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.

Intro to Strategy #3: Create multi-channel communications

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Multi-media challenges for church communicators
What is the best way to communicate your message today? We help you sort that out.

A key strategic question for any church any church today is what to do about all the channels of communication available? What material should go on the web? Stay in print? Be in both channels? What about social media?

If we look at secular communications, we see an explosion of options. USA Today's publisher Larry Kramer shared his strategy to provide content in a variety of channels when he took the job by saying, "The paper will build 'closer relationships with our readers' through new uses of technologies. . . . . We're going to give people what they want, when they want it, where they want it. You want it on your watch; I'll give it to you. Or inside of your sunglasses. "

Those sounds great—give people all the content they want in any channel they want it in, but realistically in the church, we don't have the time or money to do all this. Most churches are not looking for additional work in communications. Many are overwhelmed by the option of the print and the web and thinking about other channels seems impossible. We naturally want to simplify our communication workload in a ministry setting because we don't have time to do all the work we need to do. Most churches are not looking for ways to increase, but to consolidate their communication efforts. Following are typical questions I've received for help in doing that:

"What is the best way to communicate with people today?"

"What is the way to reach people best: the web, email, or social media?" 

"Do we still need to print?"

"What is a communication channel? Which communication channel works best to reach people outside and inside the church?"

These questions reflect the concern, confusion, and frustration over the communication channels available to us today, which include print, web, email, postal mail, telephone, texting, social media, digital projection systems, voice, and people. When overwhelmed with channel choices and having limited time to implement them, it is natural to want to narrow our church communications down to one or two that will be effective. Because of that, I always feel bad as I answer people's questions about what to use because I know people want me to tell them that one channel, especially if it is the one they prefer, is all they need, but I can't do that. I can't do that because to be effective in your church communication ministry, to fully fulfill the Great Commission, there is no one way. [Read more...]

Let’s get honest in our evaluation of the effectiveness of our church communications

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How to measure church communications
We must measure the success of our church communications to be sure they are fulfilling the ministry of the church.

Effective church communication involves much more than who thinks they are right and who doesn't. It matters much more than who likes what or who is not wanting to change a way they've "always done" something. It also means you don't change things or do away with something because somebody went to a big church conference and that big church that did this or that and to be like that big church you think you need to do exactly the same thing.

Don't look at another church or trend or internet article to know what to change or modify in the communication program in your church. To see what to do for communication in your church, you need to first look at your church.

  • You look at lives.
  • You look at behavior.

Are these changing or not as a result of your communications? Are the changes you see helping people come to know Jesus or grow in their faith? That is the measure of success.

Keeping score starts by simple counting

This is not rocket science. You create events or ministries to introduce people to the Christian faith or to help people grow in their Christian lives. They have to get there for that to happen. Therefore effectiveness in church communications is determined first by attendance, the simple numbers of people who respond (or didn't) after you created and distributed your communications to market, inform, and get people to the event. This is how you start the evaluation process of what works and what doesn't in church communications. Like success in a game, you take score.

The score is determined by asking questions such as these and recording your response: [Read more...]

Templates: Valentine’s Day Outreach Postcard with room for Church Info

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The following set of Templates was inspired by the article by Gayle Hilligoss and the postcards she created for Valentine's Day outreach for her church. The ones I created prior to seeing her wonderful creations filled the entire front of the card and assumed you would personalize them on the back. I loved her idea of having all the information on the front (much easier to print, etc.) and so I created some templates for you to modify and use in your church.

You could use these as postcards or hand-out invitations. The church office can print them and then put in 5 in each bulletin on Sunday. From the pulpit encourage the congregation to pray and send or hand them out. If you have a special Valentine's Day event (dessert buffet of chocolate is what we did one year, it was a big hit), give the details of that on the back.

Below are images of the cards and below them is the ZIP File to download and modify for your churches.

Postcards with room for personalization

To download the editable ZIP file for the cards above, click the following link: Valentine Cards quarter page with church info

Why church communications are sometimes ineffective and what to do about it

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Ineffective Church Communications
Sometimes our church communications aren't as effective as we'd like them to be. Here are some reasons for ineffectiveness and a proposed solution

Editorial note: I found this article when reorganizing the website. It was first written in 2009 and as I reread it I fear I sound excessively cranky. Do forgive me for that, but I think there are some worthwhile challenges in it and of course the  purpose of the Effective Church Communication ministry is to solve the issues discussed here.

The church today is the butt of late night television jokes, the target of aggressive atheists, and if not openly attached, seen as irrelevant to everyday life.  Why is this happening when....

  • We have the greatest message: that Jesus came to earth, died on the cross, rose from the grave, and offers eternal life to all who believe in him.
  • We have definitive, historical proof of the truth of our message: in terms of the history of people in the Bible and the textual support of biblical manuscripts, there is no other religion that can make the truth claims made by Christianity.
  • We have extraordinary tools: churches today have undreamed of power to spread their message through computer-generated print publications and the power of the internet, websites, and social media.
  • We have incredible people: people who work on church communications are extremely committed and dedicated.
  • We have an incredible promises: the Lord has promised to be with us in all we do and to give us the power to do the tasks he asked us to do.

So why aren't we getting our message out there clearly?

Sadly, many church communications are not created strategically, with any well-thought-out purpose or plan. We throw things together (like the church bulletin) because we’ve all ways done it that way; we put up a website (great template,  little content) because at a conference somebody said we have to have one; we get social media accounts because churches are supposed to have them, but don't have the time to update them or the energy to do much with them.

Finally, because we often work without strategic goals, we have no basis for measurement of how well we communicate the biblical message, how efficiently we use  our resources, or how effective we are in reaching people with our church communications.

To remedy this situation, I'll discuss the following:

  • Why we are ineffective in church communications.
  • A proposed overall strategic goal and approach for effective church communications

[Read more...]

Strategy #1: Clarify and commit to your objective—for ECC it is The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

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5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This book will give you a comprehensive plan to use your communications to take people from outside the church and grow them to mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

INTRO note: the following is from the preface of the book on The Five Steps which is an overview of our approach to church communications. We we are different than many other church communications resources in a number of ways and this book is a good explanation of many of them.

In addition to the information in the book, the Effective Church Communications ministry (though the name has changed) is somewhat unique in that it's been around a LONG time—since before the internet and social media were used in the church.

Yes, we were able to communicate back then, amazing as it may seem—but seriously, because of that our training is about much more than how to be great at the latest tech tool currently in vogue. Though we keep up with and encourage the use of every means to help people come to know Jesus, we know that it takes a foundation and a vision beyond current trends to accomplish all we need to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

That is why a biblical strategy is so important. Our tools can and will change, our objective and strategy won't. What follows explains the North Star, our ministry objective we keep our eye on as we create training and resources for you.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

Author’s Preface—the North Star of this book

There are many fine websites and resources today for church communicators and churches benefit greatly from these varied resources. In this mix, it might be helpful to clarify the North Star of Effective Church Communications, the ministry behind his book, and the foundational goal of it which is:

How to create communications that will help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission.

This is the one goal around which everything we do revolves. The time-lapse image above of how all the stars revolve around the North Star instead of every star going in a different direction illustrates what we are trying to do. We want to help churches chose a North Star and intentionally revolve all their communications around it.

Our North Star was chosen in obedience to the Great Commission Jesus gave us in Matt: 28:18-20 when he said:

 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

North Star, to fully fulfill the Great Commission
Just as all the stars revolve around the North Star, so too all our communications should revolve around fully fulfilling the Great Commission. The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing will help you do that.

Fully fulfilling the Great Commission means that in addition to helping people come to know Jesus as Savior, your church helps believers become mature disciples of Jesus. Anything less is incomplete obedience. [Read more...]