The God who Communicates (David Wilkinson) #medialit

Theology of communication not articulated clearly, but comes out in attitude/actions.

Great exercises

• Circle “cross the room if”
• Agree/Disagree on a scale (why)
• Tableau – still image of ‘football’ and ‘communication’
• Images of Christians on TV/in TV – what’s the most disturbing?
  • Irrelevant
  • Trying to be hip when not comfortable in that medium
  • 1960s still there
  • American televangelists (what most people see)
  • Lack of passion
  • Trying to manipulate people through emotion.
  • Church leaders out of touch with the culture
  • Lack of depth
  • Are lots of important public faces e.g. Martin Luther-King
  • What is a communicating God about?

Towards a Theology of Communication

• God is a communicating God “In the beginning was the word”. God is extravagant in communication – he’s not a silent God who has to be tempted into communicating with people.
• Nature of God as a communicating God = fundamental.
• God communicates in context – there’s a particularity. Quite often Christians get this wrong, and preach into the wrong context. [The Fast Show]
• The nature of Jesus comes alive as you’re hearing it in your own language – connecting appropriately in the right context.
• God speaks within the language – why so much Bible translation.

God Communicates in Word & Deed

• He doesn’t simply dictate verbal writings – God – the word becomes flesh. The ways he communicates is varied in so many ways.
• Incarnation is visible and vulnerable.  Visible and not always in control. What is said in the pulpit has to be lived in our actions.

God communicates in self giving love

• God became flesh in the world – the world that is negative to him.
• There is a cost to authentic Christian communication. May have to suffer/mocked. God doesn’t come to condemn the world, but to live it. There is a view that we are about an ethical condemnation of the world… We’re safe here, isn’t that terrible over there..
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzToNo7A-94
• Many think God is like this.
• God comes into the world with all its limitations and works with it.
• This week – affirmations of what is good within the media. Christian church often hesitant and demonised.

Shannon & Weaver – how communication happens. Sender/receiver model Message, thought about – how does message go from sender to receiver? What channel, what noise is in the channel? Feedback is going on. Have to code the message & decode it. Communication as a power relationship from sender to receiver.

Quentin Schultze – “co-producers of culture”.

God gives us the gift of communication and we’re not just passive receivers.