Gary Chapman (Author of The 5 Love Languages)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes, but first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why? Two reasons. One, this is a different book for me, right? I know this is a very different biography is what is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

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Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended.

End quote.

But here's the thing. In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5merechristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all of the pre order bonuses listed on 5 mereChristians. Calm and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5merechristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode. Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Hello, I'm Jordan Raynor.

How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians?

Those of us who aren't pastors or.

Religious professionals, but who work as Mathematicians, veterinarians and food scientists. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to one of the greatest of all time, at least in the literary world, Dr. Gary Chapman. He is most well known for his work on the Five Love Languages. His a franchise of books that has sold an absurd 20 plus million copies. But this episode is squarely focused on Dr. Chapman's great book, the Five Languages of Appreciation in the workplace. We talked about which of the five languages are most popular in the workplace. We talked about three ways to discover your co workers language without even asking them. And we talked about what Jesus said gives non Christians to the right to judge us. Christians at work. You guys are going to love this episode with the legendary Dr. Gary Chapman. Doctor Chapman, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Well, thank you. I am glad to be with you, Jordan.

So you sold an untruly unbelievable number of books, right? Like 20 million, something like this. In the, in the Love Languages franchise, I gotta know, what was the initial print run for the Five Love Languages? What was the initial sales estimate for this book?

Well, I know the first year it sold 8,000 copies.

No.

And every year since then, which has been 30 years now, it sells more than it did the year before.

What was the tipping point?

It really was not. It just continued to increase bit by bit. Now there was a, there was a little splurge when I was on the Oprah show, kind of in the middle, the middle of the stream.

That helps.

Yeah, that helps. But other than that, it's just been word of mouth. I think people read it, they realize how they've been missing each other emotionally and they take the quiz, they learn each other's love language, they start speaking it, what I call the love tank fills up, they begin to feel loved and then they want their brother and his wife to read it. I had one young couple say, Dr. Chapman, when we got married, we received four copies of the Five Love Languages wedding gifts. I said, well people are looking out for you man.

So good. People love you. People love you. That's so good. I got to imagine that selling 20 million books comes with a lot of blessings.

But I'm curious, what's been an unexpected curse?

Or maybe that's too strong of a word.

What's been an unexpected challenge of selling.

20 million copies of the books in this franchise?

It hadn't been such a challenge as it has been just a privilege. Because when I first started publishing books, I put it all in a nonprofit organization. And so just asking God to guide me on how I can invest in terms of helping marriages and family. I mean, that's what our organization is all about. So that's been sometimes a challenge. You know, how to do that, when to do that, where to do that and that sort of thing. But.

But the fun kind of challenges.

Yeah, it's a fun challenge.

It's an issue of stewardship, right?

Yeah, absolutely. People ask me if I ever get bored speaking on the Five Love Languages. I says no, because first of all, I know that whatever the audience, there are people that don't understand it. They may have heard the term love languages, but they don't. They don't get the concept and they've never learned each other's language. And secondly, I know it's going to help some people. It can change marriages, it can save marriages. So I don't ever. I don't ever get bored talking about the Five Love languages.

Some of the best advice I've ever gotten as a writer was, before you pick a book to write, make sure it's something that you're passionate enough about to talk about for 10, 20, or in your case, 30 years. Because if the book hits, that's what's going to happen. So you better be really, really excited about this thing. It's got to clearly be a word from the lord.

Hey, so, Dr. Chapman, you're of course best known for your work in the.

Five Love Languages, but many people don't know that you served as a pastor for 50 years. You're calling in from, it looks like your office there.

You only recently retired from the role the pastorate. Personally, a big part of the reason why this podcast exists is I believe the workplace will be one of the primary places where non Christians experience the love of Christ in this post Christian context, when they are less likely than.

Ever to darken the door of a church to experience God's love for the first time. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think so. No question about it. We either are lights in the midst of darkness or we just kind of shut the light down and just blend in. And that's never God's intention. We're to be lights in the midst of darkness in a workplace. We're going to encounter many people who are not followers of Christ who know nothing really about it. And so, yeah, I think it's exceedingly important that we learn how to communicate to people in the workplace in a positive way.

Which is exactly why I wanted you here today to talk about this terrific book you published years ago, Contextualizing the Five Love languages to the workplace. This book called the five Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace.

But beyond the missional case for loving.

Our co workers, well, there's also a clear business case for getting this right.

Can you share a little bit about what you've learned about the value of.

Getting appreciation right in the workplace?

Yeah. I tell you, Jordan, what motivated me to write this book. And I wrote it with Paul White. Dr. Paul White, who is a Christian psychologist who had spent 20 years working with business. But we discovered research that indicated that 70% of the workers in this country say they feel little to no appreciation at work. And 64% of the people that leave a job and go to another job say they left primarily because they didn't feel appreciated where they were.

Not because of money.

No, not because of money. We tend to think they go for more money. That's not necessarily true. And so when we discovered that, then I said to him, man, okay, I'm game. Let's do some research. Let's check this out before we write the book. And so what we did, he went into businesses and would give a job satisfaction test. And then he would share the concept of the appreciation languages. And then the people in the group would take what we call the MBA inventory, Motivating by appreciation inventory. And each coworker would know everybody else's primary appreciation language at work and their secondary and the one that's least important. And then he would go back a year later and give them a job satisfaction test. Same group, same. And in every case, it was statistically improved. So that is what motivated us to write the book, because we believe it can make a difference in the workplace. When people don't feel appreciated in the workplace, they are less likely to give 100% to the job. They are more likely to take sick days when they're not sick because they like not working. They're not going to be as productive as they could be because they're not highly motivated. And so even on the bottom line, it's worthwhile for people to feel appreciated. You're going to. They're going to accomplish more for you. When that does happen, when they do feel appreciated, typically they identify with the mission of the organization, whatever that mission is. They give 100%. You know, they can hardly wait to get to work because they just love what they're doing and they see it as a way of serving people, and consequently the customer is pleased. So it again, influences the bottom line in terms of business. So it's a huge effort. It's a huge Need, I should say, in the workplace. And we're excited about the way it's being accepted and being used.

And even if it wasn't good for the bottom line, it's still intrinsically good because Jesus called us to love our neighbors, ourselves.

Before we talk about how to do.

This well, how to show appreciation and love to those we work with, I.

Want to hear you draw the differences.

Between recognition and appreciation because I think this is a really important distinction.

Yeah, recognition and most companies have some kind of recognition program. It normally involves either longevity. You've been here 20 years, we're going to recognize you and give you, we're.

Going to give you a watch.

Give you a watch. The first year we gave you a mug. Now we're going to give you, if you watch. And secondly, recognition probably most likely focuses on productivity. If they've done well, you know, in their project, whatever it was, then we recognize them for that. So recognition is focusing primarily on productivity and how long they've been there, whereas appreciation focuses on the person. Now, it may involve certain, may involve their productivity, to be sure, but it expresses interest in them as a person. It communicates to them, I appreciate you as a person. You're not just a cog in a machine here. I value you as a person. And the other factor is recognition typically starts at the top and comes down. The leadership decide, we're going to recognize people for five years, 10 years, 15 years, and we're going to recognize the groups of employees that, you know that do, da, da, da, da, da. And everybody knows that. Everybody in the company knows that. So, you know, they're expecting their watch when they get to be 20, you know, but it's. No, it's not really that big a deal because everybody gets it. Appreciation is more individualized.

Yeah, it's good. Yeah. You wrote in the book, quote, recognition is largely about behavior. Thought that was a good way to put it. Appreciation focuses not only on performance, but affirms the employee's value as a person, end quote.

And that's very much a Christian value. It's one of the ways that Christ followers could be distinct in valuing people beyond their productivity and treating human beings as human beings and not just human resources.

Right. But I also love what you said.

What you said about the relational direction.

And the difference between recognition and appreciation. Recognition is always top down. Appreciation can come from anyone within the organization, including peers.

I'm curious if you guys have seen instances in your work in which some employees actually appreciate appreciation more from their peers than they do Top down from their superiors.

Yeah, I think that is true because they interface with their colleagues much more than they do a supervisor. And so they don't necessarily expect a supervisor who has 100 people under their supervision. They don't necessarily expect them to get to know them, you know, as a person, et cetera, as much as they do the people that are working with them. When we originally started to write the book, we were thinking of writing it to leaders, you know, managers and supervisors. But we realized, no, this can start anywhere in a company. It can be a company of 2,000 people, but here's a group of 10 people that work together on a regular basis, and they get the idea. Why don't we read this book? Why don't we take this quiz? Why don't we learn how to express appreciation to each other by learning each other's appreciation language, and then somebody else next door is going to hear about it. And so it can start anywhere and kind of begin to permeate the company so it doesn't have to start at the top.

Yeah, and I love that you pointed out, because we got a lot of.

Leaders listening to this podcast, but a.

Lot of people who are working in middle management or at the very bottom of an org chart.

And anyone can get a lot out of these concepts. All right, let's get practical.

What are the five languages of appreciation in the workplace? And for those who know the five love languages, this is going to sound pretty similar, right?

That's right. We essentially took the love languages to work. Okay, so one of them is words of affirmation and looking for things about them that you can genuinely express appreciation. And all of these languages of appreciation have what I call dialects. One dialect, for example, would be words of praise in which you're focusing on something they've done and you're praising them for that. It may also focus on their character. For example, I just ask your listeners this question. Has anyone ever expressed appreciation to you about a character trait, for example, said to you something like, I just want you to know one of the things I appreciate about you is your integrity. I know if you tell me something, it's going to be true. We don't do that. See, there, there's another dialect. It's looking for personality traits and character traits, or as I said, personality traits, to say to an employee, whether it's a fellow employee or whether it's one that works under your supervision, to say, you know, one of the things I appreciate about you is your positive attitude when I bring up an idea in the group, you know, our group, I always know there's going to be. Some people are going to say, well, that won't work. We tried that 20 years ago. But your response, oh, your organization too interested. Yeah, but then you say to them, but, you know, I can almost predict when I share an idea, at least you're going to say, it's worth a try. Let's give it a try. And I appreciate that about you. So it's looking for different aspects of the person that you can express appreciation for. So words of affirmation.

I love the way you articulated that. The dialects of words of affirmation, if I got them right, praise for accomplishments and affirmation for character and praise for personality. That's great. What's the second language of appreciation in the workplace?

Well, these are in no particular order of importance, but another one would be acts of service. Doing something to help a person in the workplace. It may be helping them with their computer. In fact, in today's world, almost everybody my age needs help.

You've grown in your love of acts of service.

Yeah, but it may also be things like when you go down to the workroom, could you pick this up for me? But it's thinking of ways you can help the other person.

That's good. Words of affirmation, acts of service. What's next on the list of the five languages?

Well, one would be gifts.

Yep. That one's pretty straightforward.

This is something that we. We regularly do in recognition already. You know, but here's the thing. If a person's appreciation language is gifts, it's not that it has to be something expensive. It's that you have to know them well enough to know what kind of gift they would appreciate. If they're into sports and a sports team, then a gift to a sports event would be wonderful for them. You might give it to somebody else in the group. They don't even go to sports events in their mind. They don't have time for that.

Yeah. And I'll quickly round out the other appreciation languages, and I want to pitch the NBA inventory because I was so impressed with this. So we talked about words of affirmation, we talked about acts of service, talked about gifts. The other one's quality time and physical touch, which, man, that's a tough one in the workplace. And you guys basically say in the book, yeah, this isn't the primary language for pretty much anyone in the workplace.

But this MBA inventory.

I was so blown away by the value of this. I'm a big believer in books.

When I'm writing a book, I don't.

Think about it like a $20 product.

I think about it like a $2,000 product. Because I'm not asking somebody to just give me 20 bucks. I'm asking them to give me five hours of their life. And after I got done reading the.

Five languages of appreciation in the workplace, I'm like, this is a $2,000 book.

Because of the MBA inventory. So this is an online test.

You get a free code when you spend, I don't know, 15, 20 bucks on the book.

Talk a little bit about the features of this inventory and how it works, Dr. Chapman.

Yeah, I think it is important. Super important. Because otherwise people can just read the book and think, well, that's an interesting idea, but this is the way to make it practical in a workplace. As you said, with every book there comes a free code. And with that code, you get a free inventory. And you answer the questions you know in the inventory, and then it will give you information on your primary appreciation language at the workplace. What would be most meaningful to you and then what is second most meaningful? And also how close those two are. Because sometimes one and two can be rather close, you know? And then the one that's least important, that's the one that it's not going to mean much to you at all in the workplace. Okay.

Basically, physical touch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We almost. No one said physical touch. All the HR people would push back. No, we don't touch at the workplace. But anyway, what we say about the physical thing is if you see somebody give others a high five, it's okay to give them a high five.

Yeah, right. Exactly right. There you go.

But if you don't see them touching anybody else, don't touch them. Okay. Or if you touch them and they stiffen up, don't. Don't ever touch them again. So we actually left that off of the MBA inventory, but we have a whole chapter in the book on appropriate and inappropriate touches in the workplace. Okay? So imagine what would happen, because once each of you get your individual feedback, then there's a form that you can put it in where everybody gets one sheet of paper, and it tells you words of affirmation. It gives the names of the people for whom words of affirmation in your work group, that's number one. And then what is the secondary of each one of you? So everybody in the work group then has that information on everybody else in the work group. They know the one that's least important. You're wasting your time. And energy to use that one. And they know the one that's most important and the one that's second most important. And they have specific ideas on number one. So it really makes it easy for you to know how to express appreciation to them in the way that's most meaningful to them. So it's a valuable tool when you have that information.

I love it. I love how generous you were in the book, though. You guys basically said, hey, listen, some of your friends are going to be cheap and not want to buy this book and get the MBA inventory code. And so you gave them this basically, like really rudimentary way to discover the primary appreciation language of someone in the workplace.

You said, number one, observe.

Observe what that person requests of others.

Number two, listen to their complaints.

And number three, explore how they are encouraged.

Can you take a minute to expand upon these three things?

Yeah. There are three informal ways to discover someone's language. Yeah. One is, and by observe their behavior, what I mean is just keep your eyes and ears open to how they express appreciation to other people. If you hear them always giving affirming words to other people, that's a clue that that's what they want to receive. Because we typically speak what we want to receive. Not always, but that's a clue. And then secondly, what do they request most often? If you hear them requesting people do it to do things for them, to help them, then acts of service is probably their language. Or if they're the kind of person that's always asking to have lunch or could we sit down and talk for a minute? They're asking you for quality time. And then what do they complain about most often? If they say, I don't know why I don't ever get invited to any of the meetings they have around here, they're telling you, I feel left out. I'm not getting quality time. So if you listen to those three things, you know, what are they request and what are they complaining about? You can pretty well figure out, first of all, your own appreciation language and the other person's appreciation language.

Yeah, that's really good. I love how informal that is. I also love that the people you work with don't have to know that you're doing this. You could just observe them and what they're talking, talking about in order to.

Know how you can love them as yourself.

Right. To love them in the language that they want to be loved in. I'm remembering this story. I haven't read it in a long time, but of when this goes wrong and when you don't know the language of appreciation in the workplace. It was in this great book called Disney War, about Michael Eisner's tenure as CEO of Disney. And Eisner and Bob Iger, like, did not have the. The greatest relationship. And part of it stemmed from this meeting. Iger was doing a great job after Disney had acquired abc. And Michael Eisner wanted to recognize and show appreciation to Iger. And so he invites him to his hotel room. It's Michael Eisner, Bob Iger, and this guy named Michael Ovitz. And they're sitting there, and Bob Iger walks in the room, and Michael Eisner hands Bob Iger away watch. Right? Because he, like, knew that Bob Iger really liked watches.

And Iger afterwards, like, why would you give me a watch? Like, you pay me millions and millions of dollars.

Like, this is not at all showing your appreciation for me. So good example of getting this wrong. What's your language of appreciation in the workplace, Dr. Chapman? What's your primary one?

Words of affirmation.

Words of affirmation. I love it. That's mine, too. And you say in the book, you.

Said, when it comes to words of affirmation, be as specific as possible. What are a couple of examples or.

Maybe just an example of a specific verbal praise that you've received at work.

That you still remember to this day?

Yeah, well, I think I remember a time that a guy said to me, said, Dr. Chapman, he said, you know, I know that you're really, really busy, but I just want to say how much I really appreciate the fact that you officiated at my wife's funeral. He said, I cannot tell you how much that meant to me. The specific things. That's what. That's what you're looking for in appreciation, is giving them specific things that you appreciate. Yeah. It's so important.

Hey. According to the data, what are the.

Three most common languages of appreciation in the workplace?

For words of affirmation is about 40% of the people or so. And then quantity time comes second. Taking time to be with them. It can be lunches or talking on breaks or things like that. And then acts of service is number three, and gifts is number four. And as we said, almost no one had physical touch.

Yeah.

Does this change when you're in a remote working environment?

It's a good question. I don't know that it does. I mean, this is so new. We haven't done any research on it, but I think it would tend to be the same. Here's another question I sometimes get is your love language at home, you know, in family relationships the same as your workplace relationship? And the answer is no. We found there's only, only about a 38% correlation. That is 38% of the people. Their love language and family relationships is the same as their appreciation language at work. But that means for the other 62%. 62. I'm not good on math. 72. Maybe the bulk of the people. It's not going to be the same at work as it is at home because, let's face it, family relationships are different from work relationships. But this need to feel appreciated is the same basic need. It's, it's that need we, all of us have to feel loved and appreciated by the significant people in our lives. And so it's meeting that same emotional need.

I get questions from our listeners all.

The time of, hey, I'm working more and more remotely. I want to show Christ's love to my team in a remote environment. What advice would you have?

Where do they need to be more.

Intentional right as they're working remotely to show the love of Christ to others?

Well, I think this is certainly one way because this is such a deep emotional need for everybody you work with. They have the need to feel appreciated by the people in their lives. And so even if you're working remote, if each of you took the quiz because you can't observe their behavior and those other things that I gave, but if each of you took the quiz just in an effort, you know, let's, let's. I heard about this concept. I read this book. I want you guys to read the book and take this quiz and let's all of us take it and see what can happen. Then you know exactly what you can do to express appreciation to each other in your work group, even though you're working remotely.

Yeah, it's really, really good. Yeah. And listen, we're talking about a quiz that costs like $15. This is an absurdly inexpensive way to love your co workers as yourself. Hey, Dr. Chapman, pastor us for a minute.

Why should Christians be particularly good at.

Showing appreciation in the workplace?

Like what resources do we as Christ.

Followers have unique access to that should.

Enable us to be the most appreciative.

People, most loving people at work in the world.

I think a couple of things. One is what Jesus said when he said a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you. You love one another. By this will they know that you're my disciples. In other words, he gave the non Christian world the right to judge whether or not we're truly following him. By the way, we love people, so that makes it extremely important. But here's a positive thing. Christians have outside help in loving others. Romans chapter 5 in verse 5 says, the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And remember, love and appreciation doesn't begin with a feeling. You don't have to have positive feelings toward a person to still express appreciation to them because you know they're a human made in the image of God and therefore they're extremely important even though you may not have positive feelings toward them. So you're saying to God, lord, you know this guy I work with and you know he irritates me and I don't have a lot of positive feelings for him. But I know you love him and Christ died for him. So I'm opening my heart for you to pour your love into me and let me be your agent for loving him by expressing appreciation to him by even though I don't have positive feelings for it. We have outside help. The non Christian doesn't have that kind of help. So we can be agents of the loving people that are unlovely. And I remind you, God loved us while we were dirty rotten sinners and sent Christ to die for us so we can love somebody that's a dirty rotten sinner in his power.

That's exactly right. I heard the story recently of one of Fred Rogers's co workers on the set of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood who was asked to explain after Rogers died how it was possible that a human being could have lived and be this loving and this appreciative in the workplace because he was truly remarkable.

And I loved what this guy said.

I don't think I'll ever forget it. He said, quote, fred Rogers didn't need anything from you or from me. End quote.

What I think he was saying was Rogers was so filled up with the Holy Spirit, was so filled with an experience of God's love that he had.

Achieved what Tim Keller called the freedom of self forgetfulness.

Right. He was so filled with the love of Christ that he was free to extend that love and appreciation to others.

And that that's the ultimate resource we have to draw upon to show other worldly love and appreciation to those we work with. Amen.

Amen. Amen. That's powerful. Absolutely. Yeah. I think when we have a close walk with God, we're going to be more and more like Christ. And if you look at the lifestyle of Christ, Peter said about Jesus, he Went about doing good. A one sentence summary of the lifestyle of Jesus. And that's our model to go about doing good. And here's one way we can do good in the workplace.

Yeah.

How will the love that Christians show.

In the workplace look differently than the non Christian?

You already hit on one, which is.

Hey, we're gonna choose to love.

Love will be a verb for us, not a feeling.

We will choose to love those that we don't like.

Can you think of any other ways that Christian love will look different from the world's love at work?

Well, I think typically people operate on their emotions. If they have positive feelings towards someone, that is, their personalities tend to click and they just feel comfortable around them, then they're going to be expressing love and appreciation to that person just naturally. But if they don't have positive feelings toward the person because of the way they talk or the way they look or the way they act or something else, if they don't have positive feelings toward them, then they just kind of ignore those people and stay away from those people. All of us do that by nature. But as Christians, we're not called to live by our emotions. You can't stimulate emotions. It happens because of circumstances. Things happen, people say things, whatever. And you have feelings, negative and positive feelings. That's not to be our motivation. Our motivation is the commands of Jesus and the model of Jesus. And so we can choose an attitude of love and appreciation rather than being controlled by only responding to the people that we have positive emotions for.

Yeah, that's good. I would also add to that.

I think the Christ follower, I think.

She'S going to show appreciation to those who cannot repay her appreciation.

Right.

I think about Jesus's words in Luke 14 about hospitality and showing hospitality to those who can't repay us. Yeah, I think we can extend that to appreciation. Hey, we're going to show appreciation not just to the people on our teams who we want to motivate. We have some ulterior motive to show appreciation of them. We're going to show appreciation to the janitor who's not on our team just.

Because he's an image bearer and Christ.

Died for him just as much as he died for me, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. I was in a restaurant last night and there was a young girl, she looked to be a teenage girl and she was working, cleaning up tables and all that sort of thing. She wasn't a waitress, she was just doing the janitorial type stuff. I was so impressed by that as I sat there that when it was all over. I went over and found her. She had a broom in her hand. And I said, I am so encouraged to see a young lady your age working here and this kind of work. And I said, I just so appreciate you. I want to give you a tip. And I gave her a five dollar bill. Well, she won't forget that. She won't forget that. And someday I'll be back in there and she'll see me and say, oh, that's that, man. That I may even have a conversation with her. You know, you never know what can come out of things like that. But you plant seeds by doing good to people, whether you know they're a Christian or whether you don't know they're a Christian. Yeah.

Amen. Well said, Dr. Chapman.

We end every episode the same way.

By asking our guests the same three questions.

Number one, which books do you find giving away most frequently?

Like, if we opened up your Amazon order history, what book would we see popping up over and over and over again for you to give your friends?

I think it would be the Five Love Languages. I'd have to say that you've bought.

At least a million of those. 20 million, right? I mean, come on.

Oh, yeah, yeah. We have to be the Love Languages.

That's good.

Hey, most of our guests on this.

Podcast are not pastors or religious professionals. They're mere Christians working as entrepreneurs or baristas or mechanics.

Do you know anyone that fits that bill that you would love to hear on a podcast like this, talking about how the Gospel leads them to work.

Differently in the world?

Whoa, that's a hard question. I know.

That's why I asked it.

Yeah. There's a young guy in our city, his father owned the Truth Broadcasting Network. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's a large Christian broadcasting network. This is his son. The father died this past year. Actually. I've always admired how open he was and the kind of things he did in the community. You know, in addition to it, he has several stations now that he operates on his own, you know, as a part of that network. But he meets, like, weekly with a group of men for a morning breakfast. And many of them are men from different race and culture than he is. He's just like you and me. And also, just every time I turn around, I hear about something else about what he's doing, and he's so open with his faith in talking with people. So, yeah, his name is Stu epperson. Stu epperson junior.

I'll look him up. That's great.

All right, Dr. Chapman, you're talking to this audience of mere Christians all over.

The globe, very diverse, vocationally.

What's one thing from our conversation today do you want to reiterate to our.

Listeners before we sign off?

I would say whatever you do, do it as though you were doing it to Jesus because he said when you do it to the least of these, you do it to me. If we've got that in our minds, then we're going to freely reach out to people because we're going to see Jesus in that person. And so we're doing it as though that person were Jesus. You'll do your best in everything you do if you follow that model.

Amen. So simple and we hear it so frequently. But if we really did it, oh my word, oh my word, the world would be a very different place. Dr. Chapman, I want to thank you and commend you for the exceptional work you've done throughout your career for the glory of God and the good of others.

For showing us how practically to love our spouses and our neighbors and our co workers as ourselves in the language God has given them to speak and to receive. My friends, if you haven't read the.

Five love languages, where have you been for 30 years? And if you haven't read the five languages of appreciation in the workplace, go check it out.

Especially as we we head into this new year and we all seek to.

Love our co workers as Christ has loved us. Dr. Chapman, thank you for being with us today.

Well, thank you Jordan. I enjoyed chatting with you today and God bless you and what you're doing.

That was a heck of a way to end 2023. And don't worry, we got just as great of a guest coming up next week in our first episode of 2024.

I've been holding back on this one.

I Recall recorded the first episode of 2024 in like, I don't know, September 2023. But saving this gem for you guys next week. Hey guys, thank you so much for tuning in.

Merry Christmas.

Happy New Year. I'll see you in 2024.

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