LINK to FREE Summer Templates is at the end of this article

Looking ahead to planning summer communications, this summer your church will get lots of visitors, some of whom are friends of church members who might not regularly go to church, others may be from the surrounding community, and we can't forget out-of-town visitors. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out with the gospel and the love of Jesus and here are some strategic tips to help your communications make the most of this opportunity and some strong cautions about what not to do.

Jargon watch

We know we shouldn’t use church jargon terms like justification and sanctification in our church bulletin, web, or social media when we are writing for people visiting our church, but so much of our church jargon we don’t even see. Using acronyms we don't explain, talking about events that we do year after year and assume everyone knows about, insider jokes, assuming people know times and locations—all these things are confusing and unkind to someone visiting. We don't want our language to keep someone with a free night in our city to miss out on an opportunity to learn about Jesus.