prayerstrategists.net · Communication Document 2
General resources
Communication Document 2
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Part 2 of a series of three for Ethnê Ephesus teams, best read in order: Communication Document 1 · Communication Document 2 · Communication Document 3.
Having read Communication Document 1, Ethnê Ephesus Teams who are reading this document should have a basic understanding of the history of Ethnê and of communication complications within Ethnê. This document will give you the explanation of the need for a communications facilitator within a team and a basic outline how to find this communications faciliatator. The outline includes information of how to go about nominating a communications facilitator, vetting, making the final decision, and having the person accept their new role on your team.
Why should you have a communications facilitator on your team? A communications facilitator will be the key to communicating with your ministry team, with your regional communications facilitator, and the global facilitator. The first goal of this communications network is for the field workers on the same team to have a point person to communicate prayer requests, praise reports, and any resources between team members. The second goal of this communication network is for the team facilitator to be able to communicate to the regional facilitator any prayer requests, praise reports, or resources that may be beneficial for other regional teams in the same area. The third goal of this communication network is for the regional facilitator to be able to communicate with other regional facilitators not in their area anything that may benefit from a wider audience. If we start small, with key team communications facilitators, we are confident that we will see a communications network emerge among all the regions of the world.
The first step of nominating a communications facilitator on your team is to be aware of people who are already skilled in using email, SMS, social media, or other media to communicate what is appropriate for your region. Nominating someone seasoned in communication takes prayer and careful consideration. We highly discourage assigning the role to the first person who volunteers. This should be a thorough nomination process.
For one example of who not to pick, one person may be an excellent communicator but too busy to handle the communications for an entire team. There should be an understanding that this person does not hold the sole responsibility of communications between the entire team; this is just someone to facilitate communication, not take responsibility for it happening or not happening. Since this is a team process, we want to make sure the communication facilitator understands the security risks of communication amongst the team members of sending out certain stories or articles without team member approval. We have come up with a simple way to determine security risk and priority in the subject or title, so that the communications facilitator will have a clear understanding from the team member about their security concern for that piece of information.
Security will be shown by three colors: green, yellow, and red. Green indicates that you can share freely, yellow indicates that you can only share within trusted circle, and red indicates that you can only view but not share or forward. Some prayer or physical needs will be a higher priority than others. To determine priority, there are three options: one, two, and three. One indicates that the priority is high, two shows some importance, and three shows low priority for the content. So, if an email subject shows “Green3” that means that the information is low priority and can be shared freely.
Once a team has nominated a team member to become the communications facilitator, we recommend that this person be vetted or assessed as to their communication skills and time management principles. The team can examine past interactions with this nominated person and consider any challenges that they may take on if they were to become the central hub for the team. If the team feels comfortable about the track record of the individual nominated, we recommend the person be nominated and have the option to accept or decline the invitation as the team’s communication facilitator.
The communication facilitator now has been nominated, vetted and has accepted their role. As a next step, we recommend the individual facilitator read Communication Document 3 for more information on specific tasks, security issues, methods of sending information, etc.