How To Create An Amazing Church Communications Team

When I first started out in ministry I served as a worship director. Music and performance had always come naturally to me having played in some musical groups in high school, so it was a good fit. 

When I stepped into my first paid worship leading position, I quickly realized that my own musical abilities would only take me so far. Why? Because you can’t lead contemporary worship on your own. You need a team. You need singers, drummers, A/V technicians, and many more people with many different gifts in order to make it all work.

In addition to needing a team, as a worship director you also need to work in close collaboration with the lead or teaching pastor. This is to ensure the musical worship is aligned with both the sermon and the values of the church. If you just pick the songs you want without any regard for the topic and scripture passage of the day, you’ll have missed an opportunity to truly lead people into God’s word. 

Worship leading isn’t a one-person show. You have to have a good team and you need to be willing to collaborate with other key leaders in order to bring a quality and faithful outcome on Sunday morning. 

Your church communications team works the same way.

Collaborative & Interdisciplinary

Your church communications ministry needs a team. You can’t personally fill every communications role, nor would you want to! Church communications is inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary, which means you have to work with other people. 

Collaboration is essential because the communications team is responsible for communicating content that originates with the church’s leadership. Announcements aren’t created in a vacuum. They need to originate somewhere and so a communications director has to be able to receive information from leadership. 

But the simple passing along of information doesn’t really capture what a communications director does. There’s so much more to it than that, but we’ll get to that in a little bit.

The interdisciplinary nature of communications is also key. On any given communications team, you need numerous people with different gifts. Copywriters take raw content and wordsmith it into compelling announcements with clear calls to action. Graphic designers take that copy and create visual aids that help illustrate the content and relate it to the brand. Project managers keep all the tasks, due dates, and meetings moving toward the goal. All of these team members (and more) need each other.

The focus of this first chapter is how to create an effective communications team in a small to midsize church context. 

Who do you need on a communications team?

Assuming you are free to build your dream team with whomever you desire (not always the case with some church structures), there are some key people you’re going to want to recruit for your team. For each of these positions, you have a lot of factors to consider.

First, will you search for people who are already skilled in each area, or will you be looking for people with a basic knowledge but are teachable? I actually don’t think one is necessarily better than the other. If you recruit a person who is already a great photographer for instance, they may produce some great photography right off the bat, but they come with other baggage. This isn’t universally true, but I’ve found that when you recruit volunteers who are already a professional in their field, they can often be a little more stingy with their time and they can be less flexible and teachable. 

With someone who needs some training, you may have to deal with a lower quality product for a while, but can train that person up to really own that position and work within the vision and strategy of the team.

This is all to say, it’s great to get someone already skilled in each position, but don’t dismiss someone who is excited to serve and humble enough to be taught. 

Second, you need to figure out what positions you want to launch your communications team with. There are many communications skills out there but there really are only a handful of primary positions that need to be filled. There are many ways to label these positions but often you’ll have one person doing multiple positions or multiple people doing one position, and they are: administrative, creative, and systems. 

Administrators are responsible for directing and organizing. These are the architects and foremen who envision the project and implement the vision (eg: Team leader, project manager, pastors).

Creatives are responsible for content creation. These are the creators who bring the administrators’ vision to life through graphic design, photography, videography, copywriting, and more.

Systems people are responsible for creating and managing the platforms. These people use the content created by the creatives to create systems that makes the administrator’s vision a reality through platforms like a website, ChMS, marketing, app, Social media, and more.

Now I’d like to take a little time to unpack these gifts and positions that tend to make up these three main areas.

Administrators - Vision

Team Leader

The Team Leader brings the vision and goals for the team. This person can be the communications director or perhaps even a pastor. Team leaders are generally decision makers who are able to decide on a course of action or quickly collaborate with someone who can. Without the team leader, communications can feel aimless and disconnected from the life of the church. Team leaders are usually visionary leaders and therefore not necessarily great with coordinating details. 

Project Manager 

The project manager is the “details'' person. They’re the one who manages all aspects of every project. While many team members tend to stay in their lane, PMs don’t have that luxury because their lanes are actually all the lanes. PMs need to have a 30 thousand foot view of the entire project and then be able to zoom in to make sure certain aspects of each component are being executed to the team leader’s vision and on time. 

Because project managers are typically fairly organized, they will usually have a system in place to keep all projects on track. Systems can be as simple as a binder with dividers and paper notes, but are more likely these days to be hosted on some kind of project management platform, which that person can use to communicate with and coordinate the whole team.

Creatives - Content

Graphic Designer

Your graphic designer is the first creative position on your communications team. This person is responsible for most of the creative aspects of your branding and content creation, both of which are extremely important areas. Your graphic designer is responsible for creating sermon art, event graphics, announcement banners, informational brochures, and more.

Photographer

Photography is one area where small to midsize churches can learn a lot from large churches. When you look at a large church website, one thing you’ll notice is a lot of high quality photography. They know it’s absolutely essential for new or potential visitors to gain a window into the church before visiting. What does Sunday morning look like? Children’s Ministry? Fellowship time? Who’s on staff? They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and while I think this is a bit of an overstatement (as you’ll see when we talk about copywriting), but they are worth a LOT. 

Finding a great photographer in your church and bringing that person onto your church communications team can be a real game changer. If the team has access to a robust library of quality photography of every ministry, it will really help paint an accurate picture of your church to potential visitors.

Videographer

Similar to the photography position, videography is a powerful tool for helping new people learn about your church before coming, and I’m not just talking about recording the sermon. Videography gives you the power to create short and accessible content for your target audience.

For example, let’s say you want to help people understand the value of joining a small group. You can get a small group leader up during the announcement to give a quick testimony, but you can also create a 2-minute film interviewing group leaders and members where they give testimony on how small groups have influenced their lives, marriages, families, etc. 

Video allows us to create content that is short, engaging, and powerful. This content can also be used in many different contexts. Trust me, once you have a videographer on your team, you will never run out of projects for them.

Copywriter

Quality copywriting is, in my opinion, the most neglected area of communications in most churches. At the very least it’s an afterthought once the graphics or videos have been completed. This is a huge problem because copy is the part of your communications that engages people’s ideas and interest and then moves them strategically through a series of ideas, ideally ending with a call to action. When building a website, creating a Socials post, designing a brochure, copywriting should be the driving force of the content, not an afterthought.

The problem is, most people are not equipped to be copywriters. So finding a person who understands your church's culture and is able to deliver content in an engaging way is not easy, but don’t let the challenge of it deter you from finding and equipping a quality copywriter.

Systems

It probably goes without saying but in church communications, you work with a lot of platforms and systems. Most churches these days find themselves building or managing platforms like a website, mobile app, church management system, Social media, email marketing, and more. Each of these systems needs to be built and managed strategically in order to facilitate church communications.

We’re going to talk about systems and platforms a lot more later, but for now it’s important to note that you’re going to need people who understand and thrive in these systems, and it’s not always obvious who this person, or these people will be. Each system has a certain blend of technology, creative, and administrative aspects to them. For now I would say to be open to the person managing these systems. While the office manager may seem like the right person, if that person isn’t at all creative, they may really struggle with website upkeep or Social Media management.

Gathering, Empowering, and Equipping Your Team

Once you have your communications team assembled (which of course may take some time), you need to think about how your team will both work together AND in collaboration with the church staff.

Gathering with your team

I dislike meetings as much as the next person (probably more), but having a regularly scheduled church communications meeting is essential. 

These meetings don’t need to be long or even done in person. Communications meetings exist to follow-up on what the staff and leadership are planning for the church. Therefore, since most of your team will be composed of volunteers, I would recommend making sure your team leader is present at staff meetings, taking note of all the important information happening there, and then bringing that to the communications team meetings soon after to initiate the projects and delegate among the team.

But why not just have the whole communications team join the staff meetings? Good question.

First, if your team is composed of paid-staff, then that may be helpful. But like I mentioned, a small to midsize church’s communications team is more likely to have volunteers on their team, which makes it hard for them to attend daytime staff meetings and might be too much commitment for a volunteer.

I’ve also found it can actually be harmful to have a communications team at a full staff meeting. The reason is communications is pretty all-consuming. When a staff gets together it’s usually to do things like ministry updates, devotions, hear visionary next steps, and maybe some planning. When you insert a communications team into this equation, communications can easily hijack the whole meeting. 

This is why I recommend keeping your communications meeting separate from a regular staff meeting.

Empower your team

Your team needs to be encouraged and empowered. They have a tough job ahead of them so be sure to express to them how valued they are and then empower them to do the job you’re asking them to do.

For instance, you photographer may be anxious about coming to a worship service with a camera and snapping shots of everything. They may worry about offending someone or somehow overstepping their mandate and in the process, they may not capture the service very well. You need to give them permission to do their job and provide them with direction so they know what you expect.  

Equip your team

Some team members are going to need additional equipping. You may have a volunteer who is great at creating flyers and brochures, but doesn’t know how to create a sermon graphic. This doesn't mean they aren’t qualified to create sermon graphics, but it does mean they may need a little help and direction. 

Are there any example graphics you can provide them with so they understand your style preferences? Are there templates you can equip them with so they don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time? Take the extra time to make sure your team is feeling equipped to do their job.

Now that you have your communications team assembled, you can move onto step two. 

Next Steps

I hope you found this blog helpful and given you the direction you need to take those first steps toward creating and maintaining thriving communications in your church. 

Every year, Clearpath partners with churches just like yours to help them create thriving communications. Here’s a few action steps you can take when you’re ready:

Action Steps:

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