Random thoughts from a man who only knows in part until the Perfect comes

When I was in college I read a book called Organizational Communication Imperatives which was based on a 25-year-long study of the organizational communication structures of NASA. The author wrote the book based upon his experiences working with the space agency as a organizational communication consultant. He had been hired after the tragic 1967 Apollo 1 accident that claimed the lives of three NASA astronauts. Investigations had revealed that there had been serious concerns about the design of the escape hatch by various different people in NASA, but the message about the design concerns never reached the people it needed to reach. There was a communication problem inside NASA.

NASA spent much time and money restructuring the organizational communication framework of the agency. Many changes were made and communication was greatly improved. For the next decade and a half NASA accomplished some amazing feats, like landing on the moon, and developing the shuttle program. But before long, old patterns of communication and message failures resurfaced and tragedy struck again in 1986 when the space shuttle Challenger exploded due to faulty o-rings on the liquid fuel tank. The subsequent investigations again revealed that critical messages and data about how the o-rings fared during very cold temperatures didn’t get to the people who made the decision to launch the shuttle on that exceptionally cold January morning.

I had read this book years before before the Columbia tragedy of 2003, and therefore I wasn’t surprised to hear news stories that detailed new lapses in communication regarding safety issues that had contributed that that terrible accident. The continual communication problems regarding safety issues had lead people to describe NASA as having a “broken safety culture.” It seems that again and again NASA had struggled with getting life-saving safety messages to the people that needed to hear them. After each tragedy NASA would take steps to improve communication, yet they would fall back into old habits and distractions that short-circuited their communication structures.

In Acts 13:13-43 we read about the life-changing message of the mission that Paul and his companions had embarked upon. It was the pure gospel message of the cross of Jesus Christ. It was the message of salvation for all who would believe. It was the message that the Church was charged to carry to the ends of the earth. And it’s still the message for the Church to be heralding and spreading forth today.

Like NASA, it seems that the Church has often struggled with communication breakdowns and distractions. It seems that the Church falls into sinful habits that short-circuit the message of our mission. Throughout history whenever the Church has drifted away from the central gospel message of the cross the results have been predictably tragic. By God’s grace there have been great corrective moments in history, such as the Reformation, when God righted the Church’s course and got it back on message. Even today, there are many messages that the church is sending, and not all of them are gospel-centered. We continue to struggle with our tendency to get off message. Popular messages about cultural relevance, social justice, and felt needs are the fad in many evangelical churches today, but those messages must be secondary to the central, gospel message of freedom through the finished work of Christ. Is cultural relevance important? Yes, but it’s important only because the gospel message is absolutely relevant to any person in any culture. Is social justice important? Yes, but only because of the fact that true justice can only be found in the gospel message of Christ. Are felt needs important? Yes, but only the gospel message can deal with the greatest need that all mankind suffers from, the need to be right with their Creator. All of the churches messages must be rooted in its primary message: the gospel!

So the organizational communication imperative for the church in Paul’s day and in our day is to communicate the gospel message of our mission clearly and boldly and take that message to the very ends of the earth.