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7 Steps to Build an Effective Fall Communications Plan at Your Church

By Katy Crawford | Sep 24, 2021 12:00:00 PM

I love heading into a new season (or month or week or even day) with a plan, knowing what needs to be tackled and when I'm going to do it. When that doesn’t happen (a fair amount of the time), it can feel defeating and I often find myself floundering, buying the lie that it’s too late to do anything, and constantly playing catch up.

Although school has already begun in most places, and many church activities are back on the calendar, it’s not too late to take time to plan for fall communications in your congregation! Here are a few ideas to get you started.

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Meet Nebraska District Communications Director Kimberly Myers

By Katy Crawford | May 28, 2021 12:00:00 PM

Meet Kimberly Myers, Communications Director for the Nebraska District of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod and a communications volunteer in her congregation. With a focus on serving a broad range of congregations throughout her district and a background in teaching overseas, Kimberly offers insight and encouragement as she shares a picture of her work in church communications. 

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Ingredients of a Detailed Church Communications Strategy

By Peter Frank | Jun 9, 2020 2:00:00 PM

When I was a sophomore in college, I moved into a dormitory that had previously been used as a fraternity house. There were a lot of things that made it different than a typical dorm, but the thing I was most excited about was the large kitchen. 

Over the previous year, I started to become interested in cooking, especially food that was healthy. The prospect of having a full kitchen available made me decide to skip the cafeteria meal plan, plan to go grocery shopping on a regular basis, and cook healthy recipes for most of my meals.

Like many plans, I certainly had good intentions, but I didn't implement it very well. By the end of the school year, I was so busy with homework and finals that the majority of my meals ended up being off-brand mac and cheese bowls heated up in the microwave. It was not really healthy, but it was inexpensive, quick, and easy, and I was at least able to eat.

Church communications can often be like my "cooking" experience: detailed plans created by enthusiastic people with good intentions and an overly-optimistic idea about the available time. There is nothing wrong with any of those things, but that situation can easily lead to incomplete implementation of those plans.
 
Now that I am an adult and a bit more self-aware, I have learned the trick to cooking healthy on a regular basis. I still have good intentions and a detailed plan, but I've learned that it's a lot more likely that I will implement those plans when I have all the ingredients readily available. I make sure to keep a cabinet full of spices and a freezer full of meat. When I go out on my weekly grocery shopping trip, I load up on fruits and vegetables, so I now I have everything I need to make healthy meals.
 
Having all of those ingredients on hand makes it easy to cook healthy on a regular basis, and the same is true for church communications. There are a variety of communications tools (ingredients) that you can prepare in advance so that when the time comes to implement your church's communication plans, you're all ready to go.

 

As you build out your church's communication strategy, consider using any or all of the following tools to help you gain a better understanding of your situation, your audiences, and what you are communicating. A detailed communication strategy should include all of these ingredients in some form, but you don't need to wait to get started until you have all of them in place.

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The Proper Use of Personas and Lists in Church Communications

By Peter Frank | May 5, 2020 2:00:00 PM

This past Sunday, my church, along with many other congregations, observed Good Shepherd Sunday. While not an official holiday in the Church Year, it has been historically called that because the Fourth Sunday of Easter focuses on Jesus as the Good Shepherd. 

The Gospel reading this Sunday was from John 10:1–10, but I want to draw your attention to what Jesus says just a short time later in verse 14.

“I know My own and My own know Me.” (John 10:14 ESV)

What a wonderful thing to have a Savior who cares about us so much that He left the glory of heaven and became a human being so that He could live and die for us and our salvation. Jesus is a Savior who really, truly knows us.

We as leaders in the Church are called to follow Christ’s example as a shepherd and care for His flock. In fact, the word pastor is a Latin word that means “shepherd.” As every good pastor will tell you, you can’t care for your flock until you get to know them.

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The Importance of a Strategy over Tactics in Church Communications

By Peter Frank | Apr 22, 2020 1:00:00 PM

One of my favorite board games to play when I was a kid was a two-person game called Stratego. The goal of Stratego is to capture the flag of the opposing player while protecting one’s own. Each player starts with a large number of pieces, and each piece has a ranking. The players battle those pieces against each other until one can capture the other’s flag.

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Investing in People Skills over Marketing

By Katy Crawford | Nov 21, 2019 9:00:00 AM

I recently reread Kem Meyer’s book, Less Chaos. Less Noise. As I did, Meyer’s words hit me right between the eyes, as they often do. This time, however, it wasn’t about written communication. What got me was her writing on people skills.

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Sharing the Gospel and the Lutheran Faith on Your Website

By Lora Horn | Jun 18, 2019 8:30:00 AM

Sociologists maintain that you can learn a lot about looking in people’s medicine cabinets. In the same vein, I believe a narthex tells a lot about a congregation. When I visit a congregation, I notice so many things:

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Creating a Communication Plan for a Large Project

By Rev. Daniel Ross | Jun 13, 2019 7:30:00 AM

Nothing will stop a project faster than a lack of communication. To fill the gap, misinformation will quickly spread. This will lead to ever increasing amounts of frustration from leaders to stakeholders until overall apathy envelops the project. In turn, the project will stall out or people will come to resent it.

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Personalize Your Church Communication

By Rev. Bill Johnson | Apr 30, 2019 11:30:00 AM

We’ve all gotten them . . . the well-meaning envelope trying to notify us about an important upcoming event or to make sure we’re aware of the can’t-miss deal of the century. And you open the envelope (maybe) and pull out the letter and begin reading the message meant uniquely for you. “Dear Sir or Madam . . .”

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Coordinating a Short Video Shoot inside Your Church

By Andrew Osborne | Feb 28, 2019 3:00:00 PM

As many churches continue to see the value in social media for reaching out to their communities, it’s important that we use best practices for helping our content reach more people. As many studies show, when it comes to Facebook, videos tend to be the best content to get more engagement. Because of that, it’s a good idea to produce high-quality video content to share on our social media platforms.

For many church workers, this can seem daunting. You might be thinking, “I didn’t go to film school. How am I supposed to create this kind of content?” It doesn’t have to be as hard as many people make it sound. There are some easy steps you can take to regularly make short, high-quality videos to share on social media.

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