Towards enhancing effective communication in North-East Nigeria Conference of Seventh-day Adventist church

Abstract

Communication is the engine oil that keeps relationships going. It is one of the special gifts that God gave to mankind from the very beginning. God Himself communicated first with the other divine Beings of the God head as recorded by Moses in the very first book of the Bible (Gen 1: 26). Mankind too has engaged in this art right from time immemorial but the problem has been that most of what is communicated fall short of effective communication which in turn gives rise to misunderstanding, distrust and crisis. Effective Communication which will help the smooth running of the church machinery is not taken seriously and result has been some members complaining that they are not usually carried along by the leaders at the helm of affairs in North-East Nigeria Conference of SDA Church. The researcher in an attempt to help improve communication, collected information using questionnaire and personal interaction from pastors and randomly selected church members across the Conference. The profile of respondents include civil servants, business people, farmers, students applicants of various ages at the range of between 20 ( at least) and 60 (at most). The analysis of the data showed that only 27% members have access to cell phone number of their leaders and only 47% rate flow of information as good. For the purpose of raising this percentage to 75% in 2012, the writer developed a program on improving communication and ran it for three days in each of the two centers in the Conference. After the successful implementation of the program, the evaluation at the end of 2012 showed an increase from 47% before the program to 80% after the program implementation. The researcher, who is a pastor in North-East Nigeria Conference, advised the conference leaders among other things to interact more with the field Generals (pastors), ensure Communication Director keep his team in the Churches abreast of issues and events before they happen, and the Conference to open a website. In addition, Lay Leaders in the field were encouraged to exchange phone numbers and e mail addresses with conference leaders, and to encourage computer literacy. The website project has started and is expected be in operation in a short time. With all these in place, leaders can now communicate with members freely and vice versa.