If you’ve served in ministry for any length of time, you know that open communication is absolutely crucial for success. I think just about every ministry failure I’ve ever witnessed has been tied in some way or another to poor communication. And I assume the same thing could be said of failures outside of ministry. Sure, there is poor planning and poor management; but, communication is as important to success as anything else is.
Sometimes messages are misconstrued through no fault of your own. For example, you say you want to have a lighter, more acoustic feel to your next worship service and that might mean less vocals. Someone on your praise team interprets that to mean you don’t want them to participate in the worship ministry any more.
Sometimes messages are misconstrued because we have failed to manage our words and thoughts properly. You don’t think about all the ramifications of your decision, important tasks are left undone, and a viable ministry opportunity falters as a result.
What do you do in cases like that? If communication breaks down between co-workers and other staff, you certainly need to deal with the issue as quickly as possible and thwart any future hard feelings. But, at the end of the day, it’s your job and it’s their job; out of necessity, you either fix the problem or you build a bridge and get over it. Any time you experience a breakdown in communication when you’re dealing with volunteers, however, there is a very real danger that feelings can be hurt. Hurt feelings never serve anyone well.
The first thing you must do is examine your own heart and actions to see if there was any point at which something you said or did might have caused the breakdown in communication. Did you say the wrong thing? Did you say the right thing but with the wrong tone? Did you not say the right thing? Did you, in fact, say the wrong thing? Keep in mind that not saying the right thing and saying the wrong thing are two separate issues.
Once you’ve examined yourself, you may have some apologies to make. My advice, partly from experience and partly from common sense, is to make those apologies as soon as you possibly can. Put everything else on the back burner until it’s resolved. You won’t want to at the time. Who does? But the longer you wait, the more inclined you’ll be to let it slide. You’ll want to let it blow over. And you know what? It may very well blow over. This time. It might blow over next time. But there will be a time when it won’t blow over. By that point, too many relationships will have been damaged, perhaps irreparably. Whatever you do, don’t let that happen.
Once you’ve made the requisite self-examination and apologies, the next part is easy. Vigilantly maintain open communication with everyone on your team. If you hear that something you said was passed along incorrectly, have conversations with everyone involved (being careful not to embarrass the one who miscommunicated your words) and clear up the problem.
By maintaining open lines of verbal communication, what you’re ultimately saying is that you care about the people with whom you serve. They matter. Your relationships with them matter. In the end, without relationships, no one is successful.
Impacting the Kingdom Through Worship,
