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.

PLEASE let people know ahead of time about regular special offerings

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Don't surprise people with special offerings!
If you surprise people with special offerings, you may not get the response you'd like--take time and remind them ahead of time!

Many churches have special offerings that they take up regularly. Though the staff in the church office can tell you all about them in their sleep, they often come as a surprise to church members and because of that, the church does not get the response they hoped for. Below is a note I got from a frustrated church member that I wanted to share with you.

Identifying details in the short message that follows and in all the true church stories I share are hidden so as not to ever embarrass any specific church.

They did it again! Every month my church takes up an offering for special needs in the city. I really want to donate to this, but I can't keep track of when they are going to do it. Also, though I do all my regular giving online, for this offering they expect you to put real money or a check in an envelope that they enclose in the church bulletin. They always make a big deal out of it in the church service, but I imagine I'm not the only one who has to plan ahead to bring cash or a check. It always puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the service. Why can't they send out a message in the weekly church email that they send out every week letting me know this was happening? How can I nicely let them know?

I told the person that a nice email or note sent and kindly and letting them know how much you wanted to give, but needed to plan ahead and if they could put a short note in the weekly email newsletter that would probably work.

For the church office

Whether you get a note like this or not, please remember that what is sometimes a special, continuing project or ministry for the church staff is often not something that your congregation remembers. Please be helpful and send out a reminder in your weekly email newsletter, Facebook, social media or however else you contact your congregation.

In addition, remember to give short updates about what the money is going for because people might not have any idea what "City Service Outreach" is all about. They may not know that it goes towards job retraining programs and special fun times, such as children's birthday parties for people living in homeless shelters.

A short story and a reminder when you will be taking up the offering will no doubt greatly increase your response. The help to people and ministries will who need it is more than worth the time it takes to write and communicate a reminder.

Why upbeat interviews work better than desperate pleas for recruiting volunteers

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There are more effective ways to recruit volunteers
There are more effective ways to recruit volunteers--and the interview video described here is an effective one.

Desperation isn't pretty in volunteer requests. If you feel like shutting down the children's ministry if new people don't sign up or closing the bathrooms on Sunday morning if no one helps the facilities team—you probably won't get sign-ups by sharing your frustration.

Instead off desperate pleas, try this……

Use interviews with current volunteers

Far better than desperate pleading are positive testimonies from people who are doing the ministry you want to recruit in. If at all possible, both video them and write-up what they have to say. You can then take this material and put it into a variety of communication channels: show them at church, put them online, email them to interested potential volunteers, and use the material in bulletins, newsletters, and brochures.

Note here: you don't need to be super-serious in your interview, but don't go for funny, stupid, and trivial questions and answers. Many of the jobs at the church might seem small, but they are jobs that can impact how a soul spends eternity. And some of the jobs may not be "fun" to serve in faithfully week after week. Honor the work of volunteers in how you recruit people to serve in the work of ministry.

A few more preliminary tips: [Read more...]

Why you shouldn’t be satisfied with less than 100% volunteer involvement in your church—the fallacies of the 20/80 often quoted statistic

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Volunteers can help in church work overload
Volunteers can help in church work overload, here are tips on how to recruit them.

There are many reasons why churches aren't successful in recruiting and retaining volunteers, but one of the most damaging may be that we have an underlying incorrect assumption about how churches and their volunteer programs work.

We’ve all heard: “20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work.” Sometimes those who are in the over-worked 20 percent in the church console themselves that is simply how life is and in the church we must suffer for Jesus.

Though trials are part of the Christian life, 20 percent of the people doing 80 percent of the work in the church is not an inevitable part of them. The 20/80 statement is merely a business observation—it is not scripture. The Bible tells us we are to have 100 percent involvement in the church.  We make up different parts of the Body of Christ, but everyone has a job to do.

When we believe the 20/80 fallacy (which is what it is), the result is that the leaders (staff and key volunteers) of the church do all the work and the majority of the congregation members sit back, watch, and expect to be cared for and entertained. They complain if things don't get done and criticize how things are done. They don't grow as servants or disciples. [Read more...]

A Case Study to help you be more successful in recruiting volunteers, using Trunk or Treat as an example

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Sucessful fall church outreach
Fall is a great time for church outreach and the ideas here will make sure you get enough volunteers to make your event successful.

Yvon's note: though this material and the video is several years old, it has some extremely useful material that will help you be successful in your fall outreach. Consider the production values and artwork a retro memory and learn from the timeless principles represented.

Recruiting enough volunteers is always a challenge for any church event and few are the churches that report they have enough. When the event takes place and there are not enough people, not only is it tiring for the staff and the volunteers that are there, but it is spiritually trying also. When this happens, we ask ourselves:

Why didn't more people help?
Don't people care about their neighbors?
Doesn't outreach matter?

These and many other questions haunt us and make us hesitant to be enthusiastic about upcoming events.

In evaluating many instances of this kind, I've put together the online Video below that has a Case Study with specifics and samples that I trust will help you be more successful in recruiting people for your next church outreach event.

As you can imagine (this being a church communication ministry) I believe that the primary problem with not getting enough volunteers is in the communication that comes from the church—the problem is not in our people, but in us. Often we don't communicate nearly as well as we think we did to let people know how much we needed their help or even, as you'll see in the case of Trunk or Treat, even what the event is about.

This video would be excellent to watch with your church staff. Remember you can click on the little box of arrows at the bottom of the video to blow it up full size on your screen. Simply hook up the computer to a projector and you can show it to the entire staff. [Read more...]

Cautions about auto-responders with church visitor follow-up email

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Be careful with church auto-responders
Church visitors may not want to hear from us nearly as much as we may assume. Respond with graciousness, not assumptions.

Churches sometimes use auto-responders—the messages that are sent out automatically with your email programs to people who either join a church mailing list or who have been entered into a church management software system.

These are useful in that the church doesn’t have to create individual follow-up messages for every person, but they can be a disaster is they are done with the wrong expectation as I recently discovered from a series of irritating auto-responders I received.

My irritation resulted from incorrect assumptions that the sending organization made. I’ll list them below with church applications.

#1 Irritation—That people want to hear from you

I didn’t. I was checking out a piece of information I needed and to download it, I had to give them my email. I know that is common practice (I don’t do it on the Effective Church Communication website), but just because someone is forced to give an email that they want to hear from you.

If someone visits your church and you send a follow-up email, please do so with kindness, courtesy and no assumptions that they are dying to hear from you. Especially if the people did not initially give you any permission to contact them (e.g. they simply filled out a visitor or connection card), don’t assume they want to be contacted.

Be brief, be kind, be gracious on any initial follow-up or outreach email. Give them a way to opt-out from hearing from you in the future.

#2 Irritation –Assuming I’d done what they wanted me to do

The company assumed (based on no interaction whatsoever) that I had tried their product, found it was wonderful, and without any evidence of these things happening wanted to tell me what to do next with the product.

Don’t assume the spiritual condition of people who showed up at your church and filled out a connection card. This includes not using church jargon or phrases that make little sense to an unchurched person.

#3 Irritation—it was all about them, nothing about how they might help me

In contrast to this irritating company, I’m also checking out another company that I am probably going to be using in the future. The auto-responses from this company are consistently helpful and primarily a series of questions on how they could help me accomplish my goals.

You can be less irritating and more helpful in similar ways when you offer to pray and answer questions.

PLEASE do be sure that if you reach out in these ways you have someone who monitors the church email constantly through the day and who promptly responds with answers to questions and assurances of prayer.

Technology has given us great tools with which to interact and reach out to help people come to know Jesus and grow in their faith. Let’s be sure to use them intentionally, prayerfully, and graciously. Let’s be a help and not an irritation as we serve our Lord.