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; Effective Church Communications can help.

Why church communicators need to be on the church leadership team

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Teamwork is needed in church communications
God put us in a body for a reason and church communicators and leadership need each other to fulfill the goals of the church.

Many of you may now be part of the leadership team of the church, but for those who may not be and for those who are timid in their job, following are some reasons why it is important you are part of this team.

Church Communications are what make ministry reality in the lives of the congregation and community

The church leadership team can come up with a great plan to get everyone in the church into small groups. They can come up with a fantastic slogan, a great curriculum, all the members of the leadership team may be personally committed to small group interaction for discipleship growth.

How does that become real in the lives of the members of the congregation?

It becomes real through communications—through the lists of small groups, the website entries, the brochures, the maps that tell people how to get to where they need to go, the social media and church apps that remind and report.

In many ways church communicators are entrusted with continuing the reality of the verse, "and the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us" (Jn. 1:14) by taking the ministries of the church and turning them into the tangible communications that enable the congregation and community to become part of the ministries of the church.

Church Communicators can give strategic advice to church leadership teams

One of my goals in Effective Church Communications is to give you the BIG picture of church communications and to help you see how vital they are in helping your church fully fulfill the Great

Commission. I've developed the Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing to help church communicators and in turn their churches see how all the communications we do should be going towards the goal of fully fulfilling the Great Commission, which means to help people either come to know Jesus as Savior or grow to maturity in Him.

Individual communications might be tiny steps in the overall mission of the church and in being obedient to the Great Commission, but church communicators can help the staff see that you aren't just "creating another Sunday bulletin" but that you are creating an essential link that will help INFORM and INCLUDE people in the church.

Please take time to CLICK HERE to go to an article that explains the FIVE STEPS in more detail and help your church staff understand the importance of each communication piece.

Church Communicators can provide a reality check

In a previous article, It may not be your fault that nobody shows up for a ministry event that you advertised heavily, I talked about the reasons why no matter how great your communication piece might be in terms of writing, design, frequency, and multi-media outreach, people simply might not respond.

The reasons they don't are often because of decisions by the leadership team. The purpose in saying that isn't to assign blame or point fingers, but to encourage church leadership to have church communicators as part of the decision-making team about what and how to promote events to the congregation.

We all have blind spots, we all see things other don't and by expanding the spiritual gifts and viewpoints involved in making decisions about church communications, we will have fewer failures that could have been avoided by an additional viewpoint.

Also, church communicators can provide reality checks on scheduling and costs of communication ideas. The church leadership team may come back from a church conference with a great idea of what worked in a church of 10,000 and want the home church of 150 people to implement it immediately. That rarely works and the church communicators often are the ones who are realistic about what the church can and can't do AND can often provide ideas and options for how the great idea might be adapted or modified for their church.

In scheduling church communicators can help the staff understand that if they want a devotional booklet written, designed, laid out, and printed before Lent or Advent, that the church communication team needs more than a week to work on it. It's not fair for church staffs to make major decisions involving big communication projects or holiday outreach campaigns without having input from church communicators from the start.

It's a biblical model

We are called into a body and with the Lord as leader, when church staff and church communicators can work together respectfully and productively the Lord is honored and the church will be more successful in reaching the world and growing disciples in the church.

 

Raise money for your church communications program with designated giving

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Designated giving advice
It can be a confusing puzzle to raise money for your communication ministry. Designated giving might be an answer.

A continuous challenge for any church communication ministry is having enough money for equipment, software, and training needed to run a truly effective church communications ministry. Though one of the most important ministries in the church and the one on which the success of most other ministries depend, it often isn't a priority when it comes time to set the overall church budget.

But new equipment and training is needed—so what to do?

Designated giving may be the answer

Designated giving is, in short, where church members can decide they want to give money (above their regular tithe of course) for a special project.  This is a greatly simplified explanation and later I'll give you a link to a longer, more complete one, but this is enough for the foundational idea that designated gifts are definitely an area worth pursuing. [Read more...]

Passive or committed? Your church needs the best from you always

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Pigs as an image of commitment
We don't usually think of pigs when we think of commitment, but this fable may change your mind.

Ed. Note: Gayle Hilligoss, who always sends in challenging material just sent this to me. You may have read it before, but it's a great reminder to all of us during the lazy days of summer that if we aren't working with all that we have, we may not be as committed as we think we are.

A pig and a chicken were strolling through their barnyard. The chicken said, “You know, we should open a restaurant to raise some money to spruce this place up.”

“Okay. What would we serve?” asked the pig.

“I’m thinking ham and eggs,” said the chicken.

“I’ll have to prayerfully consider that,” replied the pig. “Your menu means simple participation on your part—it means total commitment for me.”

The fable of the pig and chicken has been around since at least 1950 when it appeared in Bennett Cerf’s syndicated column. It’s been tweaked countless times and told in scores of variations—I’ve told it in seminars for years—but the point  is always the same: the pig and chicken represent two types: those who simply participate versus those who wholeheartedly commit.

The story, of course, can be taken many ways. But, the reason a story endures long enough to become a fable is because it speaks a common truth.

How many times have you seen this scenario played out in the church? There is a need. Some person or group (a committee, deacons, whomever) proposes a program, or event, or project of some kind. But the catch is that the personas of “pigs and chickens” are in play.

Both have much to gain from the success of the project. But only the pigs will have any real skin  in the game—they will fully commit, carry the load, take the flack if things get sticky. Oh, the chickens are all good guys—willing to contribute their bits, talk the talk, even give of their renewable resources (the “eggs”), but commitment to making changes or getting things done? Not happening.

Can one be both a pig and a chicken? Not at the same time. When it comes to serving God and to taking care of the business of the church, we must choose to be passive or to be committed.

There is no middle ground.

How to communicate with an audience that has no time to listen

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Remember time stress when creating church communications
Remember the time stress of your audience when creating church communications.

Need some evidence that it isn't just your imagination making you feel nobody has time for anything related to the church? "At the end of the weekend, you are more than a full day behind in your activities. Even if we went to an eight-day week you still would be 4.5 hours behind." Was the conclusion of an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Ed note before I continue: I wrote this article several years ago and while updating the website ran across it. The time challenges of your audience today make it worth another look because though a few years have passed if anything the situation of time demands has become even more challenging as we attempt to reach people. Following is a reprint of the article with a number of updates added.

An article in the Wall Street Journal reported Americans work an average of 53 hours a week. Dale McFeatters took that statistic and calculated that if an individual did all the activities reported such as sleeping, TV, dressing, etc., without multitasking, that person would have a 28.5 hour a week time deficit. In addition to helping explain why we often feel stressed and tired, his calculations help explain why it is so difficult to get people respond to the communications from your church. Following are some ideas on how to communicate your church's message to a time-stressed and time-starved audience. [Read more...]