Discover how to leverage technology in your church

Last week, I wrote about the first step of stategic planning for churches—implementing a program review process at your church. With that step in hand, you can now set the future in motion through visioning.

Strategic planning is important for every organization, whether it’s business, a group, or a church. As a church leader, you are responsible for looking at the larger picture to decide what will be of most benefit to your congregation—unless your church has unlimited resources, of course!

The first step? Implementing a program review process at your church. Here’s how to get started:

Let’s be real—creating newsletters is a pain. Especially if you’re creating your document in Microsoft Word, where formatting can be a real issue.

Whether you make newsletters for print or email, it’s a struggle to keep your announcements down to a page or two. But if your newsletters are much longer than that, readers lose interest and resort to skimming or throwing away the paper completely. Here are some tips to keep your newsletters short and informative: 

When I start working on my Christmas cards every year, I find myself wishing for a really awesome photo.

My guess is that this happens every year. Some well-meaning person comes up to you after the Christmas Eve service and says "Isn’t it exciting to see so our church so full? Wouldn't it be great if we could get them to all come back next week?"

If no one has ever said that to you, I’m sure you’ve at least had that same thought. I know I have!

Sometimes it’s really easy to get worked up about the number of people who worship at your congregation. Our culture defines success by numbers. When large numbers of visitors attend worship, we think that means we must be successful as a congregation, and our thoughts naturally turn to how we can keep them coming back.

’Tis the season to bring a little Advent/Christmas spirit to social media!

Imagine a month where you didn’t need to think about what you were going to post on social media. Pretty great, huh? Better yet, imagine a month where members of your church are creatively generating images that you collect and share throughout the Advent season. Sound too good to be true?

Enter the Advent Photo-a-Day Challenge.

Nonprofits, including churches, see a huge influx of donations and gifts during the month of December. With this in mind, it’s important for churches to talk about giving this time of year!

This can be done on social media, through email or a letter, on the church website, or in the church newsletter. By starting the conversation, you’ll increase the likelihood of people giving to your church (and it’s Christ-centered mission) when the desire to be generous strikes!

When it comes to taking photos at events, it’s hard to capture a moment that actually looks good! All too often, event pictures turn out blurry, dark, or out of focus, or they manage to catch someone right as he puts a huge bite of cake into his mouth.

Have you ever converted anyone with your church website?

To be clear, I’m not talking about a digital altar call or anything like. I know the Holy Spirit can bring believers to faith through a variety of means, including websites, but that’s not the type of conversion I mean.

In the marketing industry, a conversion is when a website visitor takes an action that leads to a business result. This could be an initial action, like adding an item to a shopping cart, or a final conversion, such as a completing a purchase.

Have you ever looked at one of those color picker tools, only to feel suddenly paralyzed by indecision?

That little rainbow circle offers endless color options (literally millions). Try not to hyperventilate. When you’re called on to design the church newsletter, emails, flyers, or even the website, I know the task of choosing colors can be overwhelming!