RMC Communications Rationale

Thank you for taking the time to better understand communications and our connection. The changes we've made to Rocky Mountain Conference communications reflect a commitment to strengthening our connection as the Body of Christ in service to the world. They also distinctly reflect our experiences: 

• The Columbine shootings forced us to recognize how important speed is in delivering information to leadership. 
• The events of September 11th confirmed the value of being able to quickly deliver a wide variety of resources across our vast distances— resources that were often far away and in many places. 

Smaller scale yet equally important incidents have also pushed our communications into the "on-line environment;" 

• When our shared church in Littleton (Columbine again) experienced a hate crime at the start of 2002, it was something the rest of the Body of Christ needed to know so that the support of prayer could be offered.
• Likewise, the outsider assault on a child care provider in one of our Denver churches was an immediate reminder to local leaders to re-assess the balance between our "open doors" hospitality and responsible security. 
• Less urgent but no less important matters such as stem-cell research and the polity of the United Methodist Church as it pertains to homosexuality have heightened the need for some way to connect local members with larger quantities of complex information and interpretation. 
• And sometimes even the mundane requires quick, comprehensive delivery: a change in Annual Conference dates, a correction to some prior conference information, or clarification of incomplete or mis-information in the public media.

All of these kinds of communication occur in what was the context of general dis-satisfaction with the communications of our conference. Interestingly, this matches what has been researched in a number of other annual conferences: here is a report by the denomination's Conference Resourcing Team that reveals our sentiments may have deeper roots than we previously imagined. 

In light of these experiences, and from studying the very nature of communications itself, Rocky Mountain has pressed to the leading edge of conference communications. A few key commitments have been made: 

1. On-line communications are the best way for us to be connected across our three states, and allows us to do so with good stewardship of resources (paper, postage, personnel, etc.) To enable this, we have been one of the first and few to directly fund the placement of computers in local churches. At the same time, we have been diligent in sustaining a "printed" connection with those not yet on-line.
2. We recognize that communications is fundamentally a two-way dynamic: both the sender and receiver must see themselves as partners, each mutually accountable for the quality of the communication. Without this partnership, the connection defaults into a dependent (dysfunctional) relationship that destroys the very essence of communication. This has led to....
3. We have affirmed the key role of local leadership, especially the person serving under appointment or assignment. This means several things: 
   
   • Those who are elected and appointed locally are in the best position to determine what is needful in that place, at that time. They can do the grass-roots listening and strategically respond in a way that can't be matched. 
   
   • These same lay and clergy leaders receive an avalanche of information from the many parts of our church: regular congregants look to their lay and appointed leaders to focus that information according to the local context, and then to share that information. Bypassing this relationship contradicts and undermines the very essence of leadership.
   
   • This means that, for leaders to be leaders, they must honor and practice this mutual relationship. They become accountable for the essential information that weaves together the connection that is both Christian and distinctly United Methodist. As Christians, we are caught up by Paul's imagery of the Body of Christ— not a machine but an organic, alive, connected whole where "the eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of thee,'" and "when one part of the body suffers, the whole body suffers." This is at the core of why it matters to us that children suffer hunger in Angola, that refugees are at risk in Serbia: but how we will we know about it, unless our leaders make the connection for us? This same connection is at the root of our United Methodist polity, that only together are we capable of fulfilling Christ's mandate to "go into all the world," preaching the good news. Connection is predicated on communication, and local leaders are the vital link. 
4. Finally, we celebrate that new technologies have turned the old problems upside down: the universal accessibility of the web means virtually anyone (who is willing to try!) can access more information than any one agency could ever hope to collect, edit and deliver. At the same time, it helps us as the Conference overcome two other major problems: the extraordinary difficulty of keeping track of members in a population and culture that is constantly on the move AND the new constraints of the postal system. The overlap of these two make it not only difficult but expensive to keep up with our changing membership. 

It is for these reasons that our on-line connection has moved to the center of our communications system, and that local leaders are being drawn into a closer partnership. Again, thanks for your interest in better understanding the system of communications and our Conference connection. 

Communications Committee, 
Rocky Mountain Conference, The United Methodist Church