'I can't see clearly now'

By John Halford

In this time of doctrinal change, many of us find our progress stops when we become worried over some point we don't understand.

The overall direction of the church may be clear to you. You agree with it. But something is holding you up and causing you to say, "Yes, but ..."

This may help:

I had dinner with one of our longtime British members, Keith Watts, and his wife, Deidre.

During the Second World War, Keith was in the British merchant navy. He served on the Atlantic convoys ferrying war material and men between the United States and Europe.

It was a dangerous time. German submarines constantly prowled the sea-lanes, striking without warning.

Many of the ships were sunk, and thousands of lives were lost.

Communication was vital, but radio silence had to be maintained. Even a short message could be intercepted by a submarine and used as a direction finder. So the ships had to keep in touch with signal lamps that were secure.

But as ships were often wrapped in fog and pitched and rolled in the rough seas, visibility was often poor.

To decipher a Morse code message from a small flashing lamp half a mile away through fog and rough seas was, to say the least, difficult. Yet it was vital that the messages be relayed accurately.

For example, a message would come from the lead ship informing all captains that the convoys would not be rendezvousing at a certain hour.

Keith was responsible for receiving this message. Squinting across the ocean, he might manage to get C-O-N-V-O-Y- W-I ... Then the ship would roll, and he'd temporarily lose his line of sight.

What was that next letter? It looked like "dot, dash, dot, dot" or was it "dot, dot, dot" or "dash, dot, dash"--a moment of panic, but not for too long. Because another letter started coming across. It looked like the same!

It was important to keep calm and receive the rest of the message. He couldn't afford to get hung up on one detail.

For example, if the next word was not this would be crucial to understanding the whole message. Thus the signalmen learned to keep going, and receive the whole message, even if at first they didn't understand. They found they could go back and fill in the gaps, once the overall direction of the message was obvious.

Keith told me this experience has helped him considerably as the church has made changes in direction in the last few years. Certain things have come across to him clearly. Others have been hard to understand.

So he concentrated on the big picture, rather than details, until the big picture became clear. It was then much easier to go back and look at what may not have been clear at first and see how it all fit together.

I wonder how many members who have left, would have stayed, if they had understood this simple principle of communication.

Don't get hung up on the details. Don't react before the message has finished transmission. Don't be so sure you don't understand until you have seen the bigger picture.

This was the wisdom of Gamaliel when he advised his colleagues to wait and see the fruits of the new Christian faith before they reacted against it (Acts 5:34-39). That is still good advice today.

John Halford is the regional coordinator for the United Kingdom and administrative coordinator for Europe.