Communication

Communication. I watched a show on TV the other day. I can’t remember the station. It was something like the History or Science channel. The show talked about what differentiates human beings from animals. The show explained how our physiology - the size and shape of our cranium, and consequently the size of our brain and the design of our throat etc… - enable us to produce sounds and pitches that other animals can’t. With this ability came better communication capabilities. Increased and better communication, the show went on, gave us a clear advantage in term of survival.

Communication. If you are married, have a family and have friends (that should cover everybody, right?), you know the importance of communication. How tricky communicating with one another can be. Things can go down hill quickly if we fail to communicate properly.
In marriage counseling, quite a bit of time and effort can be spent helping folks actually communicate, instead of talking “above each others’ head”, where the spouses are not really talking with or listening to one another.

I remember a little bit of a speech class I had years ago in college and I remember that we talked about the mechanics of communication. How a “message” is sent and how it is “received” and the interference that are in the way of the sender and receiver. If you have ever played the game of “telephone”, you get the idea of what I mean. A message starts one way and ends up garbled at the other end. There are so many things which can go wrong, beginning with the sender, the space between the sender and the receiver and the receiver itself. Sometimes I think it is amazing that we understand each other at all. I know that I don’t always communicate as clearly as I want to. So I am trying to get better. I am looking at is a book titled, “How to communicate: The Ultimate Guide to Improving Your Personal and Professional Relationships.” I have had this book for a while but had never read it until now.

Communication. I think of communication quite a bit because part of my calling is sharing God’s Word with people. I spend quite a bit of my week praying for, thinking about and crafting the message that I deliver each week. I think about flow, about transitions, about delivery… I had a preaching class in seminary. I have read books about preaching but I want to keep learning and get better so I have started to read a neat resource titled, “The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching” to help me hopefully improve in this endeavor. This book is a hefty tome at over 700 pages. The title struck me because it says the “Art and Craft.” Communication is a skill which can be learned. No one is born knowing how to effectively communicate. It is more than words as you know also, it is body language, the tone of one’s voice, one’s culture, one’s gender in relationship to the people receiving the message… Communication requires sustained intention and care.

So I think a lot about communication as a pastor but I think we all need to give thoughts to this because it is really important for all of us to communicate clearly.

The resources I mentioned above are certainly helpful but I don’t want to forget that Jesus gives us a model of healthy communication among Christians in the Bible. Look at Matthew 18:15-17. It says: Go directly to the person you have a problem with and talk; no gossiping behind the person’s back; no holding on and chewing on something for days, no triangling – trying to get others to take side. Go and talk directly with the one you have a problem with. If this does not work well, than bring one or two others with you and go talk with the person you have issues with. In our denomination, this might be someone from the Staff-Parish committee. In the first church that I served, things unfortunately escalated and the District Superintendent got involved, along with a conflict management consultant, a retired pastor. I hope to never get to that point again. It was ugly and it was painful and I am sure God cringed.

Few things can hurt a church more and lead to faster decline than lack of, or unhealthy communication, among folks. My experiences with churches is that we are not very good usually at communicating clearly. We are usually pretty good at undercover, guerilla warfare, sadly enough. Things are said behind people’s back. Egos get bruised. We don’t want to offend so we don’t say what we really feel. Feelings get hurt but we hold on to a grudge because we are unable or unwilling – because of pride maybe - to talk with the people we feel resentment toward…. Mole hills soon grow into mountains. Do you know what I mean?

Communication. I believe most of the world’s problems stem at some level from lack of or poor communication; from an unwillingness to listen and understand others…

Communication. Clear, healthy, loving communication among Christians can offer a great witness to unchurched, unbelieving people also. Let’s do our best to have healthy, loving communication. As the hymn says, “they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”