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Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga

With crisis and scandal dogging religious organisations globally today, they struggle to regain the moral high ground. The messages of brotherly love, faithfulness to God, peace between nations and being of service to the “poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan”, become lost in the noise of negative media attention.

It finds them either paralysed, stoic when responding or they choose to stick their head in the sand. All this may have not been the intention of the churches concerned, but rather, a default reaction typical of church officers chosen as spokespersons.

The 24/7 news cycle and the enduring glare of social media is unyielding as it demands answers on scandals within the church. This inevitably leads to them employing largely reactive crisis communication management where proactive management of issues is preferable.

The art and science of public relations are why so many Fortune 500 companies and organisations spend millions of dollars working to get it right. Public relations help shape perception, project the brand, image, and character of an organisation.

More importantly, it helps create a positive definition of what an organisation really is, be it a global church, parish or congregation. It becomes very costly to get it wrong.

Some weeks ago, the Zimbabwe Adventist Communicators’ Association (ZACA), was formed. It is an association of communicators who are members of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. What was noteworthy was that this was done with the blessing of the leadership of local Conferences, the Union and the Division and Regional, some of whom witnessed the event.

For those of us in the communications profession, this is very commendable indeed. This is in light of the battering the local church has endured in the media and secular space, and the apparently misunderstood role of communication by many pastors.

It must have been divine intervention because the global Adventist church has long accepted the import of religious PR, its secular version, and the efficacy of its tools in propagating its mission. It wouldn’t seem right for the local church to assume a disinterested demeanour at the damage that was being done to its image.

As far back as 1960, Howard B Weeks, then secretary of the Public Relations Bureau of the General Conference of the Seventh-Day Adventists, wrote the article, “What is church public relations?” in the Ministry magazine, the international journal for pastors.

Weeks wrote that when the church considered the ways in which the message might have a greater impact on the public, it often thought more in terms of a massive volume of literature, efforts, broadcasts, and publicity.

“Yet we recognise that all the volume in the world will not penetrate even one mind whose approaches are barred by the barriers of suspicion, misunderstanding, and prejudice. Such barriers resist any religious appeal whose source is unknown or poorly known,” he wrote then.

“Therefore, the Spirit of Prophecy writings abound in counsel to first ‘win the confidence of the people,’ and to ‘do all we can to remove the prejudice that exists in the minds of many,’” he wrote.

Failing to do this through sound, consecrated public relations, inevitably led to a waste of large sums of money, material, and energy in attacking “un-neutralised fortifications.”

A basic definition of public relations, is that of seeking to create a mutually beneficial relationship between an organisation, in this case, the Adventist church, and its stakeholders, including those who are necessarily not its members.

It is the apparent lack of understanding of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, and what it stands for, that has led to the near distorted picture that is sometimes peddled in the public domain.

The Adventist church has, as part of its structure, communication directors. They basically work with three audiences or publics; the church workers, the church members and the community. Generally, they only concentrate on the first two.

“It is important to hit the third one, but if I do not hit the first two then the third will be wasted. If we say to the community that ‘every Seventh Day Adventist’ has a smile on their face but we meet solemn church members — then we are giving a wrong message,” admits a post by the European Adventist Communicators Online.

“If we don’t communicate at all, people will think we are just weird.”

They accept that you can’t just create a good reputation: but you can influence it by actions, how well one does, then by how well the church communicates what it does.

Religious organisations constantly attract the attention of different kinds of people from all spheres of endeavour and diverse interests. These individuals form the critical mass from which the church seeks to win souls.

“Beyond the spiritual call, and the divine interactions, there is a rising need for the religious leader to fully understand the needs, aspirations and desires of his or her teeming public,” says Chika Ebuzor, an associate hub editor at Pulse Nigeria. In his opinion piece: “Beyond the spiritual call: Public relations and religious organisations,” Chika asks, how will a shepherd know the state of his or her flock if he does not take time to see how they are doing.

In this case, to properly understand if the message is impacting their lives, or if there needs to be an adjustment in the service outline or organisational structure to suit members’ needs. The issue, he advises, is that of the church properly tapping into the human resources available in its community, due to the dearth of the expertise required to tackle this communication deficit.

“Religious leaders need to find ways to generate data and/or research their congregation to properly understand their ‘publics,’” he says.

Which informs the principles by which the Zimbabwe Adventist Communicators’ Association was formed recently. ZACA places at the disposal of the Adventist church and its officers, the knowledge and experience inherent in its members who are communicators, such as journalists, broadcasters and public relations practitioners.

In any case, the Adventist church has in its arsenal, a plethora of media that they effectively utilised to push for its mission. From television channels, to radio stations and a host of printed and online magazines, their quality and reach has grown immensely over the years.

In a follow up article, the writer will show why the formation of ZACA is by no means an attempt to usurp the role of communication directors or the communication structures and offices that already exist inside the Adventist church. But rather, that it seeks to add value by making available, the advice and counsel existing with church lay members who are respected and qualified communication professionals in the secular world.