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.

Strategy, the essential, but often missing foundation for effective church communications

Strategy is how you get to where you want to go; it’s how you achieve your objective. It is the commanding general in your head that chooses and uses whatever resources necessary for victory.

Instead of a communication ministry that is driven by deadlines, trends, tech tools, and whatever the promise that THIS item or way to do things will get thousands pouring into your church, when you learn to think and implement strategically about your church communications you’ll accomplish far more of lasting value.

This is the approach we want to teach you in Effective Church Communications and the articles that follow will show you how to implement effective church communications strategy in a variety of communication situations.

 

 

Strategy #1: Clarify and commit to your objective—for ECC it is The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

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5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This book will give you a comprehensive plan to use your communications to take people from outside the church and grow them to mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

INTRO note: the following is from the preface of the book on The Five Steps which is an overview of our approach to church communications. We we are different than many other church communications resources in a number of ways and this book is a good explanation of many of them.

In addition to the information in the book, the Effective Church Communications ministry (though the name has changed) is somewhat unique in that it's been around a LONG time—since before the internet and social media were used in the church.

Yes, we were able to communicate back then, amazing as it may seem—but seriously, because of that our training is about much more than how to be great at the latest tech tool currently in vogue. Though we keep up with and encourage the use of every means to help people come to know Jesus, we know that it takes a foundation and a vision beyond current trends to accomplish all we need to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

That is why a biblical strategy is so important. Our tools can and will change, our objective and strategy won't. What follows explains the North Star, our ministry objective we keep our eye on as we create training and resources for you.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

Author’s Preface—the North Star of this book

There are many fine websites and resources today for church communicators and churches benefit greatly from these varied resources. In this mix, it might be helpful to clarify the North Star of Effective Church Communications, the ministry behind his book, and the foundational goal of it which is:

How to create communications that will help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission.

This is the one goal around which everything we do revolves. The time-lapse image above of how all the stars revolve around the North Star instead of every star going in a different direction illustrates what we are trying to do. We want to help churches chose a North Star and intentionally revolve all their communications around it.

Our North Star was chosen in obedience to the Great Commission Jesus gave us in Matt: 28:18-20 when he 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.”

North Star, to fully fulfill the Great Commission
Just as all the stars revolve around the North Star, so too all our communications should revolve around fully fulfilling the Great Commission. The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing will help you do that.

Fully fulfilling the Great Commission means that in addition to helping people come to know Jesus as Savior, your church helps believers become mature disciples of Jesus. Anything less is incomplete obedience. [Read more...]

What should characterize our communications, God’s Word on our words

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God's word for church communicators
God's Word must be the inspiration, source, and guide for the words of church communicators.

If we want to reflect our holy God in all our communications, the Lord has given us very clear guidelines on how to do that. Below are collections of verses, both the positive words that should characterize our communications and then negative words that we should avoid.

Instead of listening to the often depressingly ugly discourse that fills much of the media today, take a break and spend some time to wash your mind with these verses today and God's Word always.

We want to be good citizens, we want to keep up on what is happening so we pray and participate in making a more just and godly world, but to do that in truth, we must constantly fill our hearts and minds with God's words—the only eternal voice that ultimately matters.

Verses on positive words, on what should characterize our communications

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.
(Col. 4:6)

The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
(Prov. 10:11)

Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
(Prov. 12: 18)

 The advice of the wise is like a life-giving fountain; those who accept it avoid the snares of death.
(Prov. 13: 14 NLT)

A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
(Prov. 15: 1) [Read more...]

Peace should permeate our church communications

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Not how a church communicator should speak
The way a drill sergeant yells is not appropriate for a church communicator. I know this from personal experience—my father was a drill sergeant.

Today an ugly, vicious tone of public discourse has entered our world. Though each person is ultimately accountable to his or her Lord, I humbly believe from my study of scripture that there is no excuse for people who call themselves followers of Jesus to blast every foe or perceived political offense with slanderous, true or untrue, angry tirades. I do not see anywhere in the Bible were there are exceptions to these verses:

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: 'It is mine to avenge; I will repay, ' says the Lord.  On the contrary: 'If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.' "(Romans 12: 17-21).

"Live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God. Show proper respect to everyone: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king" (1 Peter 2:16-17).

We were taught as children that we could disagree without being disagreeable. We would do well to remember that advice as adults.

An attitude of kindness in communications won't always be appreciated

When I tried, gently I hoped, to challenge someone who was making some rather strong, nasty statements about a church situation and those in authority, he responded angrily that Moses talked like that to people, so he had every right to do that.

"Maybe so," was my reply, "but you aren't Moses."

If we haven't been commissioned by God out of burning bush to deliver a message, we need to be careful that our tone does not exceed our authority. [Read more...]

The 5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing, redone, simplified, essential

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The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This is a way for you to put all your work into a strategic, progressive system of church communications that helps people come to know Jesus as Savior and grow to mature disciples.

Throughout human history, voyagers in the Northern Hemisphere have used the North Star, that one fixed point in the sky, as a reference for navigation. And though in the church office, you don't rely on a physical star and though not all communicators throughout the world can even see it, it remains a good analogy for all of us that we need a fixed point to keep our eyes on so our work accomplishes the goal our Lord wants us to reach.

For church communicators that fixed point, our North Star, is the Great Commission, where Jesus told his followers and says to us today:

“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.” Matthew 28:18-20

We can summarize this command by saying we are tasked with:

  1. Helping people come to know Jesus as Savior
  2. Helping them grow into mature disciples

Both are commanded, but unfortunately many churches today stop short of developing their people into mature disciples. That is incomplete obedience.

As a corrective to this, for Effective Church Communications, our North Star and the one strategic and practical goal I have for all church communicators through the timeless strategies and Biblical encouragements I share is:

To create communications that will help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission

The key phrase here is fully fulfill. Your communications should not stop at just bringing people into the church and involving them in uplifting worship services. They must help people become disciples.

How to do that?

Through The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

The Five Steps is a progressive way to organize and order your communications to take people from outside the church to mature discipleship. Here they are:

Step #1: Invite

Step #2: Inform

Step #3: Involve

Step #4: Instruct

Step #5: Inspire

The progression in evangelism or discipleship is not always obvious or explicit. An invitational postcard or social media post doesn't say "This is Step 1 and we are inviting you to an event where you can consider Jesus."

A clear podcast and notes on How we got our Bible and why we can trust it doesn't say, "This is Step 4 and you are being instructed in the Christian faith so you will become a mature disciple." But prayerfully progress is being made and lives are changed bit by bit.

I've been working on this system for decades and it has proven to be effective and inspiring to the people who have seen it in books, seminars, and online.

Please download and share the chart.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing Chart

Click on the image to download a copy of it.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

 

For seasonal and special event success: plan beyond a great invitation

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Join Us image
An invitation to an event at your church is simply the start of a relationship with someone who doesn't know Jesus. Plan from before you send it out to do more to make sure visitors connect.

When a church holds a seasonal or special event, initially we want to get lots of people to attend. But for a church that isn’t enough because we must always keep in mind that we are not just there to celebrate the various holidays, but to reach out to the community with the goals of helping unchurched people make a connection with the church, begin to come on a regular basis, come to know Jesus as Savior, and grow to Christian maturity.

We don't want to be satisfied with merely creating a great invitation and even with a great turn out at the event because as anyone who is involved in special events knows, attendance on the following Sundays, even if the seasonal celebration itself has a huge attendance, is almost always less than hoped for.

The problem is never because of the event itself—churches have figured out how to put on great events. Solving this problem is more complex than many churches realize but before we talk about solutions. . . .

First, a story that illustrates the importance of more than an invitation to events

This is a true story. Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it apply to Fall, Christmas, and every other outreach event in the church. Here is what happened: [Read more...]