Creating Understanding: A Handbook for Christian Communication Across Cultural Landscapes

This book is built on twenty-three propositions about communication, propositions that, when taken together, encompass fundamental truths about human communication from a Christian perspective. Creating Understanding puts communications media into proper perspective. It makes meaning and understanding the focus of the effort of communication. It is committed to having the purposes of communication determine the means to be employed. This book is a foundation on which the enterprise of Christian ministry can be built or refined. It provides perspective, constantly, on the ways the cultural landscape is informing and affecting the communication process.

Dr. Donald K. Smith is professor international communication at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He is a former missionary in southern and eastern Africa, where he developed programs for communications research and training including the predecessor to Day star University College in Nairobi. He is the director of the International Institute for Christian Communication, now based in Portland, and pastor of Faith Baptist Church in the same city. His previous books include Writing Is Thinking and Communicating for Development.