FEBC Global

Communication Support

This chapter of Neal Pirolo’s book, Serving as Senders, is a great reminder of ways in which you can be a significant agent of encouragement to your global partner.

The first thing that is expressed is that the Sending Church friends need to initiate communication with the global partner sometimes, instead of always waiting for the traditional prayer letter from the one sent.  Stated in another way, receiving a letter from a friend unsolicited always reflects a real sense of interest and desire to share what is going on in your life.

Talking about what is happening in your life as well as asking questions that reflect an interest in what’s happening in your global partner’s life is important.

Depending on the means of communicating, try to be sensitive to the timeliness of what you are saying.  Traditional conventional mail service may be lengthy, and events or situations may have passed by the time you receive the letter on either end. Obviously email services will eliminate this issue, but we need to remember that even simple email services are not always available in some challenging contexts.

With the exploding options for communication available we need to use those options for consideration. 

• Email
• Fax
• Sending photos
• Highlights from periodicals
• Music recordings
• Skype, Zoom and related services

In many cases it is easier to respond to some inquiries from a sending church or friend than to always try to express what life is like when you are not sure that there is any interest in your arena of activities.

Initiating an effort in communicating reflects an interest by both parties.

This article was written by Roger Reimer, FEBC Commission on Global Partnerships, and retired global partner to Ecuador under HCJB/Reach Beyond.