Discover how to leverage technology in your church

Whether they’re potlucks, special voters’ meetings, or trunk-or-treats, last-minute events are bound to happen (sometimes more often than we would like!). The idea of driving attendance or gaining support for a last-minute event makes most of us cringe. While it is sometimes easy to explain to a volunteer that they should consider moving the date to ensure the event is successful, it isn’t as easy to tell the church president or pastor.

So, what do we do with these last-minute requests? How do we pull off a successful communication effort in a short time frame? We must dig into our toolbox of available resources and communication knowledge. We must become creative and not panic in the moment of slight (or maybe big) frustration.

One of my greatest struggles working in a communications role for a church is finding the balance between executing existing plans or ideas and finding space for creativity and exploring new possibilities. Church communicators function within a certain tension of straightforward (relatively speaking) administrative tasks and an ever-changing communications landscape that requires awareness, innovation, and a certain amount of “let’s try this and see how it goes!” (See this post on agile failing for a little encouragement.) There are things that simply need to be done, but we can find ourselves so stuck in the maintenance of things that we forget to explore new possibilities.

Before computers became integrated with our lives, the big office complaint was about paper. A good deal of our communication and information storage involved paper. How to store that information, share that information, and avoid being buried in that information was a daily challenge.

I know—it still is.

While we might deal with less paper than previous generations, we’re bombarded with more information and communication than ever before. We have a completely different kind of clutter and the same need. How do we keep it all straight?

In a perfect world, our churches would have all the financial means to employ ginormous staffs who can serve both the people in our congregations and the communities around us. We’d have people hired to teach Bible studies geared specifically to certain age groups. We’d have communications experts who could craft social media posts to reach all the people in our communities to draw them to our churches. We’d have it all. But as we all know, the world isn’t perfect, and our churches can’t always afford to hire people to fill each role we need to do the ministry God has called us to do. That doesn’t mean, however, that God doesn’t provide exactly what we need to accomplish what He wants with what we’ve got.

When it comes to logos, branding, and name recognition, it seems the world understands why it’s so important for their favorite pair of shoes or beverage to have these things, but not why their church home should.

Happy 149th birthday, Concordia Publishing House! Of course, there’s a bunch of excitement about the big one-five-zero happening a year from now (and rightfully so!), but you only turn 149 once. Whatever the number, birthdays are a great time to remember, reflect, and celebrate—so here we go!

Read any number of books on church organization and evangelism, and you’ll hear some common goals. Visitors should feel at home. They should be comfortable finding their way around. They should feel like they’re welcome and that their presence is valued in the community. They should feel safe.

Those are all good things, at least objectively, but it’s hardly a list that your elders couldn’t have written themselves. More interesting are the competing ways we’re advised to achieve these same goals. Visitors should be singled out and welcomed the moment they walk in the door or they should be allowed to worship in anonymity and peace. We should follow up at their house later in the day, or send them a letter next week, or maybe just leave them alone and hope our distance conveys enough respect for their privacy that they come back. It’s a mess.

In my last post I touched on how I ditched a well-thought-out communication request form for more personal interactions with our ministry leaders. I think this idea of relationship building goes even deeper than with the leaders; it applies to each volunteer too.

Our goal as church staff members, called or not, is always to be personal and to connect. But sometimes a volunteer not seeing the bigger mission of the church can drive a wedge between what the volunteer wants to do with a specific ministry and what should be done. As a communicator, I know for me anyway that this wedge can create unnecessary friction. We want to help the congregation and pastors achieve our church goals, to do our job, and to make everyone happy. We all know that is easier said than done! Am I right?

My eyes have been opened over the last two years about showing appreciation. Not that I wasn’t appreciative before, but now that I’m in development, appreciation has become a large part of my role in ministry and I’m much more conscious of showing it.

Ben Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

Although I’m one who loves a well thought out plan, I have a lot of growing to do when it comes to having a solid grasp on this. So, I’ve been reading, listening to podcasts, and trying to soak up any wisdom I can from those who do this sort of thing well. One recurring theme I’ve encountered is that of planning rhythms.