DEVELOPMENT OF A DISTINCT ADVENTIST COMMUNICATION PROCESS MODEL: A PARADIGM SHIFT FROM SECULAR WORLDVIEW TO BIBLICAL CHRISTIAN PERSPECTIVES

Abstract

For decades Seventh-day Adventists casually embrace the popular and secular concepts of communication process. Short of having their own distinct model, Adventist professionals  and students regard the popular Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver-Feedback communication model as the most acceptable standard of communication process. The most obvious reason is the dearth of Adventist communication researchers; and instead of engaging in Bible-based studies to ‘renew their minds’ are simply ‘conforming’ to the ideas of the world (Romans 12:2). Such mediocrity was revealed in the result of open-ended communication  diagnostic questionnaire where the responses of Adventist teachers were not different from their non-Adventist counterparts. Their stored knowledge about communication is obviously rooted from the popular, human- based, and technological worldview. Through a cross-case analysis, these secular concepts were found to be deficient in many respects in the light of the Holy Scriptures. The greatest question of the study is: Where is the place of God in human communication process? Thus, a paradigm shift is inevitable to attain the Christian standards of communication.

The  final  output of  this qualitative   study is a diagrammatic   representation of a distinctly  Adventist communication model based  on Synergistic Communication Theory (Barrios,  2015; 2014; 2013; 2012;

2011…) grounded on strong Biblical foundations of Christian communication.