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Christian Principles of Communication
Information, religion and communication are drastically changing the world we live in. Instead of establishing commonness and solidarity, public communication now tends to reinforce divisions, widen the gap between rich and poor. WACC want to change this.
Communication and God
Yet communication remains God’s great gift to humanity, without which we cannot be truly human, it can be said to reflect ‘God’s image’. Nor could we enjoy living together in groups, communities and societies steeped in different cultures and different ways of life.
It is both the potential for solidarity and the threat to humanity which modern communications contain, that has prompted the members of the World Association for Christian Communication to examine their communication practices and policies on the basis of the Good News of the Kingdom.
The guidelines which follow are an expression of our common witness to Jesus Christ and to the hope He has given us through the transforming power of His own communication.
Communication from a Christian perspective
Jesus announced the coming of God’s Kingdom and commissioned us to proclaim the Good News to all people until the end of time. Hearing the Good News, living by it and witnessing to it, is the basic calling of all Christians.
To enable them to carry out this task, they have been promised the power of the Holy Spirit. It is this Spirit that can change the Babel of confusion into the Pentecost of genuine understanding. But the Spirit ‘blows where it pleases’ (John 2:8), and no one, neither church nor religious group, can claim to control it.
The Good News addresses itself to the whole person and to all people. We pray for the coming of the Kingdom as well as for our daily food, for God’s reign in the world-to-come and the here-and-now.
For Christian communicators, the material and the spiritual are part of each other. Christ’s own communication was an act of self-giving. He ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant’ (Phil 2:7). He ministered to all, but took up the cause of the materially poor, the mentally ill, the outcasts of society, the powerless and oppressed.
By accepting Christ’s sovereignty, the Christian communicator proclaims God’s Kingdom rather than our divided churches. The churches do not exist for their own sakes, but for the sake of the Kingdom. For this reason, the Christian communicator gives preference to ecumenical communication so that Christians of different denominations can speak with one voice, thus bearing witness to the one body of Christ.
Christian communicators, as witnesses to the Kingdom, should awaken and reflect the corporate witness of the church. The lives of Christians, as well as the work of communicators, need to be set free from the individualism which characterises some cultures and traditions. We need to rediscover the early Christian community’s understanding of a witnessing and communicating church. The church as a community of believers is God’s chosen instrument for promoting the Kingdom.
This is because the church is meant to embody and testify to the central values of the Kingdom, among which are oneness, reconciliation, equality, justice, freedom, harmony, peace and love (‘shalom’). Furthermore, Christian communicators are conscious of and show respect for God’s mysteries. God’s ways can never be grasped, let alone be explained.
Likewise, the crown of God’s creation, people, cannot be fully understood. Christian communicators, therefore, are always aware of their inadequacies when speaking of God, and conscious of ‘mystery’ when telling the story of God’s people.
Paul calls himself and all servants of the Word, ‘servants of your glory’ (Eph 1:12) and thus ‘servants of your joy’ (11 Cor. 1:24). The glory of God and the joy of the people should be the hallmark of all Christian communication. These general principles of Christian communication will now be elaborated in the context of today’s communication problems.
Conclusion
These above mentioned principles should guide the work and mission of Christians in communication. They also set out the corporate agenda of the World Association for Christian Communication – for project support, studies and dissemination of policies.
Communication must be seen as central to the churches, as the process in which God’s love is received and shared, thus establishing communion and community.