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.”
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication. Show all posts
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
HisSpace.com
12/28/08 sermon - Luke 2:41-52
You know I am realizing a little more every day that I am getting older and that there are a lot of things around me that I don’t quite get but that I find fascinating nevertheless. A couple of these things are iPods and MP3s (I guess these are the same thing, aren’t they?): I remember buying LPs (33 rpm) and 45s (you know, the vinyl records with a big hole in the middle). I remember when cassette tapes were big and then when they faded away as old dinosaurs when the CDs came out. Now you can’t even give these things away. I guess I was good this year because I got an MP3 player for Christmas! :) I spent some time these past few days charging it and learning how to load songs into it. Pretty cool!
The other thing I find interesting is the phenomenon of websites like MySpace.com and Facebook and Blogs. Somewhere in cyberspace I have a MySpace account. That one was started for me by a youth at a former church I served a couple of years back. I have been invited by several friends to sign into Facebook. So I have one of those too somewhere. The sad part is that I am not sure how to get back on these accounts or how to post anything there. I have a blog now also you know. The good news is that I know where that blog account is and I know how to post texts, and pictures and videos on there too. Whether anybody is looking at my blog is another story. I learned to text from my cell phone this year too. (our youth is looking at me funny by then, like duh...) Communication sure has changed since I was a teen. These are signposts for a relational revolution which I think already started with emails.
Sites like MySpace or Facebook are sites where anyone can post information, pictures, preferences and musing by and about themselves.
On a quick aside, I read in a 12/17/08 Elkhart Truth article that an Australian court has ruled in favor of a mortgage lender using Facebook to contact delinquent payers. I wonder how long it will be before this is legal in America. Makes you think twice about using MySpace or Facebook, doesn’t it?)
While these are designed for people 16 or older, increasing numbers of preteens have been logging on too, declaring or manufacturing their identities for the world to see. On the surface, it seems kind of innocuous. Users can arrange themselves into groups by interest, musical preferences, hobbies, schools and the like. The interactions take place in ways that our kids love and that PC (that would be Pre-Computer – I fall in that category – yikes!) mistrust to varying degrees. On an aside I remember sitting in front of my first computer, an early Apple computer, in business school, holding a floppy diskette and wondering what to do with it. This was 1983 or 84.
Blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, MySpace and Facebook: In a sense, these have created a virtual community where everyone can participate. The danger we are finding more and more is when predators, like child molestors and pedophiles, enter these sites and pretend to be what they are not. And that is one of the problems some parents and educators have with this. Anyone can participate and not everyone is whom they say they are.
Everyone’s identity is self-generated, which encourages embellishment at the least and outright falsehood at the most. Places like MySpace tap into one of the key tasks of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, which is discovering one’s identity. Laura Kastner, a Seattle-based adolescent psychologist, says that the popularity of MySpace among young teens “makes perfect sense developmentally because of their burgeoning identity. They can try out different identities and make them up along the way.”
One almost teen we find today in our Scripture text is Jesus and he is growing into his identity and trying to figure things out like any other young person. This is an important passage in the gospel story. At that time, it was laid down by law that every adult male Jew who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover feast (The celebration of the Jews being liberated from slavery in Egypt after the Spirit came over the country and killed every first born child of each family, except for the families which had smeared lamb’s blood over their door frame and thus were sparred.) In fact it was the aim of every Jew in all the world at least once in a lifetime to attend that feast. A Jewish boy became a man when he was 12 years old. Then he became a son of the law and had to take the obligations of the law upon him. So at 12 Jesus, for the first time, went to the Passover celebration. Can you imagine what that must have felt like to be in the big city of Jerusalem during Passover for the first time for this country boy? All the sounds and smells and the cheer number of people present. And experiencing the Temple and the sacrifices… This is the only boyhood story of Jesus that is recorded in the canonized (accepted) Scripture. There are some crazy stories found in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
(see http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/infancythomas.html)
When his parents returned home, Jesus lingered behind.
On an aside (I know, another one), I always wondered how come Jesus’ parents did not miss him until they were a day’s travel out of town. But they were not as careless as might first appear to us. Large groups traveled together. Usually the women in a caravan started out much earlier than the men for they traveled more slowly. The men started later and traveled faster and the two sections would not meet until the evening encampment was reached. It was Jesus’ first Passover. No doubt Joseph thought he was with Mary and Mary thought that Jesus was with Joseph.
For the Passover season it was the custom for the Sanhedrin (the High Jewish Court) to meet in public in the Temple court to discuss, in the presence of all who would listen, religious and theological questions. It was there that Mary and Joseph found Jesus. Luke says that he sat among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. (v. 2:46) He is trying to figure who he is and we realize that he has started to find out. When Mary asks, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere” (v. 48), Jesus answered in the most natural way, as if the whole thing was obvious, “But why did you need to search? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (v. 49)
What we learn from a 12 year old! Not only was he starting to understand WHO is was but he also understood WHOSE he was early on. This is a good reminder for our children but also for all of us adults: Our real identity, our authentic self are not something we create. Instead, we find our true value and purpose in vital relationship with God. What we’re talking about here is not our need for self-invention or reinvention, it’s about the discovery of self that can be fully realized only through relationship with God through Jesus. It’s when we move from MySpace to HisSpace that we discover who we really are and who we are destined to become.
I got an email invitation a few days ago from a friend inviting me along with others friends to join an online-based book group. As I understand it, the discussions, instead of happening face to face, would happen online. I will have to think about that one for a little while. For one, I am trying to get back to a book group I belonged to but stop attending because of my ordination work and too many moves. My other hesitation is that I spend too much time on the internet and e-mails already. I need more face to face contacts and relationships with people.
I believe that the proliferation of sites like MySpace and Facebook and blogs are an indication that we are a relationship-starved society. Things move too fast. People are too busy and our attempt to connect on-line tells me that people are more lonely and more disconnected than ever before. Families are fragmented and distant (geographically and emotionally). Email can be a great thing but it seems to me that people are also trying to feel connected, to feel a sense of belonging, by forming virtual families and friends. There is something a little sad about that. I believe the local church can fill that void and that hunger for relationship and provide a real community instead of a virtual one.
While I can understand how MySpace and Facebook can be a lot of fun - with proper attention to security risks - it cannot define who or whose we are. Virtual relationships on the web can never replace genuine, face to face, heart to heart relationships, especially with the One who made us and love us more than anybody possibly can.
As we are about to enter a new year, I think we need to ask ourselves who we are and who we will be but most importantly we need to ask ourselves WHOSE we are and WHOSE we will be.
Jesus chose to base his identity on the Father and to follow His Father’s will. Will you?
Amen.
You know I am realizing a little more every day that I am getting older and that there are a lot of things around me that I don’t quite get but that I find fascinating nevertheless. A couple of these things are iPods and MP3s (I guess these are the same thing, aren’t they?): I remember buying LPs (33 rpm) and 45s (you know, the vinyl records with a big hole in the middle). I remember when cassette tapes were big and then when they faded away as old dinosaurs when the CDs came out. Now you can’t even give these things away. I guess I was good this year because I got an MP3 player for Christmas! :) I spent some time these past few days charging it and learning how to load songs into it. Pretty cool!
The other thing I find interesting is the phenomenon of websites like MySpace.com and Facebook and Blogs. Somewhere in cyberspace I have a MySpace account. That one was started for me by a youth at a former church I served a couple of years back. I have been invited by several friends to sign into Facebook. So I have one of those too somewhere. The sad part is that I am not sure how to get back on these accounts or how to post anything there. I have a blog now also you know. The good news is that I know where that blog account is and I know how to post texts, and pictures and videos on there too. Whether anybody is looking at my blog is another story. I learned to text from my cell phone this year too. (our youth is looking at me funny by then, like duh...) Communication sure has changed since I was a teen. These are signposts for a relational revolution which I think already started with emails.
Sites like MySpace or Facebook are sites where anyone can post information, pictures, preferences and musing by and about themselves.
On a quick aside, I read in a 12/17/08 Elkhart Truth article that an Australian court has ruled in favor of a mortgage lender using Facebook to contact delinquent payers. I wonder how long it will be before this is legal in America. Makes you think twice about using MySpace or Facebook, doesn’t it?)
While these are designed for people 16 or older, increasing numbers of preteens have been logging on too, declaring or manufacturing their identities for the world to see. On the surface, it seems kind of innocuous. Users can arrange themselves into groups by interest, musical preferences, hobbies, schools and the like. The interactions take place in ways that our kids love and that PC (that would be Pre-Computer – I fall in that category – yikes!) mistrust to varying degrees. On an aside I remember sitting in front of my first computer, an early Apple computer, in business school, holding a floppy diskette and wondering what to do with it. This was 1983 or 84.
Blogs, instant messaging, chat rooms, MySpace and Facebook: In a sense, these have created a virtual community where everyone can participate. The danger we are finding more and more is when predators, like child molestors and pedophiles, enter these sites and pretend to be what they are not. And that is one of the problems some parents and educators have with this. Anyone can participate and not everyone is whom they say they are.
Everyone’s identity is self-generated, which encourages embellishment at the least and outright falsehood at the most. Places like MySpace tap into one of the key tasks of childhood, adolescence and young adulthood, which is discovering one’s identity. Laura Kastner, a Seattle-based adolescent psychologist, says that the popularity of MySpace among young teens “makes perfect sense developmentally because of their burgeoning identity. They can try out different identities and make them up along the way.”
One almost teen we find today in our Scripture text is Jesus and he is growing into his identity and trying to figure things out like any other young person. This is an important passage in the gospel story. At that time, it was laid down by law that every adult male Jew who lived within twenty miles of Jerusalem must attend the Passover feast (The celebration of the Jews being liberated from slavery in Egypt after the Spirit came over the country and killed every first born child of each family, except for the families which had smeared lamb’s blood over their door frame and thus were sparred.) In fact it was the aim of every Jew in all the world at least once in a lifetime to attend that feast. A Jewish boy became a man when he was 12 years old. Then he became a son of the law and had to take the obligations of the law upon him. So at 12 Jesus, for the first time, went to the Passover celebration. Can you imagine what that must have felt like to be in the big city of Jerusalem during Passover for the first time for this country boy? All the sounds and smells and the cheer number of people present. And experiencing the Temple and the sacrifices… This is the only boyhood story of Jesus that is recorded in the canonized (accepted) Scripture. There are some crazy stories found in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.
(see http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/infancythomas.html)
When his parents returned home, Jesus lingered behind.
On an aside (I know, another one), I always wondered how come Jesus’ parents did not miss him until they were a day’s travel out of town. But they were not as careless as might first appear to us. Large groups traveled together. Usually the women in a caravan started out much earlier than the men for they traveled more slowly. The men started later and traveled faster and the two sections would not meet until the evening encampment was reached. It was Jesus’ first Passover. No doubt Joseph thought he was with Mary and Mary thought that Jesus was with Joseph.
For the Passover season it was the custom for the Sanhedrin (the High Jewish Court) to meet in public in the Temple court to discuss, in the presence of all who would listen, religious and theological questions. It was there that Mary and Joseph found Jesus. Luke says that he sat among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. (v. 2:46) He is trying to figure who he is and we realize that he has started to find out. When Mary asks, “Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere” (v. 48), Jesus answered in the most natural way, as if the whole thing was obvious, “But why did you need to search? Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (v. 49)
What we learn from a 12 year old! Not only was he starting to understand WHO is was but he also understood WHOSE he was early on. This is a good reminder for our children but also for all of us adults: Our real identity, our authentic self are not something we create. Instead, we find our true value and purpose in vital relationship with God. What we’re talking about here is not our need for self-invention or reinvention, it’s about the discovery of self that can be fully realized only through relationship with God through Jesus. It’s when we move from MySpace to HisSpace that we discover who we really are and who we are destined to become.
I got an email invitation a few days ago from a friend inviting me along with others friends to join an online-based book group. As I understand it, the discussions, instead of happening face to face, would happen online. I will have to think about that one for a little while. For one, I am trying to get back to a book group I belonged to but stop attending because of my ordination work and too many moves. My other hesitation is that I spend too much time on the internet and e-mails already. I need more face to face contacts and relationships with people.
I believe that the proliferation of sites like MySpace and Facebook and blogs are an indication that we are a relationship-starved society. Things move too fast. People are too busy and our attempt to connect on-line tells me that people are more lonely and more disconnected than ever before. Families are fragmented and distant (geographically and emotionally). Email can be a great thing but it seems to me that people are also trying to feel connected, to feel a sense of belonging, by forming virtual families and friends. There is something a little sad about that. I believe the local church can fill that void and that hunger for relationship and provide a real community instead of a virtual one.
While I can understand how MySpace and Facebook can be a lot of fun - with proper attention to security risks - it cannot define who or whose we are. Virtual relationships on the web can never replace genuine, face to face, heart to heart relationships, especially with the One who made us and love us more than anybody possibly can.
As we are about to enter a new year, I think we need to ask ourselves who we are and who we will be but most importantly we need to ask ourselves WHOSE we are and WHOSE we will be.
Jesus chose to base his identity on the Father and to follow His Father’s will. Will you?
Amen.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Blogging
It seems like everybody is blogging these days. I was wondering when I started this a few weeks back why I blog. Doesn’t it seem arrogant to think that anybody would be interested in what I think about whatever topics happen to be on my mind and heart at any given moments? I still don’t know about that. I am not even sure anybody is reading what I am writing, even though I did give out my blog link to some friends but I did realize a couple of things:
1. Blogging helps me think about things. It helps me put my curiosity somewhat into words. But then why not journal in my more traditional paper journal? Well, I do that too some but blogging is not journaling.
2. Some of my friends blog. Some are younger than I am and some are older. And I find myself really enjoying what they write about. I am interested in what they think about and about what is important in their lives because I love these people and care about them. Some of what they write really resonates with me. No matter the topic of their blog I always feel blessed when I have read what they write in their blogs. And that is true of friends that I see and talk with on a fairly regular basis and also for those who are geographically distant. I feel closer to them in some ways. I get to glimpse at a little bit of their heart and in turn, if anybody reads my blog, they see a little piece of my heart too.
3. I think that is the main thing that got me going with blogging, the need to connect and to share. It is not that I think that what is write is brilliant or earth shattering in any way but it is a new way for me to reach out in an attempt to connect with friends and with people I may never meet in person.
4. I think people are starved for connection and meaning and deep relationships. Maybe I am projecting my thoughts and needs onto others but I do believe there are plenty of people out there feeling this way too. The world moves too fast too often. People are too busy. Too many relationships are very superficial. Families are not always geographically close...
5. I hope blogging never replaces face to face or voice to voice contacts though. A blog can't share a cup of coffee with you on a crisp autumn morning. A blog can’t give you a hug when you need one but it is one form of contact.
My hope is that my wonderings might help someone in some way. I leave that up to God.
1. Blogging helps me think about things. It helps me put my curiosity somewhat into words. But then why not journal in my more traditional paper journal? Well, I do that too some but blogging is not journaling.
2. Some of my friends blog. Some are younger than I am and some are older. And I find myself really enjoying what they write about. I am interested in what they think about and about what is important in their lives because I love these people and care about them. Some of what they write really resonates with me. No matter the topic of their blog I always feel blessed when I have read what they write in their blogs. And that is true of friends that I see and talk with on a fairly regular basis and also for those who are geographically distant. I feel closer to them in some ways. I get to glimpse at a little bit of their heart and in turn, if anybody reads my blog, they see a little piece of my heart too.
3. I think that is the main thing that got me going with blogging, the need to connect and to share. It is not that I think that what is write is brilliant or earth shattering in any way but it is a new way for me to reach out in an attempt to connect with friends and with people I may never meet in person.
4. I think people are starved for connection and meaning and deep relationships. Maybe I am projecting my thoughts and needs onto others but I do believe there are plenty of people out there feeling this way too. The world moves too fast too often. People are too busy. Too many relationships are very superficial. Families are not always geographically close...
5. I hope blogging never replaces face to face or voice to voice contacts though. A blog can't share a cup of coffee with you on a crisp autumn morning. A blog can’t give you a hug when you need one but it is one form of contact.
My hope is that my wonderings might help someone in some way. I leave that up to God.
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