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Genuine democratic discourse requires that politicians and political communicators be more receiver-oriented than source-oriented.15 And I would argue that as Christians desirous of effectively communicating to others the spiritual truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ we also need to be much more receiver-oriented—personally embodying the gospel’s central characteristic of self-sacrificial love, fully immersing ourselves among those we seek to serve, and framing our messages in the terms and words that they would use if they understood our message and were communicating it to someone else.
The psalmist (and political leader) David was a receiver-oriented communicator, as were many of the Old Testament prophets. But Jesus of Nazareth was the master of this style of communication. By embodying the truths he sought to communicate, by practising the self-sacrificial love that he preached, he gained an authority in spiritual matters that exceeded that of the scribes and Pharisees. As he spoke and taught in terms and words that the common people used and could understand, people were willing to listen to him, flocked to hear him, and were amazed at what they saw and heard.16 The Sermon on the Mount was effective because the sermonizer was not some distant moralizer but a communicator incarnate and embedded in the lives and culture of those whom he addressed in words and phrases drawn from their own experiences.17 As even the temple guards sent to arrest him acknowledged, “No one ever spoke the way this man does.”18
Implications for Us
As previously mentioned, if we believe in the providential placement of ourselves as human beings in particular places and times in order to participate in achieving God’s purposes in the world, the first challenge for us is to discern those purposes and to live and act in the light of them, just as Jesus did.
But if those purposes require us to communicate in the public sphere, the second challenge is to become incarnational communicators, with Jesus again serving as the great example.19 So if you are someone in a position to communicate spiritual or political truths and messages to individuals or public audiences,
• To what extent do you yourself embody and personify the truths and messages you seek to communicate?
• To what extent have you immersed yourself in the lives and community of those you seek to influence?
• To what extent have you framed your communication within the conceptual frameworks and vocabulary of those with whom you are communicating?
• How much time and effort have you devoted in preparation to become an effective incarnational communicator?
Imagine if we required anyone wanting to enter the public arena to spend six years of incarnational preparation—learning the troubles, hopes, habits, stories, and vocabulary of his or her constituents—for every year of intended public service.
Imagine if we required anyone wanting to enter the Christian ministry to spend six years immersing themselves not just in theological textbooks and Scripture study, important as these are, but in direct and daily interaction with the troubles, hopes, habits, stories, and vocabulary of their future parishioners for every one year of intended public ministry.
Might not the results be more like those achieved by Jesus of Nazareth—minds and hearts of ordinary, busy, and distracted human beings moved and changed for the better by a unique and authentic style of communication?
4 Esther 4:14.
5 Luke 3:1–2.
6 Luke 4:16–21.
7 John 2:4.
8 John 7:6.
9 John 13:1–3.
10 John 1:1–14.
11 Galatians 4:4–5.
12 “Jesus spoke all these things to the crowd in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable” (Matthew 13:34; see also Mark 4:34). When his disciples asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” he replied that it was both to enlighten and to obscure (Matthew 13:10–13).
13 “The Pharisees were a religious party or school among the Jews at the time of Christ, so called from the Aramaic form of the Hebrew perushim, the separated ones. This name may have been given them by their enemies, as they usually called themselves Haberim, associates. They were formalists, very patriotic but bigoted in their patriotism as in their religion. Their political influence was great, though they were only about 6000 to 7000 in number. Jesus denounced the Pharisees for their hypocrisy, which was shown by their care for the minutest formalities imposed by the traditions of the elders, but not for the mind and heart which should correspond. They were ambitious, arrogant, and proudly self-righteous, all of which qualities were contrary to the teachings of Jesus. This explains in part their intense hostility to him” (Alexander Cruden, Cruden’s Complete Concordance to the Bible [Toronto: G.R. Welch Company Limited, 1980], 494).
14 Note that this form of communication is not simply finding out what people want to hear and then communicating that to them—a communication style to which unprincipled politicians are particularly prone. The receiver-oriented communicator has definite communication objectives and distinctive messages to offer, some of which the audience may definitely not want to hear but should. The difference between the source-oriented communicator and the receiver-oriented communicator is that the latter has the audience rather than himself or herself much more in mind at every stage of the preparation and delivery of the communication.
15 In my own experience with public communication, first as a management consultant and then as a candidate for public office and a politician, I first began to use a receiver-oriented communication planning framework in meeting the challenges of cross-cultural communication on behalf of energy companies with Indigenous people. I then began to use this same communication planning framework in preparing my speeches to public audiences as a candidate for public office and as a political leader, including most of my addresses in the Canadian House of Commons.
16 “The common people heard him gladly” (Mark 12:37 [KJV]).
17 “The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the law” (Mark 1:22). Much of this perceived “authority” came from the content and style of his communication rather than from his position in society.
