Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.

Progress, not perfection is what’s important in church communications

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We can't implement every communication challenge, but we can make progress.
We can't implement every communication challenge, but we can make progress.

As I finished the article: 9 essentials to prepare your church website for Easter,  I realized that though all the points are important and truly essential for a church website, to carry out all of them before Easter may be impossible for many churches.

That's OK.

Take a deep breath, relax. Have a cup of tea.

Even if you only get one or two areas updated on your website before Easter you will have made progress in better communicating what your church is about and how to find Jesus.

In some ways this ECC site is like a fashion or home-decorating magazine

What I mean by that is that almost nobody really dresses like the women in fashion magazines or has a home that looks like the ones in home decorating magazines. These are ideal images, goals, visions of style to strive towards. [Read more...]

Challenges to all church communicators from Catholicism Inc.

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We all have much to learn from the current changes taking place in the Catholic church.
We all have much to learn from the current changes taking place in the Catholic church.

An op-ed article in The New York Times, "Catholicism Inc." by Bill Keller not only challenges the Catholic Church with some suggestions for change during this time of transition between popes, but it inspired me to make some communication suggestions for all churches, based on his ideas. What follows are quotes from the article, and then communication applications suggested by the quotes:

Catholicism is mostly a service industry . . . .  and its deliverables have stood the test of millenniums: instruction in how to live a good life, sacraments to consecrate major milestones, comfort in times of distress, the cleansing therapy of confession, penance and absolution, a sense of place in the universal order and the promise of a celestial payoff. . . . .There is still a robust market for the faith. The problem — evident in the waning confidence of the customers as well as the rising market share of evangelical start-ups . . . is with the management.

Communication application: Though we might use different terms to describe the benefits of our individual churches, a common denominator is that our gracious Creator has met every need of the human soul now and for eternity in the freely offered salvation provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or as he says, "The fundamental problems are not in the catalog."

He goes on to lay the cause for the problems with the management of our churches and church communications are a key part of that.  If the core message of salvation is not getting across to your audience, if new people aren't coming to know Jesus as Savior and growing to mature disciples, if they are not sharing the good news with their friends, practicing their spiritual gifts, and being salt and light in their world, the problem is not with the culture or media or lack of time or the crippling demands of the modern world—the problem is with us, the managers, the communicators. We have to take responsibility  for what is happening our church if the message we preach and teach (or assume we do) isn't a reality in changing lives before we can make necessary changes. [Read more...]

Be proactive, not reactive in your church communications as you look ahead in the New Year

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Plan, measure, evaluate your church communications
As the year begins, take time to plan, measure, evaluate your church communications.

The start of each year is a good time to set goals to make your church communications more effective in growing your church, introducing people to Jesus, and helping them grow into mature disciples. One of the best ways to do that is through a proactive approach to communications.

To understand what proactive communication is, it helps to first look at its opposite—a reactive approach to communications, which is how most churches do their communications. While there is little "wrong" with this approach, it isn't always the most productive.

The characteristics of reactive communications

Last-minute communication production is a key characteristic of reactive communications.This is communication that is created after the event planning is done and the event is about to take place. Because everyone is overworked and often stressed, the details of many events aren't in place until a short time before the event and so the church staff waits until then to begin telling people about it. Unfortunately, by then many people have other plans or won't hear your message. [Read more...]

Words or images? What works best to communicate your church message?

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Words or images, what works best to communicate our church message?

Here are some blogs that expand on the topic in the video:

Why words and images need each other–the feedback loop of meaning

We’ve all heard the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words"– a phrase which I consider one of the most meaningless and destructive phrases to meaningful communication ever coined. That is because without words, the proper response to that statement is, "which thousand?" [Read more...]

How I created an INFOGRAPHIC with MS Publisher

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Infographics are extremely popular today and though a number of free sites on the web that advertise how "easy" it is to create them, I didn't find them useful for my needs in Church Communications. After many failed attempts and frustration, I turned to MS Publisher and was very pleased with the results. You can see the finished graphic at:

Below is a short video that shows how I created it and below the video the resources mentioned in it.

[Read more...]