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.
If we don't create connecting communications at our seasonal celebrations and few people return to church after them, we are bound to wonder what we did wrong. This article and website can help!
Ed. note: I have shared this story before, but it is such an important reminder of how we need to create communications that will help people connect with the church AFTER the big event.
This is a true story. Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it can apply to any event. In addition to applying to any event, we can all identify with the situation here. The challenges of ministry are so huge, it is very easy to get overwhelmed in one area and totally forget another one. May the Lord have mercy and help us all.
In one of my seminars, at the break, a woman literally came running up the aisle to talk to me.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, “Now I understand what went wrong.”
I had just been discussing the same ideas I’ve presented here about the importance of an overall communication plan for maximum results from your holiday outreach. I knew it was useful, but her response was more excited than most so I asked her to tell me more about her experience.
She then told me about a special Easter service her church put on that was a huge amount of work and an equally huge disappointment in results. They were a new church plant and wanted to reach out to their community at Easter.
They were meeting in the grade school, but they wanted to grow and to do that committed to reach their community for Jesus this Easter. On faith, they rented the high school gym so they would have room for a huge crowd. They prayed hard and worked hard to get lots of community involvement. They got it—merchants put up posters; they got lots of media exposure. The day came and the church of 300 had over 1500 at the Easter service held at the local high school gym.
They were so excited. The next week back at the grade school, they set up hundreds more chairs, printed lots of extra bulletins. They were excited to see what would happen.
Pastor Gil Monrose, shares his projects helping victims of Hurricane Sandy and invites us to join in.
Pastor Gil has been interacting with our site for many years in addition to his many ministries serving God's people. When I got this email, I wanted to pass it on and encourage you to participate. Churches helping those around them is one of the most powerful ways to witness. If you can give money--great--but we can all pray.
To be without power and in the cold--how scary that would be. Pray the Lord turns the current storm away and that many people come to know Him through the love and care of his people.
***At the end of this article, please add in your comments any other links to groups, denominational or those you know and trust for Hurricane Sandy Relief.
Dear Friends,
Oh taste and see that the Lord is good and his mercies lasts forever. Amen. Praying that all is well with you, family, and those around you. I wanted to provide a quick update as to our progress and ways you can help. [Read more...]
Here are ideas to keep your Christmas visitors coming back.
As we go into the holiday season, your church will be holding many events that will attract visitors. You want these visitors to become regular attenders and you can help make this possible not only by the quality of your holiday event, but by the follow-up publications you send out.
Successful follow-up publications DO NOT mean a mass generated “so glad you were here….” letter. Instead, try these ideas:
Position your church positively
Sending out a “so glad you were here” publication is OK to do if you have the time and money, but there is nothing usual or memorable about that. People expect churches to be glad they came and of course a church wants them to return.
What might be a bit more surprising is if your church, instead of asking for something, gave something away. For example, what if you sent out a series of postcards or a series of one-page newsletters and tips that would give people ideas that would help them get through the holiday season. What if those publications didn’t ask for anything, but were genuine servant publications with the motive of honestly helping the people they were sent to.
This would put your church in an entirely different place and a very positive one that would cause people to want to return. Following are some specific publications that could do this:
Countdown to Christmas Postcards/flyers or emails
Depending upon how far back from Christmas you start this, let’s assume you have a list of families who attended your Fall Harvest Festival. You make up a series of perhaps five post-cards, tri-fold flyers, or follow-up emails in bright colors with topics like this:
Countdown to Christmas
Week #1—some inexpensive, creative, and alternative ideas on how to plan Christmas shopping and gift exchanges, drawing of names, deciding to give to charities in the name of family members, what charity opportunities are available in your community, if any churches (your church?) sell third world gift items.
Week #2—some favorite recipes from your congregation: a favorite fudge, a hot cider mix, a special grandma cookie recipe. Many families today don’t have family members close by and many young families don’t know how to prepare holiday items. Make sure your directions are simple and easy.
Week #3—the meaning of advent and some ideas on how to help families celebrate it. Perhaps offer an advent booklet for free by simply calling your church or requesting one from your church website.
Week #4—Offer to pray for people during this busy and sometimes stressful time of year. Have a prayer line where they can leave requests or an email address. Assure them it is confidential and is a gift from your church to them.
Week #5—An invitation to take part and the times your church offers free baby-sitting so busy parents or especially single parents can shop, locations where your church is doing totally free gift-wrapping.
On all these postcards be sure to clearly give the address of your church, your service times and times for children’s church or education programs, contact phone number and web site. Be sure also to always say something like “Your Local Community Church is there for you and your family, not only at Christmas time, but any time of the year. Please contact us if we can serve you in any way.” If you say something like that, be sure there is a team in place and ready to respond.
You could also do electronic versions of the postcards by creating electronic postcards or emails with the same content. The holiday postcard templates at www.constantcontact.com include wonderful designs that can be very useful in this way.
What it’s really all about
Another option would be a series of cards explaining the meaning of different traditions at Christmas. If you do a Google search on the web you’ll find dozens of pages with explanations of various Christmas traditions.
You could choose one tradition a week and again send out a series of cards. Again, many people today don’t know why we celebrate the traditions we do and you can give them a Christian explanation. Be sure to always remind them, that in addition to the reasons we have candy canes or Christmas trees (both with very Christian historical traditions) the “reason for the season” really is that Jesus, who was fully God, became fully man to grow up and become our Savior.
What’s most important
The most important thing about either of these communication/church marketing projects is not how fancy your clip art is or how stunning the type face that you choose. What is most important is if you create these and send them out with lots of love and prayer for the visitors to your church, you have a tangible way to let them know you care.
In the past, when the culture, school system, and world view was Christian, when you talked about Jesus and accepting him as your personal Savior, most people knew what you were talking about. They may not have believed it, they may not have thought it applied to them, but part of their cultural worldview was a Biblical view of the historical Jesus. Again, they may not have accepted it personally but they knew the facts about who and what they were rejecting. It is very different today.
Now, when you mention Jesus, you need to be very complete and clear what Jesus you are talking about. Are you talking about:
A Jesus who is in every person, a sort of divine spark, which is what many new-age folks believe?
A Jesus who was a first century Jew and who did good works and taught ethical precepts, but was not the Messiah, as Jewish people believe?
A prophet, but not the prophet, as the Muslims believe?
Or are you talking about the eternally existing second person of the Trinity, who came to earth, died, was buried, physically rose from the dead, and who is coming again, which is what evangelical Christians believe?
This is just the start of what you need to completely communicate about Jesus: his life, substitutionary death, his physical resurrection, his intercession for us today, his coming return. All of these truths are not part of most people’s current world view. You cannot assume that people have any knowledge of them when they come to your church. You can’t ask them to commit to a savior if they don’t even know who he really is.
A practical example of the dangers of incomplete communication about Jesus
Imagine it is Christmas and your church hosts a Christmas concert: wonderful organ music, uplifting choir pieces, moving poetry, and Bible passages all as background to a moving Christmas pageant. In the beautifully designed program (that the church communicator worked for hours to create and that cost a small fortune to print), is the statement:
If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, we trust that the joy of the music and message will so fill your heart that you will accept the true peace and joy of Christmas and become a Christian.
I do not want to be cynical, the Spirit can move in any way he desires, but if a person would then check on a card that he or she responded to this message, what does that mean? Does that person have any idea of the complete gospel message? Of the Jesus of history and not just the Jesus of beautiful hymns? Of cross-bearing and the crucifixion of Jesus and not simply Jesus the tiny baby in a manger? You may feel that you shared the gospel, that you challenged people to become Christians, but if someone responded to this incomplete gospel presentation, what really happened?
The early church required that potential converts go through a lengthy teaching time of many weeks and in-depth instruction before they were allowed to publicly proclaim their faith and be baptized. If we are not careful to completely proclaim the Christian gospel and completely teach people what a response to that gospel involves, we may be responsible for souls who think they have become a Christians but who are tragically, completely wrong.
Beyond the details of events and the essentials of salvation
The need to be complete goes beyond being certain we have all the details of events in place, though this is very important if we want to connect people with life-changing events. Being complete also moves beyond being certain people understand what it means to become a Christian, though that is the essential starting point.
We must also be complete in preparing our people to defend the faith. If we don’t take the time to completely explain, defend, and teach in depth about our faith, our people will be unprepared for those who oppose the Christian message, but who take time and care to completely put forth their false teachings. Though this component of effective church communications is most emphasized in Step 4, INSTRUCT; we must keep it in mind in every step of our communication ministry.
The challenge of those who do not believe the biblical, Christian message are sometimes more complete in their communications than we are.
The enemies of our faith are complete in their attacks. For example, a New York Times best-seller, Misquoting Jesus, the Story Behind Who Changed the Bibleand Why by Bart D. Ehrman, has been weakening and destroying the faith of many for years. Ehrman, who claims to have been a believer at one point in his life, drones on and on and on for 218 pages, in complete (though often distorted) detail, about why we cannot trust the Bible. His book is not difficult to refute, as his logic is faulty, his conclusions dubious, his seemingly shocking statements about supposed biblical inconsistences hardly news to any reputable biblical scholar. In addition, for any so-called scholarly author to use himself and his books, again and again as a primary citation of the truth of his facts, as Erhman does, is ludicrous.
But he is complete in a rambling, false, repetitive way and for a casual reader the simple volume of his argument is persuasive. I am not recommending his method, but it is effective.
Why his volume of distortions convince people
We somehow assume that if an author or authority takes the time to expound on a topic in detail and depth that it is important. Conversely, if we aren’t told about or taught about an important topic in depth it is easy to assume it is not very important. Consider the above two examples:
1. A Christmas gospel presentation of one paragraph.
2. A lengthy book detailing why the Bible can’t be trusted.
Based on the sheer volume, number of citations, seeming care and time taken to explain each topic, it would seem that author of the book about the Bible took his topic much more seriously, that he obviously cared enough to research and write about it in more detail. An uniformed seeker might consider it more true because of its completeness.
In contrast, a challenge to consider an eternity-changing decision presented in one brief, emotional paragraph, doesn’t have the same apparent importance. You may protest that a Christmas program is not the place to do into a lengthy, apologetic discussion of the Christian faith and that’s true. However, the lack of space in the program does not mean we should not explain the plan of salvation in its completeness.
Here is where the communication tools we have today and the ability to do multi-channel communication can be useful. We don’t have to put the complete details about salvation in the Christmas program. Keeping in mind the multi-channel resources we have, in the Christmas program, could be a short statement like this:
Becoming a Christ-follower is a decision that will change your eternity and the way you live the rest of your life on earth.
Don’t make the decision lightly. To explore what it means to be a Christian, please check out our website at www.churchwebsite.com.
There you’ll find answers to questions, links to explore the faith, and email addresses of folks waiting to interact with you. Not wanting to go there? Call 555-5555 and there will be someone to talk to.
We need to take time to be certain the messages of our church and the gospel are presented in completeness. Yes, setting up a complete web links, finding and training people to interact through email and the phone is difficult and time-consuming. But, if the enemies of truth can take the time to do this, we can do no less. Even if you can’t go into this much detail, at least including a well-done tract would be useful, but without anything more than a brief mention to consider Jesus, it’s hard to take the challenge to consider Jesus as Savior and Lord seriously.
One more note: An in-depth, complete critique and series of articles showing the falseness of Bart Erhman’s thesis is available on www.equip.org, the Bible Answerman’s website. In addition, one of the most complete apologists of the Christian faith is Lee Strobel and his book, the Case for the Real Jesus, deals with Erhman’s and other current critics of the Bible and Jesus and provides in-depth answers to their false claims. I highly recommend both sources and have used them prior to Christmas to do a series of lessons on Why Jesus is the Reason for the Christmas Season.
