It's easy to get buried in the burden of work required of any committed church communicator. Your world can easily narrow to a computer screen and a list of seemingly endless projects that all need to be done now. When you feel overwhelmed, it's also easy to forget that in many ways the immensity of your challenges is a correct representation of the eternal importance and value of your work. I wrote the following devotion to remind you of it:
You are the Great Ones and far more than important than you may realize
Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (Dan. 12:3)
Often when I ask someone who has come to one of my church communication seminars what they do in the church, they often respond by saying something like: "Oh, I'm just the church secretary" or "Oh, I just help work on the church newsletter" and similar self-deprecating statements.
My heart is broken when I hear that because the person who says it (and you may have thought similar things about yourself) has no idea of their true worth. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story from a scene in C. S. Lewis' book, The Great Divorce. In this scene the main character is being escorted around heaven. He sees a woman coming toward him magnificently clothed and attended to by a great procession. The book goes on:
"Is it?...is it?" I whispered to my guide.
"Not at all," said he, "It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green."
"She seems to be . . . well, a person of particular importance?"
"Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things."
I often think of this passage as I teach my seminars and meet many of you who work day after day, week after week getting out the bulletin, preparing the flyers for the youth programs, putting together the newsletter one more time, updating the website.
Those of you doing church communications are the great ones of the kingdom of God. This book is dedicated to you and the work of eternal glory you do each day.
That bulletin you faithfully create may be the first and only piece of Christian literature a visitor has ever seen. Your care in layout, your welcome in it, your explanation of how to find the nursery, and an invitation to coffee, might cause her to listen a bit more openly to the sermon and find Jesus in it.
That flyer for the youth program may be shared with a teenager living with his single mom. He might not have anybody to talk to, to struggle with through the questions and temptations all teenagers face. But that flyer might bring him to an event where he can meet a church family who cares, a youth leader who will listen, and be introduced to a Father who will never leave.
That newsletter or updated website that you stayed late to put out might contain a devotion that helps a shut-in manage through another day of pain. Or it might have a schedule that brings a newly single person to a potluck and helps ease the hurt of a recent divorce.
Lives are changed for time and eternity because of what you are doing today—with that contrary computer, a crushing work load, and those impossible deadlines.
The Lord took dust and made humanity. You follow in his image as you take words and type, images and clip-art and form them into messages that come alive and minister in the world in which he's placed you.
Sit tall, smile, work encouraged today—you are one of the Great Ones in the kingdom of heaven.
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The selection above is from the book, Devotions for Church Communicators by Yvon Prehn. The book entire is available in these ways (click on any option to go to that one):
A weekly update in the blog the Heart of Church Communications
Ebook format for Effective Communication members
Paperback print book from amazon.com
Kindle version from amazon.com
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions!