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.

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.

Get a head start on Fall Communications—many FREE TEMPLATES to inspire you

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Fall festival card
This is just one of the fall templates free for you-there are many more in the Template Section.

No matter how you decide to hold outreach fall events this year, the following generic templates might be useful.

Following the Link are images of the Templates. They are in both ready-to-print PDF format (where you can personalize them on the back) and editable MS Publisher files.

HERE is the link to the FALL Templates: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/templates/templates-harvest-festival-and-halloween/

 

Who are you inviting to your church events? Would the guest list please Jesus?

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Targeting a specific audience may seem like good marketing practice, but it isn't what Jesus asks us to do.

One of the most horrifying memories I have of a church leader is when he told me and my husband, who was the Single Adult Pastor at the church, that we needed to be “targeting young professionals more” because those were the types he wanted coming to the church.

He would have been appalled I’m sure, had he come to a party at our home that included (in addition to some “young professionals” because we didn’t want to discriminate against them) a number of homeless people, an exotic dancer, and addicts of various substances, plus many of what might be termed ordinary singles.

We didn’t follow his advice for our party or our ministry. Our group was made up of a large variety of people and everyone was welcome, not just at that party, but all the events of our Single Adult Group.

I hadn’t thought about that situation in years, but was recently reminded of this verse:

He said also to the man who had invited him, “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. Luke 14:12-14, ESV

As I thought about it, I wondered how many of our churches actively invite people outside our “target” group, people who can contribute little to the church, who don’t look like us or smell like us, who may be more trouble to the church than a positive contribution to our bottom line or image.

We might make certain groups objects of ministry—but how often do we honestly and actively invite everyone to join in? [Read more...]