Lausanne World Pulse – A Call to Kingdom Journalism: Rediscovering the Integral Role of Communication in Mission

June 2007

By Steve Knight

My friends at the Center for Church Communication, producers of the popular Church Marketing Sucks website, have done much in recent years to agitate and advocate for more “effective and authentic” communication. They say, “Churches have the greatest story ever told, but no one’s listening. … That remarkable story is lost thanks in part to poor research, little or no planning, bad clip art, cheesy photos and ignorable ads.”³

The goal, they say, is for “the Church to matter,” but the emphasis has remained primarily on producing better-designed, higher-quality promotional pieces—and relatively little focus has been given to rediscovering and reimagining mission. As a result, we are still left with the dilemma of feeling as though our communication is self-centered rather than God-centered. Disconnected from a deeper purpose, our work in communication becomes laborious—simply another task on our “to do” list.

I recently spent time revising the “communication” section of my organization’s manual, and in some places I replaced the words “promote” and “promotion” with “communicate” and “communication.” I did this not because I oppose all marketing and promotion. There will always be upcoming events to promote, and my work in Internet ministry taught me that “if you build it, they will come” simply does not work on the web (you still have to promote your ministry website to get people to go there). Rather, I based these changes on a desire to reorient us as mission around the ultimate goal of communication.

The Ultimate Goal of Communication
While a particular communication piece (e.g., newsletter, website, etc.) should have a specific (perhaps even measurable) goal, we must avoid the pitfall of viewing all communication as primarily utilitarian. As the Church of Jesus Christ, there is in fact an ultimate goal to all of our communication, and it is the same goal as mission itself—the worship of God. As John Piper has written, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t.”⁴

Through our participation in God’s mission, the gospel of Jesus Christ will be communicated to men and women from every nation, tribe, language and people, and by grace they will become worshipers of the one true and living God. Our communication about this redemptive work of God in the world should inspire others to worship him as well.

Our communication about this redemptive work of God in the world should inspire others to worship him as well.

Even our prayer requests are ultimately a call to worship because, as Bishop Niringiye has written, “The purpose of prayer is aligning ourselves with God’s will, in order that we may fulfill God’s purposes, for God’s glory—living in God’s mission—in Jesus’ footsteps.”⁵

There is a powerful “kingdom vision” presented in the story of Pentecost in Acts 2 wich is helpful in keeping this understanding of communication and mission central. We read that the Holy Spirit falls on the followers of Jesus who have gathered in Jerusalem, and they hear each other speaking in their mother tongues. Notice the topic of their conversation: “They’re speaking our languages, describing God’s mighty works!” (Acts 2:11, The Message, emphasis mine).

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Steve Knight is international communication coordinator for SIM (Serving In Mission). He writes about communication on his Kingdom Journalism blog. He and his wife Becky have three children.