Good morning, Five Minute Families. As we travelled to visit family, Kim and I were listening to a business leadership audio book titled Radical Candor, and while we don’t fully endorse everything in this book, we realized that the concept closely aligns with the key concept we teach here at Clear View Retreat – the concept of intentional intimacy. We want to spend some time today and, perhaps, more in some future weeks as well, exploring the idea of radical candor within the family context and our key concept of intentional intimacy.

Kim Scott states that “Radical Candor® is what happens when you show someone that you [c]are [p]ersonally while you [c]hallenge [d]irectly, without being aggressive or insincere.” When Scott plots her two key ideas – care personally as the y-axis and challenge directly as the x-axis – into four quadrants, she has ‘ruinous empathy’ for high caring and low challenging which becomes unspecific praise and sugar-coated criticism. In low caring and low challenging quadrant, ‘manipulative insincerity’ manifests as insincere praise and harsh criticism. In the high challenge and low care quadrant, you find ‘obnoxious aggression’ which comes out as insincere praise and unkind criticism. And, again, in the high caring personally and high challenging directly quadrant you find Scott’s concept of ‘radical candor’ which is sincere praise with direct and kind criticism. *whew*

Using four quadrants to – somewhat – succinctly explain the basic interaction of two concepts is an age-old visual aid. In our research we found Robert Turner using it to ex-plain discipleship as well as Dimitri Glazkov further developing his fallback theory within Scott’s ‘radical candor.’ While there are numerous enlightening four-quadrant graphics to learn from, we are going to discuss intentional intimacy primarily from Kim Scott’s radical candor illustrative quadrants that we just described and a little from Dr. Robert Kellemen’s style of parenting graphic in Gospel Centered Family Counseling (a grace-focused parenting family living and counseling theory).

Radical candor can be applied to families, but let’s also review CVR’s intentional intimacy concept before we merge the two. We define intentional intimacy as “the passion and desire to pursue being known and to know another deeply for the glory of God.” Every relationship we have can benefit from a mindset of intentional intimacy, even random meetings in life. Unfortunately, many people prefer to get good at interactions with strangers and acquaintances but neglect their own family, and we want that to change dramatically for families. If we get into the practice of desiring to know others for the glory of God, we must choose to also express radical candor in caring for and challenging one another.

In the numerous “one-anothering” verses we have shared with you all through the years, the elements of caring for one another and challenging one another are already there. Radical candor is required to live out those verses.

John 13:34-35, John 15:12-13, Luke 10:25-37, and Romans 13:8-10 are just four of the sets of verses that admonish us to “Love one another.” And, of course, we cannot forget the second commandment of Jesus’s – love your neighbor.

In Ephesians 4:11-16 we are reminded to equip one another through speaking the truth in love.

Colossians 3:15-17 continues to point out that we are to teach and admonish one another with all wisdom – God’s wisdom.

And, Romans 15:14 rounds out our reminders of one anothering for today when it tells us to instruct one another.

One-anothering behaviors are essential to living a life of intentional intimacy, and the two pillars of intentional intimacy we teach in our family camps are family discipleship and biblical community. Family should be our first ministry. Family is also the primary mission field we will encounter as parents; thus, family is the first biblical community we are to interact with. The only thing that makes a community truly biblical is to stand on God’s truth. Likewise, family discipleship is the ultimate show of love within the context of family.

God’s truth and God’s love are the most basic summaries of biblical community and family discipleship, again those two pillars of intentional intimacy. So, if we plot God’s love and God’s truth for our y- and x-axes for intentional intimacy, we can see how much the concepts line up with radical candor.

Please join us next week as we continue this discussion of intentional intimacy and radical candor. We’ll get into some examples of radical candor in the business world and examples of intentional intimacy in the family. Be blessed!