I thought before I got too deep in ideas and thoughts about why church communication matters TODAY that we should put the conversation on pause real quick, take a step back, and get a solid foundation, one rooted in God’s Word… to lead the rest of the conversation forward.
There is no shortage of great ideas or thoughts out there as it relates to church communications. And often, the ideas that are out there are ides that we’ve adapted from business thought leaders, marketing people, etc. I think there’s immense value in doing that, but I think the danger can be that we oftentimes turn our work into more of a career and less of a Holy Calling. Our spiritual work can quickly turn into a business where Jesus is our CEO, the product we are selling is salvation and we look at people in the community around us as customers. While some of those ides and thoughts could translate, they don’t necessarily sit well with me.
At first glance it can be hard to find “church communicators” in the Bible. I mean, there’s not words like branding, social media, target audience, etc in the Bible… and the closest thing to marketing you can find is the word “marketplace” where Jesus turns the tables over in the Temple. Not the best place to start.
But, I think if you look beyond the surface and look at the context, you can see a lot of the ideas and thoughts we talk about and examples of people who were church communicators in the Bible.
So here goes…
God is a communicator.
I love how in the first few verses of Genesis we get three glimpses into God’s character. We see that He’s timeless, creative and that His voice spoke creation into existence. And, He spoke directly to those He created.
All throughout the Bible we see God speaking to His people. Sometimes it was audibly (like to Abraham in Gen ); other times it was through signs, like a burning bush. Other times, He raised up people to speak for Him, like the prophets in the Old Testmment. Jesus spoke His message and His word is still speaking to us today.
Our Calling
Jesus’ final words to His disciples were of instruction, to pray and wait for the Holy Spirit to come and empower them to be His witnesses about Him to the ends of the earth.
I think we need to switch our thinking. It’s not about communicating “our message” it’s about communicating His message.
We’re not just graphic designers, web programmers, video editors, tech geeks or artists, I believe our calling is ultimately to be prophets… to tell God’s Story, to be His witnesses.
Prophets?
Dicitionary.com has a cool definition of the word prophet…
- A person who speaks by divine inspiration or as the interpreter through whom the will of a god is expressed.
- A person gifted with profound moral insight and exceptional powers of expression.
- A predictor; a soothsayer.
- The chief spokesperson of a movement or cause.
Of course, the Bible gives us some different examples of prophets, and honestly, I believe our call as church communicators is ultimately a call to be prophets… to hear God’s voice, see ahead, and know how to create messages to compel the people God has called us to reach.
Sounds a lot different than just making bulletins, designing fliers, and sending out email newsletters to me.
We’ve really got to begin to see the work we do as a spiritual one, and our role, although it might have us doing bulletins and newsletters, as a place where we need to be dependant on God’s voice and His Spirit’s leading.
Too often I think our gifts and talents can stand in the way of us living out our calling. Too often we look to them for inspiration and depend on them too much instead of looking to the One who gave them to us.
We need to get into the discipline of seeking God first. I think too often (I am so guilty of this), I reach for my iPhone to see what’s going on in Twitterland or on my emails before I spend time on my knees in prayer and in God’s Word.
God is the author of creativity and I know that a lot of the “roadblocks” I get when thinking through an idea or creating something is usually there because I haven’t spent enough time with Him. I think if you are in tune with God, His voice and His word, you can really begin to see Him empower you with creative thoughts, ideas, and insight.
We’ve got to surrender our gifts and talents to Him in pursuit of our calling and ask Him to empower us with His Spirit to be the witnesses, and the prophets we need to be to our communities and cities and ultimately to the world.
A Parable Explains it All
Prophets are really like messengers. God speaks and they relay the message.
There’s a parable that I think explains our calling so clearly. It picks up in Luke 14 where Jesus tells the story of a man who prepared a great feast and wanted people to come and take a part of it.
A man prepared a great feast and sent out many invitations. When the banquet was ready, he sent his servant to tell the guests, ‘Come, the banquet is ready.’ But they all began making excuses… The servant returned and told his master what they had said. His master was furious and said, ‘Go quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and invite the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’ After the servant had done this, he reported, ‘There is still room for more.’ So his master said, ‘Go out into the country lanes and behind the hedges and urge anyone you find to come, so that the house will be full.
God has prepared a great feast… we’ve been called and commissioned to go out and tell people about it… that His house might be full.
You can look at this as a picture of Heaven or also think of the house as the “Church” here on earth.
Modern-Day Prophets
What we do is about creating things to communicate and to compel people to come inside, and to take a part of the great feast God has prepared for them.
In the parable of the great feast all they had to work with was a personal invite, word-of-mouth, a viral campaign if you will… we have a lot more at our disposal today and many new ways to be modern-day prophets… be it through the art we create, sounds and melodies, images that move or cause people to be moved, words, expression, or anything else, we are communicating God’s Story and inviting other people to find their place in it.
He promised us His Holy Spirit to lead and guide us and to empower us. So don’t get too dependant on your talent or giftings, remember it won’t be done in your strength, but in your surrender.
You need to be tuned into God’s voice and in tune with the world around you to know how to communicate the message God is speaking to you in a language that people can understand.
More on that next time…
