An eye-opening look at the sin of gossip and what to do about it.

Practical guidelines and biblical and contemporary examples to help people improve their communication skills. Includes a discussion on the cost and purpose of silence.

Overcoming Gossip takes a serious look at how the “accuser of the brethren” works in partnership with people who gossip to bring down God’s children and keep a spirit of disrespect alive in families, churches, ministries, and communities. Through true stories gathered from believers, Overcoming Gossip highlights the various types of gossip as well as many of the common motivations—conscious or unconscious—for negative speech coming from Christians. Balanced perfectly with God’s love, the author paints a positive picture of hope and discusses the importance of forgiveness. This book provides a comprehensive guide for Christians who want to stop accusing the brethren and learn to live a life of love and grace toward others. Both inspirational and instructional, the powerful stories are filled with wisdom sure to change the way you think and talk.

Expert Communication Advice from a Pastor and Teacher Communication expert Dr. Michael D. Sedler offers groundbreaking, practical strategies for identifying, counteracting, and responding biblically to gossip, criticism, and negative words, and learning to speak words that bring life. Through both biblical and modern-day examples, Sedler reveals how profoundly words can hurt--or heal. This book offers multiple tools to reveal, step by step, the impact of verbal contamination; how to identify and counteract it; why silence in the face of negativity isn't enough; and how parents, leaders, teachers, spouses, and friends can build one another up by choosing life-giving words. He also shows how to •discern why people relay destructive gossip •identify a negative conversation and counteract it •experience cleansing from conversational pollution •find freedom and reconciliation with those who have spoken harm

At last—a resource for librarians who wish to build or develop their nonfiction collection and use it to better serve the needs of adult Christian readers. Covering the three major branches of Christianity (Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox), the author organizes more than 600 titles into subject categories ranging from biography, the arts, and education, to theology, devotion, and spiritual warfare. Award-winning classics are noted. Introductory narrative frames the literature, and helps librarians better understand Christian literature; and learn how to establish selection criteria for building a Christian nonfiction collection.

Virtually every human endeavor involves interpersonal communication. Leading Christian scholar and media commentator Quentin Schultze and respected professor of communication Diane Badzinski offer a solid Christian perspective on the topic, helping readers communicate with faith, skill, and virtue in their interpersonal relationships. Designed as a companion to Schultze's successful An Essential Guide to Public Speaking, this inviting book provides biblical wisdom on critical areas of interpersonal communication: gratitude, listening, self-assessment, forgiveness, trust, encouragement, peace, and fidelity. Given the rapid rise and widespread use of social media, the book also integrates intriguing insights from the latest research on the influence of social media on interpersonal relationships. It includes engaging stories and numerous sidebars featuring practical lists, definitions, illustrations, and biblical insights.

This book suggests that gossip can be used as an interpretive key to understand more of early Christian identity and theology. Insights from the multi disciplinary field of gossip studies help to interpret what role gossip plays, especially in relation to how power and authority are distributed and promoted. A presentation of various texts in Greek, Hebrew and Latin shows that the relation between gossip and gender is complex: to gossip was typical for all women and risky for elite men who constantly had to defend their masculinity. Frequently the Pastoral Epistles connect gossip to false teaching, as an expression of deviance. On several occasions it is argued that various categories of women have to avoid gossip to be entrusted duties or responsibilities. “Old wives’ tales” are associated with heresy, contrasted to godliness in which one had to train one self. Other passages clearly suggest that the false teaching resembles feminine gossip by use of metaphorical language: profane words will spread fast and uncontrolled like cancer; what the false teachers say is tickling in the ear, and their mouth must be stopped or silenced. The Pastoral Epistles employ terms drawn from the stereotype of gossip as rhetorical devices in order to undermine the masculinity and hence the authority, of the opponents.