Church staffs work hard and create great-looking materials, but tying them to any lasting fulfillment of the goals of the gospel is often difficult. To change this, you’ll learn the 5 Steps of Invite, Include, Inform, Instruct, and Inspire that will show you how to make your communications not only individually more effective but also how to make your entire church communication ministry work towards the one goal of fully fulfilling the Great Commission. In other words, how to use church communications to take people from outside the church and lead them to become mature disciples of Jesus.
An Overview of the book
Are your church communications accomplishing all you want them to? Are they helping your church grow in numbers or your people in discipleship maturity? Are they helping your church fully fulfill the Great Commission?
If you can't answer that positively, you aren't alone. Despite the extraordinary tools we have to create church communications, many churches stumble when it comes to having an overall goal and vision for their church communications. Church staffs work hard and often create lots of great-looking materials, but tying them to any lasting fulfillment of the goals of the church or the gospel is often difficult.
To change this, to give day-to-day significance and eternal value to your church communication work you need a worthy goal, a North Star, a plan. This book, based on many years of work in church communications, will give it to you.
It does this by providing a North Star for all your varied communications projects which is to fully fulfill the Great Commission. Fully fulfilling the Great Commission has two parts: helping people come to know Jesus as Savior and helping them become mature disciples.
To fully fulfill the Great Commission, the book recommends 5 Steps of:
- Invite
- Inform
- Include
- Instruct
- Inspire
The book goes through each step and explains the communication pieces, both in print and online, that are needed. It talks about the foundation of discipleship that the plan is based on; how the Five Steps came about; the Strategies and Characteristics that should be part of each step, how to evaluate their Effectiveness in your church, and ends with advice for practical Endurance and additional Resources.
The book will transform your church communications from scattered resources into a powerful ministry that will grow your church in size and your people in mature discipleship.
From the Author—why I wrote the book
I truly believe that the Church has been entrusted with the Words of Eternal Life in Jesus and that the Church today has the most powerful tools in the history of humanity to share that message. So why then is the church losing ground? I wrote this book as an answer and possible solution to that challenge.
Here are some of the issues I tried to address from a life spent working with churches to help them create more effective communications and in many churches:
Church communicators often don't have a compelling vision for why they are doing what they do; they don't see their work as related to fully fulfilling the Great Commission (which means both introducing them to Jesus and helping them grow to mature disciples). Often they don't see themselves as part of the ministry of the church.
In this book I wanted to help them see their work as absolutely VITAL to the ministry and spiritual success of the church.
Because of the situation above, many church communicators see their work as a task to accomplish in the most efficient way possible, so the emphasis is on tools and technology and because the church seldom has the money and time for all that is needed in these areas there is constant frustration and dissatisfaction in the work setting of many churches.
In this book I wanted to inspire church communicators to see they can accomplish great things in the spiritual success of their church no matter what resources they have.
Church communicators are often overwhelmed with immediate demands ("Make that outreach PR look spectacular!" "Get the brochures done for small groups") and don't have time to see how all the communication pieces need to fit together in a coordinated plan.
In this book I wanted to give church communicators an orderly, sequential plan (the Five Steps) of how to bring people from outside the church to mature discipleships with their communications. I wanted to make it clear what is needed when and how to create effective communications each step of the way.
Church communicators get tired and discouraged with the immense challenges of their job.
In this book I wanted to encourage them and give them a vision to help them see how the Lord can take the tiny tasks, the often repetitive work and use it to change lives for time and eternity.
Though I've written many other books on church communications, most of them deal with specific aspects of church communications (e.g. connection cards, strategy, church bulletins, multi-channel communications,etc.) this book is the foundational and overall book of that I hope clarifies the vision of the Effective Church Communications ministry, which is to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.
