Can You Hear Me Now?

Thomas Kleinert

You’ve seen this on TV, haven’t you? A tourist in a foreign country is talking to a local who doesn’t speak the tourist’s language. The local looks at the tourist’s facial expressions, hears the sound of her voice, but doesn’t understand a word. With a look of deep regret he shrugs his shoulders. She is frustrated, and she repeats what she just said, this time nice and slow, with perfectly clear pronunciation of every last consonant, at a slightly higher pitch, and much louder than before. The local’s response doesn’t change.

Communication – I got this from wikipedia – is the process whereby information is imparted by a sender to a receiver via a medium. Communication requires that all parties have an area of communicative commonality. Communication is a process by which we assign and convey meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding, but occasionally all we get in response to the attempt is a look of deep regret and a shrug.

In our Journey meetings and prayer triplets last year our attempt to create shared understanding succeeded magnificently: we agreed that we needed to improve communication both internally, i.e. within the church community, and externally, i.e. between the church and the community at large. We know this is crucial. If the girl is sitting on the couch, staring intently at her inbox, waiting for a Valentine’s e-card from her lover, she can easily miss the airplane flying circles around her house, towing a banner, “Hi Julie – Love forever – Romeo.”

We have partnered with Stephen Moseley of Four28 (yes, that’s the Stephen Moseley) to help us perform a thorough audit of our communications systems: face-to-face, phone, print, mail, email, website,facebook, blog, twitter, texting – we are probably using more media than ever to convey information, but we have probably never been less sure that what we say is being heard, what we write is being read, and what we compose with great care is ever actually noticed.

As a first step in this comprehensive audit, we ask you, our members and friends, to complete a short survey about your communication preferences and practices. And since we really want to get everybody’s input, there are several channels open for you: if you are reading this online, the easiest way is to follow this link and be done; if you are reading this on paper, you can go to our website at www.vinestreet.org and find the survey under “Links,” or call the church office and ask for a paper copy (we will send it to you via USPS) or pick up a paper copy at church on Sunday; if you are not reading this (“Love forever – Romeo”) you’ll hear about it at church on Sunday; and if you’re not in church on Sunday, we hope to see you the week after (the survey will be open for two weeks). Chances are, you’ll get an email about this, a link on facebook and ning, perhaps a little note in the bulletin. No airplane, though.

Week of Compassion Special Offering

February 15th and 22nd

Week of Compassion is the relief and development fund of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and serves as a faithful and effective way for Disciples congregations, members and friends to channel their resources and concerns to the humanitarian needs of suffering people in the world.