Communication

,

• Publisher: Church Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781640654075
• eBook ISBN: 9781640654082
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Drawing from a variety of sources, this Little Book addresses how we can communicate more effectively, and how we can lead others to do the same.

The literal definition of communication is "to make common." It shares a root with words we know well in congregational life: community and communion. At the heart of learning to live in common is the practice of speaking the truth in love: being honest and direct, fostering trust, and learning how to listen.

This series of Little Books of Leadership is designed to foster conversations within congregations around certain principles and practices that nurture community and growth in the ongoing life of the church.

1

Communication Starts with Community

The first sign of the Spirit’s presence with us is community, for the Spirit calls and summons us, drawing us together, or rather back together, re-membering us as members of the church so that we can re-member God together. The Pentecost narrative does not end with the apostles going out to the four corners of the earth with their newfound language skills. Rather, it ends with them gathered in an even tighter and yet growing community, one that holds all things in common and, most importantly for my theme, a community that worships together in the temple and gathers in fellowship for the breaking of bread and prayers.

Community, then, is one of the great markers of the Holy Spirit’s presence: for a gathered group of many to be in and of one spirit. There have always been great souls who have gone it alone, great saints whose solitary encounter with God is the stuff of legend and sacred history. The saints of yore number among them the spiritual athletes who encountered God flying solo, out in the wilderness, like Moses and Elijah, or the Egyptian Desert Fathers and Mothers, some of them going so far as to live solitary lives in caves or on the tops of pillars, as far away from human society as they could get. We cannot neglect mention of the great anchored solitaries of the Middle Ages, especially Julian of Norwich, who chose a path not entirely cut off from human society, but one that maintained a clear though porous separation from “the world” and the worldly. There is a difference between solitude and isolation: Donne reminds us that no one is ever entirely isolated, that is, no one is “an island”—however separate those in solitude may appear to be, they are promontories of the main body, not cut off from it.

However, unlike such rare souls as Moses and Elijah or the Desert Fathers and Mothers or the solitary anchorites, most of us will not find God in solitude, but in community. God does indeed appear to isolated spiritual athletes like Moses or Elijah in a burning bush or a still, small voice. But if we are spiritual athletes, it is much more likely to be as players on a team.

Moreover, the Holy Spirit appears to favor the public assembly over the private audience. The disciples were in the same place together when the Spirit came upon them, and the Spirit, far from driving them apart, bound them even more closely together by the end of the account. The Spirit came upon the apostles not in the midst of them pursuing their own individual holiness, but while they were praying together, for and with each other. It was at that moment the Spirit blew through the windows and set their souls on fire. And in that moment they became, in one way, what they were and what they were meant to be. A single atom of carbon cannot fulfill its purpose alone, though it has certain characteristics that allow it to fulfill those purposes when joined with other carbon atoms in the form of graphite, coal, or diamond, or with other elements as part of a living thing. So it is that community is the engine that realizes identity, that makes of us what we are and are meant for. And it is in community—from the most intimate community of a loving couple, to the humble gathering of two or three in Jesus’s name, to the wide community of the church—that the Spirit comes to us, revealing Christ in our midst, and revealing us, re-membered, as his body.

When Christ is revealed among us, he shows himself foremost as one who serves, who before his death washes the feet of his friends and afterward responds to their betrayal and lack of belief with words of peace, who offers them forgiveness so that they might be able to forgive in turn. This service and forgiveness find their natural home in community. For just as it takes two to tango, it takes two to serve, two to forgive. Service and forgiveness flow from community as naturally as dance flows from music, when you simply have to move your feet to the persuasive beat.

The ministry of hospitality, which combines service and mercy and grows from community, is the second sign and verification of true communal spirit, the second sign of the Spirit’s presence: “see how they love one another” is Christ’s identity badge for the church, both for those within and for those outside. We will know each other by our love, and others, seeing that love, will know the presence of the Holy Spirit among us.

We see the emergence of this in the passage from Acts, as the concern for the welfare of the group leads to communal sharing of goods, the gracious and fluid distribution of abundance in the direction of need, as natural as waters flowing downstream to be joined in the great sea.

Hospitality, that flow of grace to need, takes many forms: in a parish coffee hour or visit to a shut-in; in a welcome assist with an unfamiliar hymnal; in the round of prayer the convent offers, in which the visiting guest is gently folded in as neatly as a prayer card in a breviary; in an act as simple as an outstretched hand to help someone on the steps to the altar or as formal as the baptismal rite itself with its welcome into the household of God. Our Acts account ends with the growing household of the church, and we continue to offer a hospitable greeting to each newly baptized person, welcoming them into a dwelling for the Spirit whose building stones are the church’s members.

Do you remember the children’s game “Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors, and see all the people”? The outside of a church looks like a building, but when the doors are opened, the living, human construction is revealed—as a community. So hospitality is both the beginning and the fulfillment of the community we call the church. It is the first thing that the church is for. The disciples were gathered when the Spirit came, and the Spirit knit them closer together, adding to their number day by day as they worshiped, prayed, and served.

But let’s back up a bit. There is something else to note in our account, and this is the part that, because it does get read each year, suffers from familiarity. The first response the apostles made to the Spirit’s arrival was to proclaim the story of salvation to each other in many languages, so that those outside the house were attracted by the sound and were astonished to recognize their mother tongues, the languages of their first birth. That recognition would lead some three thousand of them to the second birth of baptism, incorporation into the body of Christ. Thus the Holy Spirit of God sets Babel on its head. Those who in ancient days didn’t want to be scattered, who made their own city’s survival the be-all and end-all of their efforts, who assaulted heaven with a proud tower so that they might make a name for themselves, were given the curse of tongues to divide them. But on Pentecost, the gift of tongues serves to do exactly the opposite. It undoes the fragmentation of Babel and calls people back together from the four corners of the earth. The Spirit graciously runs the film backward so that all who once were scattered are now called back together through this same multiplicity of language, not to make a name for themselves, but to give honor, praise, an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• A Word about the Little Books of Leadership
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Communication Starts with Community
• Chapter 2: Staring Down the Competition
• Chapter 3: Building Relationships
• Chapter 4: Practical Considerations
• Chapter 5: What’s Old Is New Again
• Chapter 6: Grounded in Prayer
• Back Cover