June 2026

Letter from the Committee

Balance

Don’t be salty!

Let your words be seasoned with salt.

Colossians 4:5-6: “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.”

Amidst all created beings, we alone are endowed with the power of speech. As alumni of Stoa, we have been uniquely trained to operate in this skill. As believers, we are charged to be prayerfully intentional in employing this gift to represent our Savior in the world around us.

Untempered power tends toward harmful extremes. We are instructed to live in wise balance, offering truth and grace.

Warren Wiersbe wrote, "Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy. We must hold them in a fierce, gentle balance." Just as a stallion carefully trained by his master is no less strong for the guidance, measured response is not weakness or a dilution of the truth. It is disciplined efficacy as we wield arguably the most influential force we possess (power over life and death).

1 Peter 3:15: “…Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

This month we echo familiar words. As disciples and ambassadors of The Word, may our words be balanced, prayerful and healing, salted and gentle, truthful and wise, full of praise and thanksgiving!

Your Stoa Alumni Committee,

Samuel Durand (CA), Nicole Kaiser (MT), Eliyah Speed (OK), Elizabeth Stapleton (OK)

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