Lausanne World Pulse – Themed Articles – Communications among International Christian Leaders
By Phill Butler
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Communication is key for international |
It was a steamy, late nineteenth century day in Bombay. The noise on the docks was deafening, shouts of stevedores mixing with the cry of local vendors and the screech of overburdened block and tackle. Two British missionaries, bound for home after years on the field, met that blistering afternoon moments after boarding the ship. Over the next two weeks at sea they discovered a number of things: although they knew each other by name, they had never met in person; although they had worked in sharply different cultures, one in the south and the other in the northwest, there were major areas of common experience. These men were able to encourage each other and share information and experiences. After they returned to India, both committed to experimenting with what they had learned in those welcome conversations. Once on the docks in Southampton, they parted ways, never to meet again.
Each of these men vowed he would share his insights with others and encourage his missionary friends to share their experiences more intentionally and frequently. The truth is that what they had shared in experience and understanding was largely lost to the wider missions community, much less the wider Church community in the United Kingdom. In modern parlance, the hard-won intellectual capital (which in this case could be taken to include objective data and cultural, emotional and spiritual dimensions), born out of living in highly complex, strategic circumstances, was largely lost.
The More Things Are Different, the More They Are the Same
Despite CNN, shorter missionary terms, ease of transportation and communication and the ubiquitous Internet, to the reasonably informed observer there is some question as to whether circumstances have changed all that much in 125 years.
Superficially they no doubt have. Reports can be filed electronically; missionaries travel more frequently at lower cost per mile traveled and prayer support for distant circumstances can be marshaled virtually overnight. But what about the “standing gap” of information among international Christian leaders—is it really much different today than in those circumstances reflected in the lives of the two missionaries on the Bombay dock?
What This Piece Is and Is Not
In this short article no attempt is made to examine the specific communications skills or routine practices of international Christian ministry leadership. How a leader handles email, deals with communications technologies, prioritizes his or her communications with colleagues or handles communications with the Board of Trustees or donors has been covered dozens of times by other authors.
In contrast, this is an effort to (1) raise awareness and questions regarding the current international context and practices of communication between international Christian leaders and (2) ask whether creative, intentional efforts at more effective communications might yield near-term as well as eternal dividends.
In preparation for this article, I sent an informal questionnaire regarding communications practices to seventeen international leaders (roughly evenly divided among Westerners and non-Westerns). I have known all for quite some time. The outbound email communication was marked “priority” with the well-known red exclamation point attached. A response was received from seven (forty-one percent) and the first to respond was the leader of the largest of all the international agencies. The reader may draw his or her own conclusions from this modest exercise.
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