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.
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5 Simple Ways to Work Smarter in the church office and at home

27 May, 2014 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

 5 ways to work smarker
Working smarter, not just harder is the best way to get church communications work done.

Working smarter is a much better option than working harder. What works for other ministry assistants can work for you.

• Know your pastor’s preferences
Every supervisor has his or her own way of doing things, preferred ways of having jobs done. To work most effectively, discover your boss’ preferences and make them yours. Observe and ask. Find out the best times and best ways to present information. Some like written memos; others prefer verbal reminders. Some are morning people; others function better later in the day. Rather than trying to change the pastor’s work style, tailor your own style to complement it.

• Organize steps in assignments
Make an action list and/or routing slip for every project. Attach it to the folder—paper or digital—containing your working documents. As you work, note any course corrections: this works, this doesn’t work, this is a better way, whatever. For recurring projects, copy the list. It becomes a blueprint for how you, or someone else, can best handle the project next time.

• Go after elephants
When it comes to time management, observed writer Peter Turla, we go hunting for elephants and end up stomping ants. In other words, we establish priorities and then ignore them to chase after the easier prey, the little stuff that diverts our attention from the primary target.

Elephants are the few tasks among many—those that give the best return for time invested, that the pastor notices as work well done, that move you toward your goals.

Ants, the busy work tasks, are always more plentiful on any to-do list. The problem with wiping them out is that while the list is shortened, we achieve little of significance. The elephants remain to grow stronger and more difficult to ignore or to bring down.

Become a better big game hunter by asking yourself the classic question, “Is this the best use of my time now?” If the answer is no, hunt an elephant.

• Take your organizational skills home
Working smart isn’t just for church. “Trying to clear off the kitchen table for a place to pay bills, I realized that as organized as I was at work, I was a mess at home. That’s when I got serious about home office space.”

Managing bills and important home documents can be so much easier with workspace and files modeled after an effective office system. Purchase a small file cabinet or use a portable one that can be tucked away. If you have a desk with file drawers, all the better. Supply your space with stamps, envelopes, pens, tape, everything you need to manage well.

• Enlist help when you need it
Even the most efficient assistant can use a helping hand now and then. Delegating lesser tasks allows you to focus on responsibilities only you can handle.

“When I recruit a volunteer for our office,” writes one successful office manager, “I call a carefully chosen person and ask her if she could serve as ‘assistant to our assistant’ one day a week for the next month.”

Matching the person to the task is vital; assistants are more likely to be there when you need them if what you ask them to do makes good use of their abilities. Once you have given clear instructions on what is to be done, how and when, let the assistant do the job; be available for questions. Your helper may not perform the task as well as you or the same as you.

Guide a little if you must, but don’t take over. You have other jobs to do. You are working smarter!

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Filed Under: Church Communication Management, Church Office Skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss Tagged With: church office management tips, effective church office procedures, work smarter in the church office

How to create “ministry motivating communications” and tips for photos, writing, creating videos in them

25 May, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

 http://www.animoto.com
You don't have to yell to get people to motivate people in ministry--here is a video program that will help.

In ministry we want people to respond to our message with tangible actions and to do that we need to create what this training article refers to as "ministry motivating communications."

In contrast to administrative or teaching communications, the purpose of ministry motivating communications, is to create a change in the lives of your audience. That change might be to encourage them to grow in their walk with Jesus, to become involved in a ministry, to donate time or money, to be challenged to share their faith. To be most effective creating these behavior responses, ministry motivating communications must involve the hearts and emotions of your audience in addition to their minds. When the heart is involved, people are more likely to take action. And to involve the heart, it's helpful to stimulate emotions to drive that response.

An important point needs to be clarified here. This isn't about creating artificial, falsely generated, ramped-up emotions. This is not about by-passing the mind—solid facts, statistics, and examples are part of the foundation of our communications, but to motivate to action, conviction, and life change, we often need to go beyond the facts.

Children dying of hunger; children without education or drinking water, young people sold into slavery, these issues and many more are worthy of our deepest emotions. We should cry. They should pull at our hearts. Some situations should make us sick to our stomach and angry.

When Christians do not grow in their faith, when they act in disobedience to God's Word and harm themselves and others, when they do not walk worthy of their calling and cause the Lord shame, whether from lack of teaching, not knowing any better, or outright disobedience, we shouldn't be indifferent. This is not how the Christian life is to be lived.

These situations need to be changed. The task of the Christian communicator is to share situations and stories, physically and spiritually, locally and globally, so that people will see the needs, feel them in their hearts, and respond in concrete actions.

We can do that in print and online writing, and in addition, video gives us a powerful tool to create ministry motivation communication. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Fall Festival and Halloween, Video, how-to Tagged With: how to fundraise, how to get people to volunteer in church, ministry motivation

Better Verbal Church Communication

4 May, 2014 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Better verbal communications essential
Better verbal communications are essential in the church office if we want to do our best in serving our Lord.

According to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, there were 340,213 cell phone users in the United States in1985; by the start of 2004 there were more than 159 million. Wikipedia reports that as of April 2014 there were over 327 million cell phones in the U.S. If technology made us better communicators, we would all be masters by now. Certainly we talk more, but do we communicate better? We can. Both on the phone and face to face, ministry assistants daily have countless opportunities to demonstrate these characteristics of the excellent verbal communicator.

• Approachable and available
Members like to feel comfortable about calling the church office for all sorts of information. Consider those calls an integral part of your job. Your value to ministry increases as you get to know the members, their personalities, their needs, and the roles they fill. They want to know you too.

Some assistants say that accepting invitations to have lunch with groups meeting at the church is one of the best, and most enjoyable, ways of building rapport with those groups. And it is always easier to communicate with those with whom we have a common bond.

• Informed
No matter how long you have been on your job, there will always be more to learn. Add something to your store of knowledge every day.

Master the art of knowing where to go to find answers—to a person, a book, online, wherever. When asked a question to which you have no answer, you communicate better by saying, “Let me look into that and get back with you,” rather than “I’m sorry; I don’t know.”

• Engaged and interested
As the one at the hub of the church communication wheel, the assistant needs to be an interested listener as well as a giver of information. This is not to say you are to spend endless amounts of time. To the contrary. You will use your communication skills to pleasantly find out what your callers need, to meet those needs efficiently, and to conclude conversations with all concerned feeling good about the church and about you.

• Observant
More than words go into verbal messages. Listen for tone of voice, speed of the speech, and the emotion displayed. Be aware, too, of what is not being said. One-on-one, notice facial expressions and body language.

New members in particular may be hesitant during visits to the office. Your awareness helps you anticipate their needs. They want to fit in, but are not familiar enough with the church to know what to ask for. Can you offer a pictorial directory, program information, a quick tour of the building?

• Impartial
Some people are more pleasant to talk with, more gracious, more appreciative. The best communicators don’t play favorites. Bias, past negative experiences, or personal prejudices cannot be allowed to hinder clear conversation.

• Thorough
One of the weakest links in the communication chain is that of follow-up.

Someone says, “Call me if you need help with that big mailing.” Call her. Even if it’s for a different task; she is offering willing hands. Someone sends a gift. Send a prompt thank you. You meet with a group of volunteers and discuss plans. Follow up with a written memo of the conclusions reached. In a discussion with a member you say you will do such and such. Be certain to do in a timely manner whatever you promised. Then, let the member know you’ve done the task.

Being thorough, tying up all those loose ends, is a sure mark of professionalism.

Incorporate these essentials into your verbal communication. They will make a positive difference!

 

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Filed Under: Church Communication Management, Church Office Skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss, Contributors Tagged With: church office communications, church office phone skills, church office verbal skills

How to really love visitors and the members of your congregation with church communications

4 May, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Love with your actions not just words
To love with your actions not just words, you've got to communicate clearly and completely.

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. 1 John 3:18

Imagine a person looking for a new church. They are new in town, lonely and want to connect. After an online search for local churches, perhaps they google the church website and then visit. They want to find out more.

The church proclaims "We love people!" and the person is certainly in need of tangible love.

The person would like to find out more about the church and at the service, someone briefly mentioned that small groups were starting and that it was a great way to connect. It sounded interesting, but many other things were mentioned quickly in the same announcement time.

Wanting to learn more, the searching person looks at the bulletin, the online newsletter, and the website, looking for more information for the details on how to make a connection.

The bulletin had a very fancy graphic that said "Be sure to join our small groups!"

The website had a new landing page under "Small Group Ministries" that had testimonies of people who loved their small groups.

The social media links said pretty much the same things—encouragements to be part of groups, but no connecting details.

The person received a generic note from the pastor telling the person how happy he was that they visited and various other friendly sentiments.

Why none of these communications was loving

Not one of them communicated anything SPECIFIC about how to connect with a small group. They all gave tantalizing bits of information about the small group ministry at the church, but the underlying message was that if you were already part of the group and knew how to connect the small groups were great.

If you didn't know—you could call the church office—but chances are you wouldn't get a real person to talk to and you many not want to leave a message and your contact information with strangers.

You might try emailing the church—but many churches don't answer their emails promptly, if at all.

Why this happens

No one at any church intends to be unloving in their church communications. But it is so easy without thinking to assume that "everybody knows……" about small groups or any other ministry of the church that has gone on for years.

But visitors don't know and if you don't give clear information and detailed information in every channel and/or links to that information every time you mention an event, people will not know what is going on. No one can read your mind; no one knows the good intentions you have to involve people in any ministry if you don't clearly communicate it.

Specific advice on how to create loving communications about small groups or other ministries

Be sure you know all the details. Sometimes church communicators don't have all the information they need to communicate about an event to visitors and regular members. Be sure you get and then pass on the following information:

Time and dates of the events: as well as starting time, be sure you always include duration. Does the event last 1 hour? 2 hours? Whatever it is, be clear.

Location: "At the Johnson's house" or a similar description doesn't count—who are these people, is a question newcomers will ask. Always give a specific address and if the host has a specific role in the church clarify that. For example, at Pastor David's house, who is pastor of Single Adults.

Target audience if that is important: if an event or group is for singles, seniors, married couples or any other specific group, be sure you state it. If it is open to all adults, be clear.

Clarify child care situations: If you charge, what about a single mom who may not be able to afford your fee? If you charge by the child (one church charged $5 a child) that might be great for the host who had one child, but that effectively made the small group cost-prohibitive for the blended family with 4 kids. Consider making child care free and paying for it out of your Missions or Outreach budget—this could be one of the kindest things you might do for a family who really needs to be part of a small group, but who couldn't afford $20 a night for small group child care or a single mom who couldn't come if there was any fee. (Both of these true situations—one turned out well, the other did not.)

Anything else that might be important: do people need a workbook? To they have to pay for it? Is homework expected? Think through and ask yourself if there is anything that would cause someone embarrassment or awkwardness if they first found out about it at the group.

Benefits of attending: sometimes we forget to list the great benefits of church events and ministries because we think they are self-evident—but they aren't or more people would probably attend. Will people learn more of God's Word, our only true guide for life and eternity? Will they meet people who will be fellow travelers in their journey of faith? Will they find people they can pray for and with; encourage and build up? We sometimes become complacent about the tremendous privilege and joy we have of being able to take part in church activities without fear—remind your audience of that.

Clearly communicate where to go or who to contact for more information: In all print communications, have your website and the specific place on it listed for more information. Social media are almost useless here because it is an ever-flowing stream, not something that has specific facts, schedules, and locations. In print, social media and web communications be sure to have contact information—phone, text, email, social media interaction links and most important of all—be sure someone constantly monitors them and responds immediately.

Loving in "action and truth"

As the Apostle John reminded us—it is so easy to say we love people, but to truly love them, we must combine our sentiments with "action and truth."

To do that in your church communications requires detailed, often tedious work as the sections above illustrate—but it is important to do it for our communications to reflect the patient love of our Lord Jesus.

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Filed Under: Devotions & Challenges for Church Communicators, Writing Tagged With: Church Visitor communications, clear church communications, how to church communications

What you bring to the job

22 April, 2014 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

What You bring to the job
Though skills are important, YOU are the most important component of your work in the church office and this week we celebrate YOU!

Ed. note: Gayle asked that I publish this on YOUR celebration day for Administrative Professionals and I couldn't agree more. YOU are the heart of the church communications ministry and I celebrate your service to our Lord and praise Him for YOU!

You have worked hard to develop and strengthen your skills. You stay updated on techniques, learn the ins and outs of the latest software, and network with others to share ideas and tips.

Are your hard-won administrative and interpersonal skills all that important to the work of the church?

Absolutely!

But the most important component you contribute to the job is none of the above. You bring an element even more valuable than your excellent skills of organization, of communication, time management, or desktop publishing. You bring you!

As essential as your ministry tasks may be, what you are is even more valuable than the tasks you do.

Your unique contributions—faith, commitment, ethics, how you relate to others—these things most certainly affect others in ways your expertise with newsletters and data bases cannot.

Aspects of contributions only you can provide:

• Personal faith
Whether you are a member of the church you serve or of another congregation, being committed to the tenets of your denomination enhances your service.

• Professional image
While it must never replace substance, image does matter. You want what shows on the outside to accurately reflect the professionalism you possess on the inside. Look, speak, think, and act like the professional you are.

• Positive attitude
The only trait more contagious than a positive attitude is a negative one. Your positivity helps make problems solvable, cares bearable, goals reachable.

• Sense of humor
Sharing a good laugh can change a sad circumstance into a funny one. Learn to look for the humor in situations; it is usually there.

As you continue to grow in your job, appreciate your most valuable contribution—YOU.

 

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Filed Under: Church Communication Management, Church Office Skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss, Contributors Tagged With: Admin Professionals in churches, Church Administrative Professionals, value of church administrative professionals

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