The most important page on your church website

Up to this point, everything we’ve talked about has been centered around creating and developing your church communications. I’ll be honest, not everyone is built for development. In order to develop a strategy, team, branding, and platforms, you have to be wired for it. You have to be able to face the reality of months of projects and troubleshooting and actually enjoy it. It’s not for everyone.

In the same way, management is not for everyone. Managing church communications also takes creativity and strategy, but instead you need to be able to approach it from the perspective of maintaining ongoing projects, promotions, and announcements.

With that, I’d like to discuss a few key areas of maintaining thriving church communications. 

Efficient Communication 

Your communications team needs to stay connected and to work together efficiently. Using tools like texting and emails may be good for mass one-way communication, but it’s not great for collaborative communication. If you’re working with a team of 4-5 people, then you need to be able to engage with one another better. You can’t go looking for email messages, forget to include certain team members in a reply-all, etc. 

So I recommend using a team collaboration tool like Slack. If you’re unfamiliar, Slack is a team communication tool that allows multiple people to connect via mobile and computer app. When team members have something to say or a question to ask, they can just jump on Slack, say their piece, and move on. Work conversations stay in one place, move forward quickly, and don’t get confused in a mess of other emails. 

Over the years, I started many Slack accounts for churches for the purpose of completing projects together. But most churches end up liking it so much they continue to use it with all of their teams long after our projects are complete.

Efficient Project Management

In addition to using a communication tool, I think it can also be useful for teams to use a project management system.

Project Management systems are different from something like Slack because they allow teams to work on tasks by assigning people to specific subtasks, set due dates, upload shared files, and receive reminder notifications.

There are some problems with church teams using project management systems. First, there’s often a steep learning curve and you might leave less tech savvy people in the dust. Also, the cost can be a little high. Some of these systems are pretty expensive if you want to unlock all the features.

So I tend to recommend platforms based on how tech savvy and ambitious that team is. If all the technology so far has been pretty challenging (ChMS, Apps, Website, etc), then I usually recommend using something simple like shared google folders and docs. 

If the team is feeling a little more ambitious, then I tend to recommend something like Asana, which has a pretty robust free version and is fairly user friendly. But there are tons of options out there. What’s really important is to find something that works for your team and stick to it. 

Long vs. Short-Term Calendar Meetings

One of the greatest gifts a communications team can give a pastor or ministry leader is to stay on top of the ongoing recurring communications needs of the church. Pastors are typically visionary leaders, which often means they don’t like details. So your team staying on top of the details is huge.

However, something that is often forgotten among communications teams is to balance prioritizing short-term ongoing and urgent needs with future long-term communications needs of the church. 

This is why I recommend in addition to holding regular communications team meetings to stay on top of ongoing needs, I think it’s also important to hold separate long-term calendaring meetings to anticipate future needs so you can determine lead time, deadlines and budgeting. 

This is important because very often in the church big communications projects tend to sneak up on us. We get consumed with something like the Fall ministry launch and boom, it’s three weeks until Halloween and we haven’t done anything to promote the Trunk or Treat.  We recover from Trunk or Treat, it’s early November but we forget that Advent usually starts on the last Sunday of November, so you need all of your Advent content prepared, printied, and shipped in just a few weeks. 

This last minute rush tends to hurt the quality of the communications and stresses out the team. Long-term communications planning can help avoid these common pitfalls and help your team thrive.

Budgeting

Thriving Communications costs more than most people think. Not counting staffing cost, the combined costs of your platforms, special printing, signage, paid marketing (if you go that route), all come with a price tag and you can’t produce great communications without a decent budget.

So make this topic an agenda item in your long-term planning meetings. If you’re looking a year ahead and planning numerous outreach events, plan on building these costs into your budget for next year. 

Also, help your leadership understand that communications and marketing is a crucial part of growing the church. Be thoughtful about how you make this argument. Please don’t compare a church to a business and say something like “it takes money to make money.” While there may be some truth in this, it’s not usually very effective.

Instead, go back to your vision. Most churches desire to reach new people with the gospel. To do this, churches need a communications and marketing budget that will empower them to reach new people. 

Just a quick note on budgeting for printed mailer campaigns vs digital. While there are certainly lots of pros and cons, one of the huge pros for digital campaigns is that you can actually track (to a certain extent) their success. If you can prove that a Facebook boost or Google Display Ad reached a certain number of people, then it will help secure a larger marketing budget in the future.

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:

Learn more about Clearpath: https://clearpath.church/

Download the Church Communications Blueprint: https://clearpath.church/blueprint

Start an Assessment: https://clearpath.church/assessments

Start a conversation: https://clearpath.church/contact