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.

Don’t only master church communication technology—measure results

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Figure measuringHow is your church doing in technology? Did you finally get a church Facebook page and Twitter account? Did you make your website smartphone and tablet-friendly? Did you create an app for your church or put QR codes in your bulletin? Did you move back-up files to the cloud?

Though all of these accomplishments might count for bragging rights at church geek gatherings, there a more critical question for Christian geeks, techs and communicators and that is:

How does your church communication technology help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission?

Though we all love technology, the foundation for all we do in tech, communications and life is found in Jesus command to us:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matt. 28:18-20.

Our Great Commission, the command to share the good news of salvation in Jesus alone with others and to help them become mature disciples is what it means to fully fulfill the Great Commission. This is not only the North Star and measure of success in our Christian lives; it should be our measure for success in everything we do in our church technology and communication ministry. [Read more...]

The importance of complete church communications if you want people to connect with church events

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details thumbIf there is one thing that I think would change the destiny of the Christian church and make it far more successful at reaching our world today and effective at communicating our message,  it would be for church communicators to stop assuming that everyone knows what they are talking about and to communicate the church message completely.

In communication after communication, in print and online I see incomplete messages. As a result people don’t respond. Then church leaders get discouraged and think people don’t care anymore.

But they do! People care about their earthly well-being and eternal destiny, as the huge following of every new self-help or spiritual guru program shows us. But many are not responding to the Christian message because church leaders and communicators forget what it’s like to be an unchurched person or a casual church attendee. [Read more...]

What customer service confusion can teach us about communicating the gospel

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Customer service can teach us to listen I just finished a customer service interaction after several days of frustration, phone calls, incomplete information and finally a satisfying answer. At the end of this process, I realized that my interactions with the customer service representatives had some valuable lessons for church communicators as we share the gospel. We may not like to think of ourselves as customer service reps for Jesus, but consider. . . .

What happened and how it applies to us

The typical customer service phone call goes something like this:

  1. We call "customer service" because we don't understand something.
  2. The person we call totally understands the issue—they were trained in all aspects of it —they probably had to pass a test on their knowledge of the product before they were allowed to answer the phone.
  3. When we ask our question, it isn't new to them. It is issue #3 on the list, or however they categorize it, and they know the answer, even before we are finished asking.
  4. The customer service person rattles off the answer.
  5. We have no idea what they are talking about—we haven't been involved with the product for years and it makes no sense to us—that's why we are calling.

At this point, one of two things can happen:

  1. We ask for clarification and the customer service person is kind, listens, and takes the time to explain what we don't understand and makes sure our question is answered in a way that makes sense to us.
  2. The customer service person lets us know subtly or blatantly that if we don't understand, that's our problem. Sometimes, they act insulted that we don't understand.

For my recent customer service interaction, fortunately my call ended with option #1--the person realized I had no idea why they couldn't do what I needed their company to do. She courteously explained what was going on, the options, and finally, though I wasn't happy with the answer, why what I wanted was not possible.

In this instance, I was calling because my charge card processing company couldn't process PayPal for someone who wanted to buy a membership in my church communication training site. I had been trying to get an answer on this for two days. I talked to fairly nice people who told me it should be possible. They said someone else would check it out. They said they would work on it. They said they would get back to me. None of this happened.

The final person I talked to listened, explained, and though her answer was finally that what I wanted wouldn't work, I now knew what I had to do next.

Why this is like communicating the gospel

[Read more...]

Unlike the Occupy Wall Street Movement, churches have a unifying message, but are we communicating it?

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Occupy Wall StreetQuote:

"The weakness of the Occupy movement is its lack of a unifying message, other than the mantra about representing 99% of America."

Lionel Beehner, "Will 'Occupy Wall Street' movement fizzle out?" USA Today, 10-13-2011

Commentary:

It's a little early to know if the movement will fizzle out, transform, mature, and bring about change or none of the above. However, as time goes on, this lack of a coherent, unifying, doable message is being noted, if not as the cause of the movement's eventual demise, but at least as a stumbling block to it making any significant impact.

No matter what the outcome of the Occupy Wall Street Movement, it gives church communicators a challenge.

We have a unifying message

Our unifying message is the Great Commission. In some of Jesus last words to his disciples, he told us what we are to be about and what we are to do when he said:

“All author

ity in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

We gave our message: to make disciples, to baptize them, to teach them everything Jesus taught.

Our challenge is to communicate it, all of it

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What hasn’t been said about Steve Jobs: what he did for church communications

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Steve Jobs and Apple Computers
In his later years Steve Job created incredible things, but his early work made an immense, but often forgotten impact on the church.

In commemorating the life of Steve Jobs much of the media attention this past week has focused on his recent inventions: the iPod, iPhone, iPad and understandably so because they are extraordinary devices. Though beautifully designed, at their core they are merely ways of listening digitally to music, making a phone call, and viewing digital content. Jobs did all these things with more style and features than anyone else, but he didn't invent a new way of interacting with the world in any of them.

For church communicators, however, Jobs totally changed our world

What he did has become such an everyday part of the church office, it is easy to forget what happened and if you are were not around in the days before the personal computer was invented, you honestly have no concept of the extraordinary revolution brought about through the Macintosh computer, the Apple Laser Printer. [Read more...]