Effective Church Communications

The Bible is not only the source of content for our church communications, but it can be a source of how to craft our communications. As I've studied the Old Testament prophets recently, I wanted to share three communication lessons I've learned from them:

#1 Multi-media is useful, but not by itself

Ezekiel was told to act out the captivity in Ezekiel 12, because, as God told him, "Perhaps they will understand. (Ezekiel 2:3b)" Today we agree with this method and we live in a world of visual illustrations, stories, and images—we love creating and using them. As powerful as images and story-telling are, we can't stop with them alone. The rest of Ezekiel 2 gives his audience a verbal explanation of the meaning of his illustration.

When people see things as well as hear about them, it reinforces the message. Again and again, in the Old Testament, the acted out lessons were always followed by the verbal message of the prophets  to clarify them. It's often said that "a picture is worth a thousand words" and that may be true, but without commentary, the question is always "which thousand?" Without words, powerful images create emotions, but the emotions created are usually unfocused and without purpose.

No image, no story (which is a verbal picture) will, in and of itself, communicate the precise message you want communicated to your audience. You must always use words to communicate the message you want—you must tell people what to see in pictures and stories. For example, you might show a series of images or a video showing homeless people panhandling. Without commentary the responses might be:

• Isn't that awful how he's standing by a business scaring customers?
• That man is disgusting, why doesn't he get a job?
• He should at least clean up—that beard is gross.
• I don't want to look at this—I wish he would go away.
• How humiliating for that dear man; I wonder what brought him to that point and can we do something?

We never know how people will respond if we don't guide their response. If we don't guide the interpretation of what we want them to see, their history, preferences, and spiritual background will all create different messages for each person and you'll get the assortment of responses like the ones above. The response of your audience would be very different however if you introduced the video with these words:

Joe worked construction for 20 years. Then one day, he slipped and fell when he was on the upper floor of a building. He was badly injured and didn't know that his company was filing for bankruptcy that same week and all his benefits were gone with them. When he got out of the hospital, he couldn't pay his bills or the rent on his apartment. He didn't have extended family living and his few friends were as short on resources as he was. He lost his apartment and the pain in his back makes it impossible for him to work like he did. This video shows how he spends his days. He hates it; he feels humiliated, but he doesn't know what else to do. He is never sure where he will spend the night.

Then show the video. However, this time you've given people context for what they will see. After the video, share what your church is proposing in partnership with a housing and job-training program for the homeless. Your images and stories should always do more than simply create an emotion--they should ignite conviction.

After you have created conviction, you need to follow-up with specific actions and applications. This is absolutely essential--just as bad as showing an image or telling a picture without context is to share a gut-wrenching context without giving your people a concrete way to help. For example:

• We need "X" amount of dollars as our weekly contribution to help get people like Joe off the streets and into the job training program sponsored by the local RETrain Group. Please check the handout in your bulletin and turn it in with the offering if you can help.
• We need volunteers to cook at the shelter and life-coaches to help people get a new start on life. Please check the handout in the bulletin and tell us what skills you have that you can share. We will respond this week.
• Sign up for weekly email newsletters on the shelter and job-training website or you can give us your email address on the handout in the bulletin.
• Pray for Joe and people like him that he will be open to changing his life.

Use images, media, and any tool you can to share your message. Powerful, emotional, quality design and production should tell the story well. But don't stop with images or story alone, be sure you always accompany it with specific, propositional words so your meaning and message is clear. Then follow-up your clear message with specific applications for your people.

#2 The message isn't always good news, but we must deliver it anyway

It certainly wasn't for Jeremiah and Ezekiel and it isn't always for us today. At the same time they preached, there were false prophets who promised victory and prosperity, but Judah had passed a point in their sin where captivity was inevitable and they had the task of reminding the people that judgment was coming and the best thing they could do was submit to it:

 “Do not listen to your false prophets, fortune-tellers, dreamers, mediums, and magicians who say the king of Babylon will not enslave you. For they are all liars, and if you follow their advice and refuse to submit to the king of Babylon, [God] I will drive you out of your land and send you far away to perish. . . . .“If you want to live, submit to the king of Babylon,” he said. Jeremiah 27:9-12 (TLB)

It's really hard to tell people that God is not pleased with what they are doing, but God often calls his communicators to deliver hard messages.

He said, “Son of man, I’m sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They’re a hard case, these people to whom I’m sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, ‘This is the Message of God, the Master.’ They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they’ll know that a prophet’s been here. But don’t be afraid of them, son of man, and don’t be afraid of anything they say. Don’t be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don’t be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They’re a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They’re hardened rebels. Only take care, son of man that you don’t rebel like these rebels. Ezekiel 2:3-8

We must also remember that because we speak truth, this never gives us a license for meanness, ranting or anger. Remember James 1:20 (NIV) tells us:"Human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires."

What should we do then? How can we communicate difficult truths? One of the best pieces of advice I've seen comes from In the Footsteps of Jesus, written by Bruce Marchiano, the young actor who played Jesus in the movie The Book of Matthew. As he was preparing for the role, he didn't know how to approach the scenes where Jesus is confronting the religious leaders who didn't believe in him and many of the other scenes where Jesus words seem harsh and judgmental. Then he remembered the advice of his former acting teacher, who told him. Here is the advice and how he used it to portray Jesus:

"Bruce, every scene is a love scene. Approach every scene as if you desperately love the person you're dealing with. Find the love in a scene, and you've found the scene."

It's amazing, isn't it? The Lord was preparing me to play Him years before I even knew Him. Approach every scene as if you desperately love the person you're dealing with. If that isn't a definition of Jesus, I don't know what is . . . . . Unknown to me at the time, it was a cornerstone that would set the tone for everything I did while the camera was rolling in the months that followed. It was so obvious, so "of course." When it hit me, I remember falling back in my chair and breathing a hushed, "Wow."

Jesus loves people—all people, everybody, no exceptions—even these people He was yelling at. Sure, they were messing up; sure, there was sin; but He loved them—nothing could change that. So though the words were condemning, the heart would be loving. Yes, anger, but anger born of love—anger born out of a broken heart.

The only way we can do that—communicate hard truths in love is to spend time with Jesus, studying his life, looking at his Words, asking him how to deal with your current communication challenge. If you have trouble telling the hard truth in any situation, not only sin issues, but in the really hard ones, like how difficult it is to get your job done when other members of the church staff don't follow through on deadlines and how hard it is to tell them that, it may be a sign you need to spend more time with Jesus.

Faithfulness to your message changes eternal destinies: not only for your hearers, but for communicators. Do what you need to do to be faithful in your calling.

The last lesson is probably the most important one of all, because if you don't follow it, the first two won't have a lasting impact.

#3 People need repetition of the message

You can use every channel available to you, you can share the truth even when it's hard and do it in love, but if you only do it once—it probably won't make a difference in anyone's life.

For hundreds of years the prophets preached the same message: obey God and He will bless you; disobey God and judgment will come. God's rules didn't change. He gave Israel the Law and they were told to learn and obey it. They didn't and that is why both Israel and Judah were ultimately exiled from the land.

One reason we don't see the importance of repetition and how God used it in communicating his message is that our English Bible is arranged with the historical books in one place and the prophets in another place. Even the section of the prophets is not in historical order. Because of that, we don't see how God gave the same message again and again and again through various prophets to different groups of people, some to Israel, some to Judah, some to surrounding nations; to different groups within each nation, some to royalty, some to common people, some to people in the land, some to exiles. If you take time to read the Bible in chronological order, where the prophet's messages are place in their historical setting, this constant repetition becomes clear.

If there is one overwhelming application to church communicators from the Old Testament prophets it is that repetition of God's message is important. There are many reasons why this might be:

• Perhaps to illustrate that God does not change.
• Perhaps to test our faithfulness as messengers.
• Perhaps to serve as a witness to the wickedness of humanity.
• Perhaps to show us that repetition is an invaluable tool for us to use to communicate our messages.

In the church office we may be sick to death of discussing a program, we may have planned a ministry event for months ahead and are tired of even thinking about it, but we must always remember that our people know nothing about it and we must repeat our message many times, in many ways, and as honestly as possible.

If we do these things, we cannot control the outcome of our communications, but we will know we have been faithful to our Lord in our calling as communicators, as modern-day watchmen on the wall.