We Must Speak: Rethinking How We Communicate About Faith in the 21st Century "Pray that I may declare (the message) boldly, as I must speak" - Ephesians 6:20 In "We Must Speak" Larry Hollon addresses the communications crisis in mainline denominations and sounds a call to action for the church: Speak out in today's digital culture or risk irrelevance. Communications technology is connecting people in unprecedented ways, yet many mainline churches have been slow to adapt - and have continued to lose members and status. Other voices and messages are filling the void, offering superficial entertainment and consumerism as poor substitutes for the good news of the church. By embracing communications ministry, churches can transform their communities, change lives and be the presence of Christ for a hurting world. Hollon shares success stories, a theologically grounded vision, and specific steps for local congregations and denominations to tap the power of communications. "Larry Hollon sets out the case for why we need to maintain our voice . . . in a world crowded with competing messages and often destructive values" - Mike McCurry, former White House press secretary

WE MUST SPEAK

RETHINKING HOW WE COMMUNICATE ABOUT FAITH IN THE 21ST CENTURYBy LARRY HOLLON

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2012 Connexion Mission and Ministry
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-3211-8

Contents

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.......................................................ixFOREWORD...............................................................xiINTRODUCTION...........................................................xviiPart One Why We Speak..................................................11. OUR MISSING VOICE...................................................32. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATION..........................123. IS THE MESSAGE THAT THERE IS NO MESSAGE?............................174. DEEP SUPPORT........................................................235. SINGING GOD'S SONG..................................................336. LIVING FAITH, DOING THEOLOGY........................................397. ENGAGING THE CULTURE, HEALING THE WORLD.............................508. THE MESSAGE WE LIVE.................................................55Part Two A Second Chance...............................................639. STORY, CALLING, AND MINISTRY........................................6510. STRATEGIES FOR LIFE................................................7111. PROMISE AND POSSIBILITY............................................7512. WILL, FOCUS, AND PUBLIC POLICY.....................................8713. TRANSFORMATIVE COMMUNICATION.......................................9814. STORIES OF HOPE AND HEALING........................................10215. THE VALUE OF EVERY PERSON..........................................11016. THE USE OF OUR RESOURCES...........................................11417. WORD AND IMAGE.....................................................11818. THE CHALLENGE WE FACE, THE CONFIDENCE WE SHARE.....................122Appendices.............................................................1271. MULTIMEDIA LINKS....................................................1292. A BRIEF HISTORY OF GOD'S COMMUNICATION..............................1303. SIX REASONS TO LEAVE................................................1324. FEAR IS NOT THE ONLY FORCE..........................................1345. "IS VIRTUAL COMMUNITY INCARNATIONAL?"...............................1366. THE IMAGINE NO MALARIA PARTNERSHIP..................................1387. CÔTE D'IVOIRE: THE VOICE OF HOPE...............................1398. CHART: EXAMPLE OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS..........................1409. THE POWER OF IMAGES.................................................14110. GOD IN OUR MIDST...................................................144BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................147

Chapter One

OUR MISSING VOICE

In the most connected era in human history, as the tools of communication have become ubiquitous and instantaneous, one voice is missing. While people across the globe gain ever-greater access to instant messaging and to 24/7 news, information, and social connection through the Internet, the mainline denominations have unplugged themselves. A dozen years into the millennium, our global repository of Christian unity and experience, spiritual and moral guidance, and advocacy for the marginalized is for all practical purposes on the sideline. It appears we have all but abandoned our responsibility to bring the Good News to the people of the world.

The First Great Wave

The phenomenon began amid the first great wave of global connectedness. The 1960s brought the first communications satellites, allowing news and information to reach the farthest corners of the globe in real time. For good or ill, Western culture—its music, television, art, sports, and ideas—was transported around the world. Concurrently, images from the war in Southeast Asia reached our homes in time for the evening news, giving events half a world away the power to grip us with an immediacy we had never experienced before. Cultures and institutions were being radically and fundamentally changed in ways we could not begin to comprehend at the time. We are still sorting out the intellectual and emotional effects of that transformation and their meaning for and impact on the church.

Ironically, the '60s saw the flowering of the last great generation of communicators within the mainline denominations. Those years were a golden age of communication led by Dr. C. Everett Parker, director of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ from 1954 until 1983, and Dr. William F. Fore, United Methodist clergyperson and executive director from 1964 to 1989 of the Broadcasting and Film Commission of the National Council of Churches of Christ U.S.A.

Parker was named by Broadcasting magazine as one of the most influential men in the field. He was known both for his leadership and for his activism on behalf of social reform. Fore was equally influential as an interpreter of theology through popular media. He frequently contributed cover articles on faith and culture to popular magazines including TV Guide, one of the highest-circulation publications of the broadcast era. The magazine, and thus Fore and a contemporary Christian perspective, had a place in every living room.

Fore and Parker engaged the culture in other important and often profound ways, using media, government agencies, and the courts when the situation warranted. When, to take just one example, a TV station in Mississippi would not provide air time for African Americans, as their license required, Fore, Parker, and others viewed the situation as a justice issue, one for which the involvement of a religion communications agency was appropriate. With the support of their respective agencies, they sued the Federal Communications Commission, first for the right even to petition the agency as non-license-holders, and then to force revocation of the station's license. The Supreme Court, in an opinion written by later Chief Justice Warren Burger, did indeed direct the FCC to revoke the license, a move which, according to Fore, made every TV station realize "they had to begin to seriously meet the interests of their minority publics, or risk losing their license." The decision was in essence a media-focused Civil Rights victory.

That generation, unlike ours, was able to articulate a theology of communication that was about justice, fairness, and equity while carrying the message of the gospel to the world through media.

Disengaging

However, the mainline church as a whole then began to disengage from the media. The reasons were many, not the least of which was a misreading of the changes that were coming. Today, in hindsight, we discuss these changes as the end of the Enlightenment, the close of the modern era, and the transition to post-modernism. The privileged position the church held in the West was coming to an end as waves of secularization swept through society and the honoring of the individual was becoming paramount.

The shift happened within a marketplace of ideas freer than any other the world had seen, carried by the mass media, the most pervasive means of communication ever known, amid a rise of new technologies heralding mass production and consumption on a scale unprecedented in human history. As these new forms of human interaction reshaped the culture and its values, changing the ways we relate to one another as individuals and as communities, the mainline churches absented themselves. Amid a revolution in thought and conversation, they left...