How we talk about ourselves
The way that we say things teaches us who we are.
I have spent a good chunk of the last month or so on a communications audit for the congregation that I serve. This is, of course, tied up with concerns about the social, spiritual, and financial health of the congregation. But my focus has been on the vehicles that we use to communicate, the messages that we communicate, and the tone that we use to communicate.
And while it’s easy to catalog the vehicles (website, newsletter, social media, and so on) and the messages (sermons, meeting minutes, lists of volunteer opportunities, and so on), it is much harder to talk about the tone. But tone is a critically important part of how we talk about ourselves; and how we talk about ourselves is a critically important part of how we learn to think about ourselves.
So let’s talk a little bit about tone, both for congregations and for ourselves.
There are three important things that I noticed in this communications audit.
The first thing is our propensity to use lists. Our physical newsletter includes meeting minutes in the form of bullet-pointed lists, lists of birthdays and anniversaries, lists of upcoming scripture readings for worship services and Bible studies, lists of who is volunteering in upcoming worship services and lists of things that we need volunteers for, and more.
There are little stories, too, of course. But there are so many lists.
And it’s not just our physical newsletter. A lot of our communication is centered around lists. And that simple thing—that simple act of putting a message in the form of a list—takes something that could be a conversation and turns it into an information dump.
The second thing is how often we phrase things in terms of what the church needs. There are people who need someone to visit them. There are volunteer slots that need someone to fill them, and more volunteer slots that need someone to fill them, and still more volunteer slots that need someone to fill them. There are bills that need someone to help pay them. And, of course, there’s so much more.
There are thank yous and updates, too, of course. But there are so many needs.
And, again, it’s not just in one communication vehicle. A lot of our communication is centered around the things that the church as an organization or an institution needs. And that simple thing—that simple act of phrasing things as needs that the church has—takes something that could be presented as an opportunity and turns it into an obligation.
The third thing is how much of our communication is aimed squarely at our own members. I think that this is something that is pretty common in mainline protestant congregations: we focus on communicating with people who are already on the inside, as it were, and take a much softer approach—or miss opportunities altogether—when it comes to communicating with people on the outside.
The upshot of all of this is that we spend a lot of time telling ourselves about the lists of needs that we have. Sometimes, those are needs that are hard to meet. Sometimes, those are needs that will only be met at the last minute. Sometimes, those are needs that we just cannot meet.
And one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is how things would change if we stopped presenting lists of needs that we have and started having conversations about opportunities that are available to people.
Let me say that again slowly.
How would things change if we:
stopped presenting lists of needs that we have, and,
started having conversations about opportunities that are available to people?And I’ve been thinking about that because I think that everything might change. I think that a church that is focused on telling strangers about the opportunities that it is providing is a very different—and a much more vibrant—church than a church that is focused on telling its own members about its own needs.
And I think that we would all rather be part of the church that is focused on giving people opportunities.
So, here’s the thing.
I don’t think we ever intended to communicate through lists, or to phrase things in terms of needs, or to focus on people who are already on the inside. It’s just one of those things that happened over time and that inertia carried forward.
But that way of communicating has shaped how we think about ourselves. Even as I’m writing this, I’m noticing the temptation to to say that it’s easy to make a list, and that we do do have jobs that need volunteers to do them, and that the people who are already on the inside are the people who are most likely to volunteer.
And I’m noticing that even though I know that it’s just as easy to write a paragraph, and that every job that needs a volunteer is also an opportunity for someone to find a purpose, and that someone on the outside can be shown how to do things just as easily (and maybe with help from someone on the inside).
The way that we talk about ourselves—the listy and needy tone of our communication—has shaped how I think about us.
But it’s not just us. It’s not just a congregation. It’s also me.
Each of us learns to take a tone with ourselves. Each of us learns how to look at who we are, and what the world around us is like, and how we fit into it. And part of how we learn those things is by learning how to talk about them.
It makes a difference whether I look at my day as a list of obligations or as a set of opportunities.
It makes a difference whether I look at myself as someone who cannot give people what they demand or as someone who can give people what they didn’t know they needed.
It makes a difference whether I look at my time as something that belongs to my employer (and, therefore, as time that I take for myself as something that I am taking from them) or as something that belongs to me (and, therefore, as time that I spend working as something that I am offering to my employer).
And so many other things make so many other differences.
And I want to be clear about two things here:
First, there is a balance to be had. I am not trying to suggest that any of us has to go all in on one way of talking about ourselves. I am simply trying to suggest that we should be aware of how we talk about ourselves and the difference that can make to how we think about ourselves.
Second, this isn’t just a matter of having the right attitude. It is not the case that we figure out our attitude and then adjust everything else to that. Instead, we adjust the other things and that shapes our attitude. Someone who smiles will become happier. Someone who speaks positively will become more positive. Someone who describes things a certain way will learn to see them in that way.
So, here’s what I’m going to try.
I am going to try to help my congregation learn to have conversations—to speak in paragraphs and poetry and back-and-forths—about the opportunities that it is presenting to the people who are already inside and to the people who are not yet inside.
And I am going to try to watch the ways that I use language, both inside and outside the church, and how that shapes the way that I see the world.
Because how we talk about ourselves teaches who we are.