How Does Your Church Communicate?

I was adding a comment to a website recently. The blogger posed the question, "How does your church provide announcements to your congregation each week". As I got closer to completing my answer, I realized that I was getting more passionate. Not mad or anything, just passionate so it prompted me to write this.

1 new way and 2 common presentations of weekly announcements.

1. One idea is to have your announcements presented to congregants via video each week. I visited a church recently who did this and I have to admit, it was very cool. However, not every church has the appropriate staffing or equipment to get this done. Also, I might have liked it simply because it was something new. I would be curious to learn that if I experienced it week in and out, if I would still feel the same way.
   
   
2. Another idea is to send out e-mail announcements each week. Um...no. This is a big time #fail in my opinion. How many e-mails do you get each day? I don't want to count how many I get, but I know I am constantly deleting e-mails that come in that I don't have time for or care to read. How many more people are out there that do the same thing as me? I can't be alone.
   
   
3. The trusty bulletin. I am sorry...will you think less of me or think that I am not a true Believer if I tell you that I avoid getting that handed to me each week? It's true. I think it is a waste of a lot of the church staff's time, ultimately affecting the bottom line and ministry effectiveness. I think that I would be fine with it if it simply provided the message outline. But when I see everything else on it, I can hear the Peanuts teacher talking to Charlie Brown as I read.

Solution

I realize that this could heavily depend on your churches demographics, (for those of you who can't read between the lines, I am saying not "full of age") but the way I see the best use of everyone's (church staff and congregant) time would be to put less focus on the bulletin and more on the way the church staff communicates online.

1. I would drastically reduce the bulletins prominence.
   • Grant your designer (hired or volunteer) some quality time to come up with a compelling front cover that ties in the current sermon series or the theme of the ministry year.
   • On the back, provide the church's contact information, website address, RSS feed URL's and the budget numbers
   • Have an insert for those note takers out there with the sermon outline.
     
     
2. I would drastically increase the websites prominence.
• Communicate to your staff that you are going to be hitting a nail pretty hard to the congregants. Explain that 95% of all future communication is going to come via your website. At first, this is going to take:
  • Buy in from the top leadership to grant you time to get this implemented and working.
  • Determination on your part, to do the above.
  • Determination on your staffs part, to do the above.
  • Patience with your congregation, to do the above.
  • Discernment. Why discernment? The advent of great technologies birthed the idea that everything happens instantaneously and perfectly. This is rarely the case. You will need discernment as you will probably get a few people complaining to you that they liked the old way better. Trust me, it's going to happen.
• Have a "Did you know" section of your website telling your congregants how to get the most from your website.
• Create some Ads to appear directing people to the above section.
  
• RSS Feeds. If you don't know what that is, please read Wikipedia's description on RSS and continue reading. Our Church CMS is set up in such a way that your Site Level News, Events and Blogs all have their own independent RSS feed URL's and so does each Ministry that you create. This means that if your staff is plugging in the information that was in the bulletin each week in their section of your website, your RSS feeds would be filled with timely information. If you do this, you will have begun to turn that huge flywheel that is storing tons of energy. It is crazy hard to get moving, but once it is, it is quite simple.
• If you aren't, I would really put some effort into getting your pastors message online and include the sermon notes. If I was going to your site, I would want to have a way to filter your weekly messages by topic, book and speaker. If you had both the audio and video I would be even more happy. Video for when I have time to watch, audio for when I am on the go.

While the crowd is silent and unsure of this new information, Travis confidently steps off stage left awaiting each readers response and future understanding.

I want your feedback, please chime in!