The Role of Culture in Gospel Communication

Introduction Culture helps in defining an individual’s identity. It shapes all human concepts. Numerous debates have attempted to explore the impacts of culture on an individual’s developmental features.1 Culture triggers the manifestation of identity that gives the individuals their exposure and orientation.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The Role of Culture in Gospel Communication specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More This supposition holds that if the same individual is raised under a different environment, he/she may ultimately exhibit a different identity altogether.   In sum, different cultures denote diversity, which is an inspiring agent in all learning concepts including but not limited to gospel communication. Diversity incorporates different features among individuals including ethnicity, socio-economic, language, and gender, orientation, as well as those with special needs, and th e gifted.2 With increased globalization, the church environment needs to be responsive to diversity for varied groups to interact and give off their best. Diversity brings on board different individuals with strengths and weaknesses that integrate to provide equilibrium of standardized performance. Religious leaders have a duty to make diversity work for them as well as for the members of their churches. Moreover, with diversity, the followers can redeem their weaknesses and unleash their potentials to impact on their communication capacity. Culture as the basis of diversity in the church Diversity is the basis of enhanced learning. The foundation of the church stems from people of diverse backgrounds. Differing orientations are unique elements that the church can model to leverage individuals to offer their exceptional abilities.3 Gospel communication seeks to engage human potential to discharge their very best. Effective ecclesiastical structure embodies the norms of culture. Evid ently, an element of communication such as mutual understanding and interaction amongst people of different backgrounds is necessary.4 Diversity gives strength to humanity. It opens up the church to explore the gospel as different individuals come up with various experiences. Shifts in the demographic trends imply that the churches will have to bear with much heterogeneous groups to ensure everyone take part in the contribution of the gospel. It is no doubt that institutions with more diverse groupings are formidable centers that guarantee greater gospel communication. Culture represents human activities and unique structure designs that symbolize the importance of a specific course of action, behavior, or orientation. Even though culture is intangible, it dictates tangible items such as food, architecture, clothing, and other forms of art, which often form the goals, missions, and objectives of organizations.Advertising Looking for research paper on religion theology? Let's s ee if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In essence, culture represents the complex phenomena that regulates learned human behaviors, characteristics, and skill patterns. Essentially, culture has a greater impact in the performance of the church to deliver the gospel. Culture as an incentive for greater performance Cultural orientation in the churches is an incentive for performance since it guarantees a more extensive gospel communication and enhanced learner base. As churches become more diverse, learners too become more effective, especially in communicating with diverse learner subgroups and varied educational facilitators.5 In essence, this gives an advantage to the church over its religious bodies that are not diverse. As there is a popular assumption that diverse schools yield impressive results, research validates that heterogeneous religious groupings normally offer a broad spectrum of ideas with strategic solutions that aim at solving va rious concerns that bedevils gospel communication.6 Notably, Diversity exists whenever different groups bring their different backgrounds and experiences together. Managing cultural diversity in the churches entails capitalizing on the various resources available as well as the diverse cultural experiences for enhanced gospel communication. Working with cultural differences in the church denotes dealing effectively with diverse groupings. Using the knowledge of diversity to produce performance For the church to use the knowledge of cultural diversity to produce better results, Coleman opines that three important factors are held. All-round diverse learners and education facilitators must possess varied abilities, skills sets, strengths, and weaknesses to make them diverse.7 Whenever different people come together, they gain abundantly both from the complementarities and the criticism from other members who hold divergent opinions contrary to theirs. Education is all about learning a nd experiencing something new, hence people with different cultural orientations bring forth a new way of expediting gospel communication. With greater cultural orientation to many ideals that come from cultural diversity, individuals will always want to perfect on all that they do, hence improving performance. Diversity, according to Coleman, comes with dissimilarities that characterize individuals, and to beat such dissimilarities, individuals have to adjust to reach an equilibrium that sets the performance structure.8 As different groups integrate, they learn to embrace one another.Advertising We will write a custom research paper sample on The Role of Culture in Gospel Communication specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In the process, they cushion their dissimilarities to reach a consensus. The church pursues different cultures to make individuals complement one another to make them the objectives of the gospel itself. Cultural o rientation denotes globalization of gospel communication With the increased globalization of the church, as well as the ever extending need to work effectively with culturally diverse groups, churches are facing new yet common challenges in meeting the demands of gospel communication.9 The challenges that bedevil gospel tutelage include but not limited to communication problems, dealing with negative ethnicity, decision-making, criticisms and disagreements as well as the problem of interpreting the ever changing church environment. Many authorships denote the benefits of earmarking knowledge reservedly for stepping up the necessary strategies for routinely intellectual cultural interaction that guide intercultural communication and organizational behavior. Proponents of a globalized church use concrete examples capable of illuminating the fundamental psychological paradigms that play an integral part in effective intercultural interactions within and across diverse cultural orientat ions.10 Diverse teams face individual and collective variances that root for institutional emphasis. Institutional emphasis denotes an individual’s status and importance as well as the behavior relative to cultural backgrounds and gender prospects. The gist of gospel communication gives insightful accounts from which ordinary readers and church leaders can learn and grow, rather than continually be challenged by intercultural differences that characterize diverse teams. Cultural orientation demonstrates the recognition of gospel communication by the church at home and away. Gospel communication is both a compelling read as well as an insightful account that aimed at perfecting the ecclesiastical roles in handling cultural differences effectively in the church. Culture epitomizes team-learning process Working in teams guarantees an absorbing as well as practical discourse on areas of significant interests to the teams involved.11 In addition, working with teams suggests the po ssibility of sustaining and building a robust student learning that guarantees the delivery of gospel communication.12 Within these considerations, the church inspires individuals to work as a team. Individuals who nurture teamwork show a willingness to rethink their priorities and develop one another within scales of learning. Team action also inspires individual improvement with a spirited shift team culture that builds structures to blend interpersonal relationships. Careful observation of team action reveals that individual team members can systematically identify vital areas to work on and further move an inch to effect the planned action.Advertising Looking for research paper on religion theology? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Essentially, the team action-learning project provides an opportunity to achieve the stipulated team objectives while at the same time specifying the desired gospel communication outcomes.  Even within the church, team action-learning project employs team spirit renewal strategy and an individual’s cultural orientation that informs gospel communication. There is nothing more encouraging to teams than when the tasks under consideration offer challenges to every individual at a personal level. Through such challenges, individuals are welcome to give their points of view, and in the process, such challenges shape their gospel training and decision-making skills. Team-based projects provide purpose and offer gospel learning action an opportunity to reason to work as a team and learn together. Through working together as a team, members of the church integrate action-learning approach to implement effectively the carefully selected project initiatives that necessitate the basic common good of everyone and the eventful success of a project. Team action makes it possible for members to acknowledge the fact that there is ideal purpose in working as a team, which translates into effective student learning for better gospel communication delivery. With team deliberation, designing of the projects aimed at carefully selecting the curriculum objectives that give the learners a reason to see the essence of teaming up and engage members in collective responsibility related to the gospel practices.13 Action learning also provides a mechanism for integrating culture and system initiatives with the gospel learning outcomes. In sum, success in gospel communication validates that it is worth the effort and time of a team to construct a strong project statement capable of inspiring individuals to reach out for nothing less than success.  Generally, working in teams is both rewarding and challenging. It is rewarding because of the benefits attributed both to an individu al and to a team. However, it is equally challenging because in a busy team environment, it could be hard to find time to discuss pertinent issues when all team members cannot meet and agree on a particular issue. In addition, the dynamics of setting up a high performing team could be complex, demanding, and tiresome. Gospel communication is particularly too broad, and, therefore, meeting the demands of various teams means that individual team members must work beyond personal limits. While these challenges are instrumental in developing individuals in very special ways, the fear is that it is generating many team conflicts that weigh down heavily on team mobility.14 For instance, a team may spend a lot of time on communication that delve much on counterchecking specific learning objectives to ensure that all the team members are in agreement with the team’s position. However, all these challenges are also great ways of practicing a team’s leadership skills and interpe rsonal development. Christian leadership calls humanity to a duty of pulling the various human resource capacities to a cause.15 Gospel communication is among the most challenging aspects in church leadership, hence proving the need to conceptualize different cultures. With the increasing assumption that diverse teams yield impressive results, heterogeneous congregation has delivered the gospel to its status. Understanding intercultural communication Religious groups all over the world seek to hire and promote individuals with excellent communication skills to help them to improve on their public imaging and interpersonal relationships. Within the church, conflicts emanating from differences in opinions occur because various individuals believe in what they perceive to be true without considering the others’ points of view. Seen in these lenses, communication is the bond that connects individuals to rise up to the duty of humanity – a medium that ensures a momentous lo ng-term relationship between individuals and one that has the capacity to guarantee the success of the gospel.16 While communication skills are a necessity in gospel teaching, the key to understand why individuals would attend to, fathom, and conceptualize persuasive message is to study the characteristics of the person presenting the message. Other than that, the contents of the message and the characteristics of the receiver of the message are equally necessary.17 The mere fact that one can always adapt to a set of particular communication skills may not automatically guarantee success. Individuals who are outright good communicators are naturally those people who have the capacity to underscore the fundamental principles behind communication. Usually, such individuals have the ability to enact, synthesize, and display particular skills of communication as the situation may from time to time warrant. Therefore, understanding the various communication theories that are applicable i n various aspects of life, including their deeply set assumptions and predictions that what they offer can make an individual a trusted and competent gospel communicator – one who can always be trusted to deliver. Researches in this field have identified the four distinct aspects of gospel communication as inscribed in attention, understanding, acceptance, and retention. Communication as a form of cultural persuasion Social psychologists view persuasion as the series of steps that an individual have to internalize and conceptualize in the concept of communication for some desired effect. This is normally so because the message sought will ultimately find acceptance especially if it activates ideas favorable to an idea. According to Ralph, individuals are easy to persuade when there is enhanced induction as to believe that the message being passed across is not necessarily intended to persuade them or deliberately manipulate them.18 In the same vein, people are more susceptibl e to persuasion when the message is simple and precise. The gospel seems to represent these elements of communication to make its conceptualization easy. Of much importance is the fact that persuasion often occurs best when the intended audience is disrupted from their attentive positioning. Markedly, through these modes, the audience has to pay attention to the message by a communicator. In doing so, the audience finds it easy to understand the contents of the gospel, and to deliberate upon the message. Research offers that communication competence is experienced as a modicum of achieving a successful equilibrium between communication effectiveness and appropriateness. As Luzbetak notes, effectiveness is the degree to which an individual achieves his/her goals in a cultural interaction.19 Appropriateness, on the other hand, reflects the ability to fulfill the social aspects in a given situation. However, an individual can be effective without necessarily being appropriate in many s ituations. The key to effective gospel persuasion is to have powerful ideas and deliver them well to the audience. Notably, one must keep in mind that the centrality of persuasion does not only rest in effective communication, but also in the supremacy of word choice. In gospel communication, information alone can never influence individuals to act. Instead, the ideas have the power to persuade the audience to conceptualize the gospel. Usually gospel communication thrives best when a message is familiar to the extent that the audience for which it is intended already have in their minds the structure of the aims and the resourcefulness of the idea. Striving to appeal to the audience is perhaps the best approach to consider when delivering a gospel communication. As such, gospel communication must always seek to involve the audience in all its endeavors while being able to appeal appropriately and give the audience the credibility to assess the resultant implications thereupon. Invol vement is another component of gospel communication. It denotes the extent to which individuals are motivated by the message that pertains to the gospel. In essence, familiarity and involvement can never be taken for granted in all matters that involve gospel communication. Familiarity with the gospel inspires individuals to respond well with the merits of such communication. Language as an aspect of communication Language is a characteristic of culture especially in its intrinsic expression to it. As a medium of communicating values, culture brings forth a robust social function that in turn fosters a sense of identity through which individuals grow and learn.20 Simply put, language offers a medium by which culture and its aspects are shared by individuals of a given cluster. Language, therefore, is a surest way to perceive the identity of an individual. The language that individuals speak denotes aspects of culture capable of expediting gospel communication. On the other hand, muc h of the popular culture has the tendency to mitigate the challenges that are linked to the communication process. Communication is all that we do all the time, and yet most often, we are tasked with the challenges that accompany it. Under these considerations, we are likely to recognize the fact that communication has the ability to break or make an individual’s personal and professional acumen. Conclusion Different religious experiences are considered as the classical work of God in the pedagogy of the Gospel, as well as references to Biblical teachings. Speaking about Jesus, his pre-existence, his ministry, death and resurrection, and most profoundly his salvific mission to the world has been the main aspect of the gospel tutelage. All forms of communication carry some aspects of culture since individuals involved come from different backgrounds. For religion, the varying backgrounds denote the use of different languages that inform Gospel communication. Recognizable cultu ral features of individuals are the only factors that contextualize them within a given cultural setting. However, shared values are the elements of culture that shape individual’s conception of learning. Culture creates a sense of identity among individuals, and as different members of the church integrate, they nurture a sense of solidarity with others. A sense of solidarity with others helps in shaping a spirit of acceptance that makes gospel communication to blossom in the church. With culture given greater recognition in the church, followers will have the ability to have their morale boosted, thus enhancing their gospel conceptualization. Finally, the modern modes of teaching being learner centered, it would be imperative to give the followers an opportunity to choose and explore their cultural experiences to ensure they perform to their level best. Bibliography Coleman, Robert. The Master Plan of Evangelism. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993. Danielson, Robert. Cros s-cultural servanthood: serving the world in Christ-like humility. Illinois: IVP Books, 2007. Frederiks, Martha. â€Å"World Christianity: A Training School for Multiculturalism.† Exchange 38, no. 1 (2009): 3-20. Harries, Jim. â€Å"Material Provision’ or Preaching the Gospel: Reconsidering ‘Holistic’ (Integral) Mission.† Exchange 32, no. 3 (2008): 253-270. Harries, Jim. â€Å"Intercultural Dialogue — An Overrated Means of Acquiring Understanding Examined in the Context of Christian Mission to Africa.† Exchange 37, no. 1 (2008): 174-189. Lingenfelter, Sheerwood, and Marvin Mayers. Ministering Cross-culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003. Luzbetak, Louis. â€Å"Unity in diversity: ethno theological sensitivity in cross-cultural evangelism.† Missiology 4, no. 2 (1976): 207-216. Nkansah-Obrempong, James. â€Å"Holistic Gospel in a Developing Society: Biblical, Theological and Historical Backgrounds.† Evangelical Review of Theology 33, no. 3 (2009): 196-212. Toomey, Stella, and Leeva Chung. Understanding intercultural communication. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Winter, Ralph, and Steven Hawthorne. Perspectives on World Christian Movement: A Reader. Waynesboro: William Carrey Press, 2009. Footnotes 1Robert Danielson, Cross-cultural servanthood: serving the world in Christ-like humility (Illinois: IVP Books, 2007), 5. 2Martha Frederiks, â€Å"World Christianity: A Training School for Multiculturalism,† Exchange 38, no. 1 (2009): 207. 3 Jim Harries, â€Å"Intercultural Dialogue — An Overrated Means of Acquiring Understanding Examined in the Context of Christian Mission to Africa,† Exchange 37, no. 1 (2008): 178. 4 Ibid. 180. 5 Jim Harries, â€Å"’Material Provision’ or Preaching the Gospel: Reconsidering ‘Holistic’ (Integral) Mission,† Exchange 32, no. 3 (2008): 257. 6 Ibid., 261. 7 Robert Coleman, The Master Plan of Evangelism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1993), 45. 8 Ibid., 78. 9 Sheerwood Lingenfelter and Marvin Mayers, Ministering cross-culturally: An incarnational model for personal relationships (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), 157. 10Ibid., 159. 11 Ibid., 208. 12Ibid., 217. 13 Stella Toomey and Leeva Chung, Understanding intercultural communication (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 123. 14 Ibid., 256. 15 Ibid., 234. 16 Ralph Winter and Steven Hawthorne, Perspectives on world Christian Movement: A Reader (Waynesboro: William Carrey Press, 2009), 172. 17 Ibid., 178. 18 Ibid., 179 19Louis Luzbetak, â€Å"Unity in diversity: ethno theological sensitivity in cross-cultural evangelism,† Missiology 4, no. 2 (1976): 209. 20 James Nkansah-Obrempong, â€Å"Holistic Gospel in a Developing Society: Biblical, Theological and Historical Backgrounds,† Evangelical Review of Theology 33, no. 3 (2009): 198. 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