When my wife and I started dating, it was basically the end of my time at Avondale College (now University). We had known each other before that, playing netball on a mixed team together. And, after getting a job at Adventist Record and moving to Victoria, we were thrust straight into a long-distance relationship. She was working and studying in Newcastle at the time.
The thing that allowed our relationship to survive and grow during this time was (drum roll please) constant communication. We were in touch. We spoke every day on multiple platforms. We called each other, we texted each other, we emailed each other. Not one day went by when we didn’t talk. So even though we were doing life apart and were separated by a thousand kilometres, we were learning more about each other, our experiences and what was happening in our lives every day. And I must pay tribute to my wife here. She was often the initiator of the contact and kept the constant communication going. She’s great at keeping in touch with old friends, people she’s connected with on social media, people across the world. While she tells me, when I haven’t talked to my friends in a while or when we’re having a family communication breakdown, “For someone with a degree in communication, you’re really bad at it.” I laugh whenever she says this but she has a point.
To have a relationship requires some level of communication. In fact, communication is one of the most important elements of any relationship.
But it is an area that is easy to take for granted. It is not missed until it is absent or breaks down in some way.
One thing you might not have considered is the spiritual importance of communication. We often talk about the importance of the spiritual disciplines of prayer and reading the Bible but we don’t necessarily think of them as lines of communication. Prayer is a space where we can talk to God. Reading the Bible is a practice where we can hear from God. There are other ways to hear from God like spending time in nature, but His voice speaks clearly through inspired writings. There is another area of communication that can help us spiritually and that is communicating our beliefs with others. When we share our faith with others, it is encouraging and inspiring to our own faith. The faith and doctrines and ideas about theology that we do in community are important as they can protect us from error and help us to grow. Is it any wonder that community and communication share a root word?
When you read Record, you have a chance to hear from your church community. Every part of Record, everything we choose to share, every platform we choose to use, is an effort to communicate better, with more of you, our readers. Because communication is important. It helps to keep us informed and keep us together as a family. It helps to keep us, here in the South Pacific Division, connected and strengthens our identity as a family of Seventh-day Adventists around the world. And we’re not just providing communication for our church members. In the Pacific, our readers share and use Record in all sorts of creative places and ways.
Just in the past few months I’ve received letters from people who don’t yet— or don’t anymore—consider themselves Adventist church members but are still deeply interested and engaged in what is happening in the church—and are following along in Record.
This Sabbath, May 4, is the Record offering.* We’ve produced a fun video (below) around the theme of staying informed and staying up-to-date—and we’ve done it because communication is important! Our Church pays for Adventist Record so we can all stay in contact. This offering, once a year, is your opportunity to say thank you, to show your appreciation or to pay it forward so others can continue to stay informed.
Thank you for your support. Thank you for contributing your letters and articles and news stories to keep everyone in contact. Your offering this week will help you:
Stay in the know, with Adventist Record.
*(If you’re reading this later, you can still show support using egiving).
If you live in Australia, use this link to show your support. If you live in NZ, use this link to show your support.
