Why does your church need a communications team?

Every church leader knows it’s important to have a high-functioning team leading and overseeing the ministries of the church. Youth teams, preaching teams, welcome teams...and the list goes on. These teams see to it that everyone in the church is cared for and ministered to.

In addition to these siloed ministry teams, there’s another kind of team in the church that doesn’t care for just one group of people, but instead takes care of a critical function for all other ministries.

That is the communications team.

Church communications teams can go by many names: church communications, marcom, marketing, or even engagement. Regardless of what you call it, this team is responsible for the same things as a business’ marketing department.

Unfortunately, many churches are still trying to function without a communications team. They may have a receptionist who sends out church emails and puts together the church bulletin, but that’s about it.

‘Wait a second” you say, “what about evangelism? What about discipleship?” Absolutely. Evangelism and discipleship are still and will always be the most effective way of growing the church. But what happens when you reach a new person with the gospel and they look for your church and encounter an ancient website? Or they visit for the first time and there are no systems in place to follow up and connect them with a ministry?

In our age and with how people typically connect digitally, communications are absolutely essential for the life and growth of the church. So here let’s now unpack the question, “why does your church need a communications team?”

Ministry leaders (probably) can’t do communications with excellence

Your youth team is great with teenagers. Your worship team is filled with gifted musicians. Your counseling team is trained in pastoral counseling...you get the idea. But odds are these same people are not great writers, graphic designers, videographers, or project managers. But all too often, ministry leaders are left to figure marketing and communications out on their own. The result? Low quality and ineffective communications.

They put hundreds of hours into planning summer camp for the youth group, but the flyers are lame, the registration and payment processing don’t work, and parents are left uninformed about next steps. If a communications team is available to come alongside the youth team, then they can take care of all the pieces that the youth leaders are not gifted in or passionate about.

Communications is interdisciplinary

A big reason you need a team for communications is it usually requires people with very different gifts, and those gifts aren’t just creative.

Church communications needs strategic analytical people to set-up and manage the Church Management System AND it needs creative graphic designers to create event graphics that will be used in the Church Management System; and those gifts rarely exist in the same person.

When you have a healthy, gifted, and organized team tackling your communications, you don’t get great writing with mediocre video, you get great everything.

Your ministry is too important for people not to know about it

Have you ever put an insane amount of work into an event, only for just a handful of people to hear about it and show up? A church communications team will do two things to ensure people know about what’s happening in the church.

First, they will make sure there are effective systems in place to deliver the announcements. You can’t just rely on Sunday morning announcements or a bulletin insert to get the job done. You need to reach people where they are and to do that, you must make your announcements on multiple platforms and with a clear strategy.

Second, a communications team will take your announcement and customize the creative and strategic aspect of the announcement to ensure it gets in front of the right audience, in the right way, at the right time.

Bottom line

Church communications is absolutely essential for the life and health of your ministry. However, we realize it can be a real challenge to find the right people, with the right gifts, who are able to dedicate themselves to the success of your ministry.

We would love to help! 

Church communications can seem overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Our team has walked alongside all kinds of churches from all around the country. We would love to hear more about your church and explore how we can partner together to improve your church communications and empower your ministry in your city.