Communication: Servanthood, Print Media, and Security

[Emma]

The book that I chose to read from was Communicating with Grace and Virtue: Learning to Listen, Speak, Text, and Interact as a Christian. Something that I learned from reading this book is the importance of strategic communication. You need to be aware of your audience, what you are communicating, and how it can come across to someone else (just to name a few things). I also liked how it was spoke about that good communication is essential in every facet of life. Being able to communicate something well can have a major impact on how you are able to share the gospel effectively.

It was good for me to re-read the Equipping Beyond’s security protocols as it reaffirmed some things that I need to be aware of. I am trying to currently figure out the best way to speak about fundraising and use social media to do that. It is good for me to try and figure out what will work and what will not work in that matter and to start implementing that now in order to keep myself safe as well as use the tools that social media gives us of communicating with others easily. I was also challenged at the idea of how risk is necessary in every element of Christian life.

[Daycee]

Thanks for your comments! You’re right, security risks will vary from location to location and you might be surprised at some of what becomes “normal” once you understand that context.

[Jaylen]

Reading through “An Essential Guide to Interpersonal Communications” had me thinking a lot about communication. I believe certain aspects of communication are my strong suit, and certain aspects of communication are my weakness. I feel that I am good at writing, and therefore emails, texts, newsletters, written stories, etc. will be very well communicated. By that I mean I can grip a reader and paint a full and accurate picture of what I’m trying to communicate.
My weakness with communication is listening. A lot of this is due to my “ADHD”, and some is due to a muscle that I could grow. I feel this book was a little bit insensitive towards people who might have some legitimate hindrances when it comes to listening or even communicating. But with listening, some of the advice the author wrote is simply something that I can’t do, and I don’t think it’s wrong to acknowledge legitimate limitations. On the other hand, there are certain parts of listening well that I can grow on, and I must also be careful not to fall on the other end of the spectrum and tell myself I can’t improve at all because of my struggles with ADHD. I believe there is a happy medium there for sure.

As for the Beyond policies, the one that surprised me the most was Living Security. Some of it just seemed to edge on the side of paranoia rather than logical measures. Of course, it depends on where you’re living, but checking your bags- for what I assume the protocol is referring to “bugs/mics” -seems a little unrealistic. I think this is more of a thing that happens in the movies and is one of those things that you might expect to happen but in reality, is not the way a High Tech Threat or Governmental Threat would choose to take you down if they wanted to.
Otherwise, all the stuff seemed pretty common knowledge or reasonable.