Neighborhood Church

The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.
Esther Perel

What do your relationships say about you?

Jesus didn’t come to build temples, cathedrals, or multimillion-dollar church campuses—he came to kickstart a radical community of relationships defined by love.

The way of Jesus is expressed primarily through the building, maintenance, and enjoyment of healthy relationships.

How To Kill A Relationship in 30 Days
• Communicate in Code
• Get Your Way ... Always
• Dwell On What's Wrong
• Avoid Conflict

The fastest way to kill a relationship is through bad communication.

In an era of increasingly fragile marriages, a couple’s ability to communicate is the single most important contributor to a stable and satisfying marriage.
Gallup Poll

If we want to learn to love another person, we have to learn to speak their language.

Two Ways to Help Us Stop Communicating in Code
• Speak Clearly
• Listen Sincerely

Communicating in code places an unfair burden on the listener to decipher your message.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of trust, empathy, and love.
Simon Sinek

Three Keys to Expressing Yourself Well
• With a calm demeanor
• Without accusation
• Asking rather than demanding

Two Ways to Help Us Stop Communicating in Code
• Speak Clearly
• Listen Sincerely

Hearing is passive, listening is active.

Listening is the single most important relational skill a person can develop. Asking astute questions, being open-minded and understanding, not interrupting, seeking suggestions all communicate to another person ‘they matter.'
Daniel Goleman

What if we made the decision to start asking more questions?

The average person thinks at 400 words per minute.
We speak at 100 words per minute.

What you think someone means can trigger you emotionally.

... difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values… The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that…
Douglas Stone

If we’re going to have healthy communication in our relationships, we’ve got to speak clearly and listen sincerely.

It’s time to speak up.