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.
People often look to churches for help in hard times and rightfully so as we represent Jesus to them. Here are some things to consider so we don't disappoint.
Yvon's note: I wrote this initially soon after the start of the previous recession. As I was reorganizing the website I found it and realized how similar our situation, challenges, and opportunities are with the current pandemic. With a small amount of editing and updating I trust it will be useful now.
We communicate with more than words as followers of Jesus. The little poem below reminds me of this. It's something I memorized years ago and I'm afraid I don't know the author or title, but here it is:
We are writing a gospel, a chapter each day
By the things that we do and the things that we say.
People read what we write, Distorted or true.
What is the gospel, According to you?
We have an opportunity to live out the gospel during this recession (and now pandemic); to communicate the love and care of Jesus in tangible ways. Let's look at one situation, job loss, and some suggestions on what to do and what not to do as a church to people who are out of work.
Summer can be a great fun time, but is what you advertise what you are really about? Here are some things to consider.
What is your church about? Why do you do what you do?
Many churches would answer by pointing to either their church slogan or mission statement. Typically churches spend a tremendous amount of time and prayer coming up with these. Here are some random ones from the web:
Church Slogans:
We exist to reach the unchurched and grow the church
Reaching out to the World...Preaching to the Unsaved...Teaching the Saved to Serve
We strive to pattern our daily lives after the example of Jesus Christ and to lead all members of the body toward this goal
Committed to spreading the Gospel of God’s kingdom both here and abroad
To reach people in our city and in the unreached nations of the world with the life-giving message of Jesus that they might become fully devoted followers to Christ.
Church Mission Statements:
First Baptist Church is a fellowship of believers that purpose to know God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, to equip believers through discipleship. Showing God's love, we strive to reach a hungry world with Jesus Christ through obedience to the Great Commission.
To bring God's healing love to hurting people. To bring the joy of being a Christian to a sad world. To bring wisdom and knowledge to an unaware world. To bring good news to the poor. To bind up the broken-hearted. To set free the captives. To preach peace, as Jesus did.
To grow in faith and share our faith in God with the world around us. We will: Provide opportunities for service, outreach, and improvement in our community as well as in the global community of which we are a part. --Model the body of Christ in our inclusiveness of the gifts of all persons and in our relationships with one another as a covenant community, as well as in our daily living.
But what are you really about?
All of the slogans and statements above are inspiring and worthy of our Lord.
The challenge is what are you doing in your church this week to fulfill them?
I just finished looking at a church summer newsletter that was sent to me (I get sent lots of things from all over the world, so don't think it was from your church) and if I was going to tell you what the church was about from their summer newsletter I would think it was about:
Having fun with kids.
Summer activities for kids.
The senior pastor's vacation and what musical programs will fill in while he's gone.
Getting people to volunteer for summer programs and making them feel guilty if they don't.
Nothing evil or sinful and some nice things there, but this was a church with "Bible" in its name and there was nothing anywhere about where or when you could study the Bible, learn about the Bible, be in a group that studied the Bible or even what the upcoming sermon topics were going to be.
The challenge to all of us
What are we really about? If we say, as one of the mission statements above did that the church wants "to equip believers through discipleship" it won't happen automatically. To grow people to Christian maturity as disciples takes tremendous amounts of work, lots of pieces of communication, and lots of time. CLICK HERE to go to an article that describes the importance of discipleship in growing your church.
Regardless of what your stated slogans and missions of your church, take some time to check out if your communications and your actions honestly reflect them.
We can make a ministry come alive with our communications.An image of the list of supplies needed for the backpacks.
The communication project started out as an email plea for help. Our mission committee was working with two orphanages in Mexico and they wanted to provide backpacks for the children there. I got a frantic email for help--the committee knew they needed a way tell the congregation about it, but they didn't know where to start.
They gave me lists like the one here and a jump drive of photos.
Below is the video I created for them. I also did up other materials, (detailed brochure, posters, website materials), but the point of what I wanted to share here is that, as I thought about it, I realized this project illustrated one of the most important things we do as church communicators--we incarnate ministry vision.
To incarnate literally means to put into bodily form, to put on flesh and bones. Jesus did that when he came to earth. Peter worshipped an invisible, holy God as a child. When Jesus became incarnate, Peter could go fishing with him. He could hug him, laugh with him, go to a party with him. God became real to Peter in the incarnate Jesus.
So many of the ministry dreams and visions of the leadership in our church are wonderful, godly visions of what God can do. But until we put them into tangible form in our communications, they remain the intangible stuff of vision. When we create a video like the project--people see the children; they see the need; they know what to do. Lord willing, we touch hearts and motivate minds to action. We incarnate. We put flesh on the vision of the ministry to our people.
Often when we do this, not only do we help our congregation get involved with the ministry, but it touches us also. I became very involved in this project and became a back-pack making maniac for a few weeks. Since then I've been involved in other Backpack projects and below the video are some flyers/bulletin inserts and social media you can use to advertise back-pack ministries at your church.
Resources to help your church share backpack ministries
Note: I used animoto.com to create the video above. It is very easy to add pictures and text to the program and then a video comes out! Really, it is that easy.
Other materials for Backpack Ministries:
PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N
Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898
Would you invite people to a birthday party for someone they didn't know? Of course not--but that's what we do when we invite people who don't know Jesus to celebrations about him.
Would you invite people on the street to a graduation party for someone they don't know?
Would you ask strangers to celebrate the promotion of a person they never met?
Would it make sense at all to send out an impersonal bulk mailing for people to attend a wedding?
Of course, you won't do any of these things. You've all been raised better than that. You don't invite someone to an event that means nothing to them, attended by people they don't know when you don't know the person you are asking.
If that's true in our day-to-day lives, why is it we do that as a church for Easter or other special events?
Think about it. I'm asking because, after spending some time looking at current online advertisements created for churches to send to strangers for Easter, I realized that many of them would only make sense to Christians. Then I realized that outside of the brunch, many of the things that church people at the Easter service are only meaningful to the people at the church. [Read more...]
At one time I thought technology would never get any better than the self-correcting typewriter and press-on letters. Now I'm learning to create HD videos and podcasts. As I've researched video and podcast hosting and distribution systems, at times my brain felt like a jumble of data that would never sort its way into a linear path of what to do next. I'm getting it figured out, but as I'm working out the next steps, I reminded myself of four guidelines I've used in the past to encourage people to try computers and websites without losing the focus on the importance of fully fulfilling the Great Commission. These helped me and may be useful if you are facing new challenges in communication technology:
#1—Don't confuse the media with the message
The media, the tool you use to craft and share your message is and will be constantly changing. Media changes always seem overwhelming and they are often difficult to get through. The change from typewriters to computers for church office communications, from cut and paste layout to MS Publisher to create the church bulletin, from print only to the expectations of a website and social media communication assortment for every church, from flowers to adorn the pulpit to multi-media projection systems—all of these have taken place in the recent experience of the church. The challenge is not only in learning how to use them, but to not allow the demands of the technology to overwhelm the priority of your message. Technology can be extraordinary demanding, but it must never be your North Star. Every person, every church has a North Star which guides all your communications whether you are conscious of it or not. The only appropriate North Star for the church communicator is to fully fulfill the Great Commission—to help people come to know Jesus as Savior and to grow to maturity in Him. The media is not our message—our message is our message. If our eye is on the goal of sharing Jesus truly and completely and growing followers into disciples , if that is the core of our message, though there are many parts of it and many steps in sharing it, we won't be thrown off course when new tools appear. [Read more...]
