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.

Summer ministry opportunities—ideas from many churches

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Summer outreach
There are so many fun festivals your church can do to reach out to your community. Pick one from this article and do it!

Communicating with scores of ministry assistants throughout the country, I’ve learned many churches are using the exceptional evangelism and fellowship opportunities of the season to full advantage. Said one, “God’s work through our church does not take a sabbatical when it gets hot out.”

Some of their summertime activities:

  • Mega yard sale. All church members contribute; the community is invited; church music provided; free lemonade; brochures about church activities distributed; members mingle.
  • Day trips for parents and kids. Church bus used to take group to art museum, zoo, and other local attractions. On the ride: skits and sing-alongs.
  • A huge sprinkler party on church grounds each Saturday. Teens hand out flyers throughout the close neighborhoods—along with free snow cones—on the Wednesdays before.
  • Dads and kids cook out and camp out at a local park. Extra “Dads” are provided for kids whose parent is not available. Our church member Dads circulate and make sure everyone feels connected.
  • Outdoor tournaments. Softball, volleyball, horse-shoes, basketball, bocce—all can be organized as tournaments. Members serve as coaches, making sure everyone gets an opportunity to compete.
  • more......

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Passive or committed? Your church needs the best from you always

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Pigs as an image of commitment
We don't usually think of pigs when we think of commitment, but this fable may change your mind.

Ed. Note: Gayle Hilligoss, who always sends in challenging material just sent this to me. You may have read it before, but it's a great reminder to all of us during the lazy days of summer that if we aren't working with all that we have, we may not be as committed as we think we are.

A pig and a chicken were strolling through their barnyard. The chicken said, “You know, we should open a restaurant to raise some money to spruce this place up.”

“Okay. What would we serve?” asked the pig.

“I’m thinking ham and eggs,” said the chicken.

“I’ll have to prayerfully consider that,” replied the pig. “Your menu means simple participation on your part—it means total commitment for me.”

The fable of the pig and chicken has been around since at least 1950 when it appeared in Bennett Cerf’s syndicated column. It’s been tweaked countless times and told in scores of variations—I’ve told it in seminars for years—but the point  is always the same: the pig and chicken represent two types: those who simply participate versus those who wholeheartedly commit.

The story, of course, can be taken many ways. But, the reason a story endures long enough to become a fable is because it speaks a common truth.

How many times have you seen this scenario played out in the church? There is a need. Some person or group (a committee, deacons, whomever) proposes a program, or event, or project of some kind. But the catch is that the personas of “pigs and chickens” are in play.

Both have much to gain from the success of the project. But only the pigs will have any real skin  in the game—they will fully commit, carry the load, take the flack if things get sticky. Oh, the chickens are all good guys—willing to contribute their bits, talk the talk, even give of their renewable resources (the “eggs”), but commitment to making changes or getting things done? Not happening.

Can one be both a pig and a chicken? Not at the same time. When it comes to serving God and to taking care of the business of the church, we must choose to be passive or to be committed.

There is no middle ground.

Church Communication Teams, how to successfully combine staff and volunteers

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Work Effectively as a Church Communication Team
This article will help you work effective with your church communication team of staff and volunteers. CLICK on the image to download it.

How do you work together as a communication team when it is a combination of staff and volunteers who work from a variety of locations? I recently did an article for Ministry Tech Magazine where I summarized many useful insights on this that I've collected over the years. They liked it so much, they made it their featured story for this issue.

I LOVE how they lay out the stories and since they distribute them in free PDF format, I'd like to pass on the article to you.

I'm doing this so you can print it out and share it with your staff and volunteers. You might first want to talk about it with your staff and come up with guidelines based on it.

We all have more than we have time to do in communicating the messages of the Kingdom of God, but putting together a team with clear guidelines and procedures, not only makes it easier for each member, but more people get to hear about Jesus and grow and mature as disciples.

Click HERE or on the image to download the PDF.

Why improved announcements or marketing may not get more people to attend church

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Church doesn't have to be on Sunday. Consider other options if you truly want to reach people in our busy world.

If you can't get people to come to church on Sunday, it may not be the fault of your communications is my conclusion after reading Thursday Is the New Sunday a thought-provoking article that underscores something I've encouraged churches to do for a long time and that is to have a service on a day other than Sunday. From the article, here are some of his statistical reasons for doing this:

A third of the American workforce works on the weekend. At least 60% of families with children between the ages of 6 – 17 take part in organized sports, with many of those having weekend events. We are in an area where a large number of people have camps/vacation homes that affect their attendance during the summer. Throw in both parents working and chores to be done, lawns to be mowed and families just wanting to spend time together, and church on the weekend wasn’t always making it on the calendar.

Not only statistically, but personally this resonates with me

My husband and I have served in churches in bi-vocational roles for many years and now, to support our ministry habits, my husband sells manufactured homes. A majority of his work (and I help) takes place on weekends and Sunday afternoons. With all we do at church I sometimes find myself dreading having to put in the hours at church on Sunday before continuing to work the rest of the day. Though we do it, we don't have to juggle children at home or in activities into the mix. If we had that, church on Sunday would most likely be impossible.

Work schedules are not choice for many people today. Unlike when I was in high school and I was able to take Sundays off because Tasty House (the family cafe I worked at) allowed me to, most employers today don't consider wanting to go to church a valid reason to take the day off.

Application to church communicators

Before I make some other suggestions (and I urge you to read the article above for their great ideas), an important thing for church communicators to realize is that no matter how hard you work to communicate about an event or program at your church, no matter how complete the social media campaign or how compelling the graphic design of your marketing materials, if the only time your ministry is offered is on Sunday morning, many of your target audience simply cannot attend.

I recently heard a church leader talking about how one program on Sunday morning was had very low attendance and his solution to this was to have the Pastor announce it more often and more forcefully. I didn't even bother to comment as I knew the church he referred to give the announcements before the service started and most people were still walking in and didn't hear any of the verbal announcements, no matter how important they might be. In addition, pastoral authority to motivate people is not what it used to be—people may like and admire their pastor, but authority figures in any area of life have little influence on behavior today.

Beyond these reasons, even if people did listen to the announcements and do what the pastor suggested most of the time, if their child has a game or they have to work, attendance simply isn't an option. Following are some ideas that might be options in our world today. . . . .

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Don’t be guilty of bait and switch in your communications

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Presenting one image on-line but being very different in reality isn't what you want to do as a church communicator. Always be who YOU are where God placed you.

Don't be guilty of bait and switch in your communications wherein you send out some slick, fancy printed piece, or display an over-designed, glitzy website if you're a little church plant meeting in a basement. Big, glossy and professional is not always more appealing—many people are looking for a real, intimate, and honest interaction about God. They might miss you if you come across looking too slick and professional. Worse, if they come expecting a big, fancy church and find you meeting in the church basement, they might assume that if you lied about who you are in your advertising and outreach, you might be presenting a false picture of God, Jesus, or salvation.

This is especially important for church plants. YOU DO NOT need to spend a lot of money on slick advertising. One of the best outreach pieces you can do is a simple business card that describes your church, tells people when you meet, how to get there and that displays your website, and social media info. Give them to your current members and tell them to share with their friends and the people they contact as they go about their daily lives. Every invitation becomes a personal one and is far more effective.

Keep in mind the parable of the talents

Jesus did not expect a person with one talent to do the work of the five talent person, but Jesus expected the one-talent person to make the most of what he or she had. If you are a tiny church with few resources, don't feel you have to create publications or a website like the ones you saw at whatever big church conference the staff most recently attended.

You could be burying your talent in a purchased design because it would not be an honest reflection of your church. Be who YOU are, communicate to your people with the resources you have, and the Lord will bless your efforts.

Variety is standard in professional communication

Contrary to what some communication companies want you to believe, there is no ONE perfect way to create any one communication piece. There is no ONE way to do any communication that is THE PROFESSIONAL way to do it. There is tremendous variety in all professionally created communications depending primarily on the target audience they want to reach with their message.

An excellent example of this is the variety in magazines. Go to your local Barnes and Noble or other big book store and look at the magazines. The design, style, and even the paper used, for example, is very different for Architectural Digest than it is for Car and Driver. Both are professional, well-designed publications, but both serve different audiences and their style reflects that audience, not some absolute, unrealistic standard.

For the editor of Car and Driver to think he'd be more professional or cutting edge if he created an issue of his magazine in the same style as Architectural Digest would make about as much sense as it makes for the pastor of a small neighborhood church pastor of a 250-member church in a farming community to attend a mega-church creativity conference in Dallas, come home and decide the church needs to create publications that look like the ones the mega-church in Dallas created. That is just goofy. [Read more...]