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 Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

My giant mistake on mobile phone layouts and why I should have known better

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Mobile phone mistakes
I made some big communication errors because I didn't check my content on a mobile phone.

This is bang your head against the wall, repeatedly, time. I know mobile phones are incredibly important in church communication today and getting more so all the time.

I know how important it is for your website to responsive, that means that it looks good on all devices from computer screen to tablet to video. I even wrote an article and did a video about it.

And I know WordPress automatically adjusts articles to fit on your phone.

But what I didn't do was check how my current home page actually looked on my phone. Until this afternoon that is, and then the head banging against the wall started. [Read more...]

Why a printed bulletin in church is as essential as a menu in a restaurant or a program in a concert hall

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Bulletins are as essential in church as menus are in a cafe
Printed bulletins are as essential in church as menus are in a cafe. In both settings, they tell us what the place is all about.

People's habits don't change that much when they go to church. When we are in a new place or where we don't know ahead of time what is going on, nothing beats a piece of paper in our hands to inform us about what's going on or help us do what we want to do. Though we might use our smart phone for nearly non-stop interactions throughout the day and use our computers for business and school, consider these two situations:

In a restaurant when you sit down to eat

The menu might be on the restaurant website and/or the waiter may have told you about today's specials, but what do most of us do? We look at the menu in our hands and skim it to find the food we want to order. The menu might also tell us about this history of the place and any interesting specials they are known for. We may not want to ask again about specials or strain to look at a scribbled board. We certainly can't remember everything on the website and the social media feeds about what people enjoyed there aren't always what we are hungry for.

We want a menu. Our very own menu. We want it to make sense with accurate descriptions of the food and prices clearly marked.

We don't consider a restaurant out of touch or not with it because they still have a printed menu. We would be highly irritated if they didn't. [Read more...]

Why your Church Bulletin is the most important piece of Christian literature printed today outside the Bible

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Church Bulletins
Church Bulletins really can be the most important piece of Christian literature outside the Bible--read here to find out why.

“The church bulletin? You must be kidding!”

That statement may sound outrageous, but think about it. The church bulletin (or worship guide or whatever you choose to call it) is, for some people, the very first piece of Christian literature they see. It is certainly the very first information a visitor reads about your church. For many it is their first serious introduction to Jesus.

In our secularized society today many people grow up without reading the Bible or any kind of Christian material. At the same time:

  •  everyone has a spiritual vacuum inside;
  • the Holy Spirit is active in our world convicting people of their need for God;
  • tragedies happen personally and globally.

In response to all these promptings, people will come to your church looking for answers.

When they come to your church, they will read anything you put into their hands.

When that happens, what do you give to a person whose eternal destiny may be decided in the next hour?

You give them the bulletin. What does it say to them? [Read more...]

Faux code that correctly describes all we should do in digital outreach

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Internet evangelism
Many of us spend lots of time each day communicating digitally. Here are some challenges for how to do it as an effective evangelist.

Tony Whittaker, the founder of Internet Evangelism Day (http://www.internetevangelismday.com) recently sent me this faux code that is a great description of all we should do in digital outreach.

Even if you aren't into computer code, I think the message is clear on what our attitude should be in our Internet outreach. Please read it and then below it, I have some current, practical application challenges.

Finally, if you have ways you currently share your faith online, please share them in the comment section following.

<need digital-evangelists

('writing' = jargon-free;

'tone' = outsider-friendly;

'target' = prioritize-non-seekers; '

condemnation' = off;

'love' = on;  '

preachiness' = off;  '

churchiness' = off; '

cultural-sensitivity' = high;

'contextualization' = high;  '

storytelling-mode' = on;

'empathy' = high;

'popular-culture-parallels' = use;

'felt-needs' = understand;  'sense-of-entitlement'= off;

'politics' = off;

'humor' = use;

'social-media-interaction' = use;

'languages' = multiple;

'location' = worldwide;

'platform-optimization'

= mobile,tablet,pc)>

Current application idea

I was recently talking to a Christian friend who spends a lot of time on Facebook and she was honestly surprised when I mentioned that she could be using those interactions to share her faith.

It's good for all of us to be reminded that the internet provides us with extraordinary opportunities to be salt and light to our world. Particularly in a day when so much online discourse is vile and contentious, we can be gracious, kind, and truthful in all we communicate—in other words to practice the characteristics Tony encouraged us to in the code above.

If you or your church are doing things to actively share your faith or be a witness for Jesus in the online world, (other than church social media announcements or even if you do something special there) please share it in the comments here. It'a an area we all need ideas and encouragement in.

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.