Value of Communication

- by Tom Hallas

Words have infinite value and meaning. What we say and how we say it matters because it is a reflection of God. In this day and age, we are all communicators. Every blog that we post and every phone call that we make is an expression of our relationship with God. This month, Tom Hallas reveals why communication is a gift from God, and how that gift is so easily squandered or manipulated when we don’t ask God what He wants us to say or what our message should be. God’s ultimate message in Jesus Christ is reconciliation. Does our communication reflect that message, or does it carry the baggage of judgmentalism or elitism? What we say and how we say it has eternal consequences; how we represent God and His work through YWAM is significant. God continues to heal our nervous system, and we help or hinder that healing by how we communicate to each other and to the world.

Please click here to view Alejandro Rodriguez’s teaching on communication.

Please click here to view Tom Hallas’s podcast on communication.

Some months ago, when the whole family was gathered to celebrate my father-in-law’s birthday, I typed his name into Google and pressed ‘search’.  To everyone’s surprise, Google found a record of a project that he had undertaken to transport an aircraft from a remote area of Australia, have it restored, and then placed as a museum piece at an airport in Tasmania.

Why is this significant?  It was something he did forty years ago… and no one in the family knew anything about it! He had long forgotten about the project, even though it was significant at the time.  But Google is like the elephant that does not forget!  Google your own name – you may be surprised.

For many years we, as YWAM, were accused of being the best-kept secret.  Well, no more.  We now need to embrace a new level of responsibility for our open, public and transparent communication in this diverse and pluralistic world.  Because we are international in our speech and universal in our embrace of all human beings, I believe that new levels of the fear of the Lord should be governing what we say about God’s world and how we represent each other as YWAMers. When I use the term “the fear of the Lord” in this context, I think of it as a reverential respect for God’s opinions, for  His feelings, and for His desires.

If we allow the Holy Spirit to unfold the feelings and desires of the Trinity into our communication content, then we have no reason to be fearful or cautious about what we have to say about the world to the world, or about each other to the world.

Some years ago, during a GLT meeting in Harpenden, England, a guest speaker named Michael Schluter, said the following: “If the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit have lived in an unbroken relationship of mutual love and respect from eternity past, and that was the reality out of which the whole universe has come into being, then the foundation of all reality is relational, and if we do not live relationally then we are moving against reality.” A guest presenter at another of Michael’s seminars I attended recently spoke about “relational theology” – a way of thinking about God which starts with God’s revelation of Himself and His communication about Himself in Jesus Christ.

The idea of God’s communication about Himself through Jesus has been informing my mind and my conversations since that time. Hebrews 1:1-2 comes to mind immediately: “In the past God spoke to us in different ways through the prophets, but recently He spoke to us directly through His son” (my own rendering of a number of versions).

In Jesus, God has spoken to us in His most eloquent, comprehensive and clearly-understood way. In John 12:49-50, Jesus spoke of this experience using the following words, which I take from ‘The Message’: “I’m not making any of this up on my own. The Father who sent Me gave Me orders, told Me what to say and how to say it…”

There it is! The essentials of communication – what to say and how to say it! Here the Godhead is revealing something profound that is at the base of all communication…. communication is for the hearer. Father, Son and Holy Spirit did not have to do anything outside of themselves to be eternally satisfied – they were complete in themselves. We were created out of the overflow of extravagant love and the universe was designed as our place of discovery.

Why was this? So that we could be genuine participants in that eternal relationship through our “adoption as sons” (Ephesians 1:5 NIV).

The precise message that Jesus communicates about God is this – God is a Father, was always a Father, and He has created us to be genuine sons just as Jesus is – that is, joint-heirs with Jesus.

Jesus must define for us what it is that we have to say about anything. Through Him all things come into existence. 

A comment made by William P. Young is his book, “The Shack”, should be the guiding principle in everything uttered: it’s not “what would Jesus say but what will Jesus say” through me.

During this time of prayer, we are seeking God to help us develop communication methods, systems and values that will correctly inform and guide us in the content and processes of our communication.

I believe that a major part of what we, as individuals and as a mission, are looking for is already contained in what God has revealed to us in Jesus:

..        We exist because of Him;

..        He came because of the Father’s love for us;

..        He came as a human being; He fully entered into our condition as a Son of Man or Son of Adam – in our fallen humanity;

..        He became our substitute in facing the consequences of our fallen state;

..        He rose to speak on our behalf at the right hand of God.

When we formally communicate about a person, people groups or nations, do we represent the subject matter so that our hearers, particularly those who are the subjects, feel that we have understood them as they really are?  God in Christ became a human being forever. What amazing identification, extravagant love.   Do we communicate Him like that?

Dr. Gregory Boyd in his book “Repenting of Religion” says that the “New Testament leaves the people of God with two basic life commands that should govern our behavior,” and I think these are values that should always be the basis of our communication: “we should be motivated by extravagant love and be free from a judgmental spirit.”

If God in Christ reconciled the world to Himself, not holding our sins against us, then none of our hearers is beyond grace.  We are responsible as new creations to be free from a judgmental spirit and see others reconciled to Christ – just as we were!

If this is true, then how should I speak about Osama bin Laden? Or Adolf Hitler? Or Mao Tse-tung? Yes, they have committed monstrous acts, and encouraged others to do the same.  However, over recent times, a question has begun to form in my mind:  What is the difference between Osama bin Laden and Paul the Apostle before he was converted? Not much, really. Perhaps the technology available – Paul’s group used stones and Osama’s prefers AK47s. We think of communication as helping people to see but sometimes I think we are blind – blinded as to how God the Father sees the human race. In Christ, He has embraced every human being…. “you are accepted in the beloved” (Ephesians 1:6).

Greg Boyd speaks of this blindness as coming from our eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the fruit which we were forbidden to eat. We assess others through our own cultural, national and personal lens, deciding in a fleshly way what we consider to be good and evil. We assign people to a condition of hope on a scale of zero to 10: zero = hopeless; 10 = my kind of people. This was what the Jews did in Jesus’ day. The idea of being chosen by God produced an elitist mindset in them that was strengthened by their zealous commitment to be governed by the law. Jesus warns that this attitude will inevitably lead to murder – Matthew 5:21-23.

It was a simple process for the Apostle Paul…. If the Gentiles were “dogs”, then those among them who chose to follow this Jesus were worthy of death. That is why Paul could say when discussing his call to ministry in Ephesians 3:6, “the Gentiles are….” ,  not can be, or should be, but “are fellow heirs and present partakers of the promises given to Abraham.” This has to be the biggest turnaround in human history.

What was it that fell from Paul’s eyes before he could write these words—yes, scales!

One of the most difficult leadership tasks I’ve ever had was to oversee an article that was focusing on a particular nation in the Asia Pacific Field. Not one of the contributing writers had ever lived long term, that is, more than five years, in a developing, difficult-to-access nation, whose government was opposed to the Gospel. YWAMers lived in this nation and still do. They face security risks every day. They are dependent on a particular visa status to remain as residents. They are constantly restricted in how they are able to share the message that burns in their hearts. Yet, they are constrained by the love of God to be there – the same kind of love that motivated Paul to go back into Ephesus as soon as he had recovered from the beating he received during his first attempt.

But one thing that Paul did not need was a visa. This is today’s doorway to long-term residency in any nation in which we are not citizens. Long-term visas are like treasures from heaven for the modern-day missionary.

Yet, do you think that I could persuade the writers of the contributing articles to refrain from broad, general condemnation of the host government and to also refrain from using real names and places as part of their stories? Had these articles been published, the YWAMers who would have read the broad, stereotypical statements about their beloved target people would have been rightly wounded and would have thought “how can my fellow YWAMers say that about the people among whom I have been called to live?”

The authorities who would have read their comments would have concluded that the writers were promoting the undermining of their authority.

Let us determine to “get inside the skin” of those about whom we write or speak before we make comments about them. Once released, these statements cannot be taken back.  Indeed, they could easily remain on the internet for the rest of human history.

Let us see all of humanity through the lens of inclusiveness that is in the heart of God.

God so loved us that, in Jesus Christ, He got inside our skin, and voluntarily put to death the effect of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that we may live by the tree of life- His life living in us.

As a worldwide movement, may the scales also fall from our eyes.

May we see the extravagant love of God for all people and be full of hope for every individual.

May our message – what we have to say and how we say it – be informed by extravagant love free from a judgmental spirit.