Communication as Mission |
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by Glory E. Dharmaraj |
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New World Outlook, September/October 2009 In her book, Outside the Ark, artist Ellen O'Grady recaptures the story of Noah as she heard it as a child from her Sunday school teacher. Describing the slow receding of the floodwaters and the ark's coming to rest on the ground, the teacher showed her young students a picture of the shining ark under the rainbow in the sky. All but one of the children were enthralled by the picture. Joel, however, kept looking at it and finally yelled, "Where are all the bodies?" Annoyed, the teacher asked, "What bodies, Joel?" Staring at the picture and then turning around to look at his classmates, he cried: "The bodies! Where are the bodies of the people and animals that died in the flood?" There was absolute silence in the class--broken when the teacher rebuked Joel for being "a very rude boy." But in Ellen O'Grady's book, she says that, when the teacher held up the picture of the ark with the rainbow above it, thanks to her classmate, Joel, she, Ellen, could imagine the bodies that should have been in the picture. Communicating to Make Community The receivers of communication are not mere objects. They themselves make meaning as they process the message being sent. They look at the story from their own different social locations, cultural perspectives, and communal angles. Thus, the receivers draw out the meaning of the message from the context of their own lives and experience. The storyteller's task is often to open up spaces in the story and the visuals, allowing various voices to respond. Without excluding any of the possible perspectives, the storyteller allows the story to take shape in each receiver's own mind. Such is the beauty of the gospel story, too, that it takes shape in a variety of contexts. No single institutionalized approach can do justice to the story. Instead, the gospel story takes on flesh in the individual lives and multiple contexts of the receivers. The fact that we acknowledge four Gospels affirms the narration of the good news in multiple ways. Therefore, communication is more than the simple transference of information--a message from the giver to the receiver. The ultimate aim of communication is to make community, ensuring that no one is left behind wondering, "Who stole my voice?" Missing Voices in the Media Commenting on the current coverage of economic recession in the US mainstream media, Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Nickel and Dimed, says in her article, "Too Poor to Make the News," (New York Times, June 14, 2009) that most of the media stories focus on the new poor--those who have had a cutback from their super-rich or middle-class status. Ehrenreich points out that the already poor--such as sweatshop workers, janitors, maids, and security guards--had "all but 'disappeared' from both the news media and public-policy discussions." This neglect revealed an information gap in the media coverage of poverty, emphasizing the new poor at the expense of the already poor. Christian communication, on the other hand, should be a space where the silenced and the "disappeared" come to find their voices. A similar invisibility was noticed in monitoring the coverage of Hurricane Katrina in the mainstream media, with a focus on class and race. On September 6, 2005, Mediachannel.org's article, "By the Numbers: In Katrina's Wake, Race and Class Largely Ignored," lifted up some startling findings. The number of segments in which race or class issues were of primary focus over a period of four days--from August 28 to August 31, 2005--amounted to zero. In a full seven-day period, among roughly 1,300 segments of TV news coverage, only 22 segments focused on race or class. Of these 22 segments, MSNBC featured 12; CNN, 8; and Fox News Channel, 2. There was also a lack of gender perspectives in the media coverage of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Women appeared in the news primarily as victims--weeping, wailing, and awaiting or receiving relief--as Ammu Joseph, a journalist in India, points out. Joseph also identified gender limitation in the news coverage. While the media relied on "authorities," "leaders," and "experts" from different groups, the perspectives on the tsunami and post-tsunami recovery by women who were decision makers in their communities were largely left out. From the perspective of Christian communication, the focus and impact of the media need to be understood and assessed from the viewpoints of those on the margins. Communication is a human right--hence the need to monitor media. The World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) is planning to have a worldwide gender monitoring of media in November 2009. (See the WACC webpage.) Christianity's Female Face The worldwide face of poverty today is female. The face of a human trafficking victim is female. And the face of migration is female. Along the same lines, Dana Robert, a leading scholar in mission, states that world Christianity today is a "woman's movement." Robert notes that this fact is not merely a sociological observation but holds implications for gender-based approaches to mission. If the emerging face of Christianity is female, Christian communicators need to be sensitive to the emerging reality of women. They are struggling to be agents of change while simply surviving their everyday existence. They are fighting for the survival of their communities, witnessing to the love of Christ in the midst of their struggle, and shaping mission histories as they go. Mutuality in Mission How contexts determine the meaning of messages is a key shift in our understanding of mission as well as of communication. We, as receivers and consumers of stories from the Global South, might want to ask ourselves some questions regarding the mission stories we hear, read, or tell to others.
Truth in Christian Communication Nurturing truth is a community effort. Members of the faith community create meaning when they strive hard to seek the truth, allow truth to "spring up from the ground," and live by that truth. It does not take long to realize that the suppression of truth is interconnected with various forms of oppression. Allowing the truth to spring from the ground means looking at issues from the perspectives of those at the margins--the poor, the oppressed, and the dispossessed. It also involves seeing the interplay of power, influence, and dominance in perpetuating systems of oppression. Tending to the truth involves looking for and working on transformative clues to the truth. Thus Christian communication involves more than merely transmitting messages from a sender to a receiver. To engage in Christian communication is to reclaim the prophetic role of the worshiping community. It is to bear witness to truth telling and to look for the Word of God as it takes shape in God's community. It is to be an enabler in the quest of all those seeking community and asking, "Is there a word from the Lord for times such as these?" Above all, it is to help one another experience the Incarnate Word of God--the ultimate in God's communication. Christian communication is a process that retools us for God's shalom, already here and not yet realized. This reign of God is lived as it is told. We Learn from Those We Serve In November 2000, I took part in a pilot training event held at the Saba Theological Seminary in Kota Kinabalu in East Malaysia. Forty-five indigenous women from eight language groups came from the two provinces, Saba and Sarawak, on the Island of Borneo. The method of teaching for the Bible Women is based on the Pro-Literacy (Laubach) model. It elicits answers from participants through a method of adult education called FAMA (Fact, Association, Meaning, and Action). On that November day, the participants did not communicate much, even though we tried hard. Finally, it dawned on me that I should try a different method. I turned to the colorful banner that an artist from the local area had made for the event. I asked, "What do you see in the banner?" The women responded with overwhelming enthusiasm. As the women opened themselves up to the process, I noticed a single raised hand. "The artist missed the river that flows through Sarawak," that woman said. I had not noticed the missing symbol for River Rejang, the longest river in Malaysia. We learn from those whom we serve! They see and hear what we do not. Glory E. Dharmaraj, Ph.D., is director of Spiritual Formation and Mission Theology for the Women's Division, General Board of Global Ministries. In 2000 and 2005, she served as coordinator of media monitoring for gender in the United States for WACC and will return as coordinator in 2009.
Date posted: Sep 01, 2009 |
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The Mission Magazine of the United Methodist Church
