomeconviction, all one word, .com, and you'll find there resources. That's a place you can also access the podcast, but you'll also have blog posts. We've done a variety of different resources that we post there. And we just continue to find things that we think help us have better conversations about convictions, but doing it in a way that keeps us from dividing the churches and the communities of which we're apart. Because, really, that's what we're all about here at the Winsome Conviction Project. So, we thank you for joining us for this time. We look forward to having you as one of our regular listeners.

Tim Muehlhoff: And goodbye, 2020.

Rick Langer: Goodbye, 2020.