Paul Clark

Life is overwhelming enough. Don’t add to your members’ load

Great little article from Church Executive via an interview with communications guru Kem Meyer from Granger Church...

You’ve seen the billboard of two pair of feet sticking out of the covers of a bed, advertising a message series on sexuality. “We don’t set out to create a flurry of activity, but to create a helpful series about real life dangerous topics for people who aren’t hearing the truth from anyone, anywhere else,” says Kem Meyer, communications director at Granger (IN) Community Church.

 “We try a few things that people don’t expect from a church, hoping people will be curious enough at least to come check it out.” Meyer is author of the new book Less Clutter. Less Noise: Beyond Bulletins, Brochures and Bake Sales (Thirty:One Press, 2009), and responded to questions:

Where do churches most go wrong in internal communications?

Life is overwhelming enough as it is. Churches shouldn’t be piling more on top of an already mounting problem, especially when people are looking for answers that will make a difference. But, typically that’s what they do. They say too much and make it hard for people to find the answers they’re looking for. If the church is looking to be a credible source for those answers, it should be looking to help reduce that information overload and helping people find ways to process the information they already have.

Read the rest of the article here.

too many messages are like little monsters

In a recent blog, Tony Morgan talked about how easy it is for critical church messages to get lost in the clutter of too many messages.  It's like to commercial for the job search company, The Ladders.

"In an attempt to be fair, churches are willing to be less effective.

• When we promote every ministry equally, nothing gets prioritized.
• When every ministry is treated the same, it creates confusion for people trying to figure out their next step.
• When we give everyone the same platform, it’s difficult for any of the messages to be heard.

The only answer to this is for leaders to be unfair. You have to determine your priorities, and give those ministries the focus in your messaging. You have to be willing to say “no” to many requests

Tough job, but so true!  Look at the messages you're sending through to your congregation.  Pulpit announcements, bulletin, Powerpoint slides, email, newsletters... are there too many--is there too much clutter for the really important stuff to get through?

is it really just heaven or hell?

The picture above makes it pretty clear that some churches and Christians believe the central message in applying faith to life is, “avoid hell.” Jesus wasn’t afraid to talk about hell, that’s true, but I think the idea of avoiding hell misses most of the point of the New Testament. Should our message then focus only on heaven?

“Fire and brimstone may spice up doomsday prophecies, but a new study shows most people prefer to look on the bright side of afterlife.

When both heaven and hell are considered valid final destinations, researchers find the notion of eternal bliss is three times more powerful than that of eternal damnation in shaping church attendance and frequency of prayer.

The 32-country study of some 35,000 people -- Canadians among them -- concludes that in the presence of the "largest possible stakes," rewards are more persuasive than punishments.”

[See the complete article here]

The truth is that the “stick” and the “carrot” are both part of the Gospel. Let’s be honest, most of us are not giving our lives to the work of the church just to avoid hell or gain heaven. The life and message of Jesus Christ are so very attractive to the human heart that we’ve let go of some big things to advance the Kingdom of our Savior.

So it's really important that we wrestle with two things: 1) the central message of our church 2) the need to market our church without diluting our message. Came across a good article to help think it through: Marketing your church without diluting your message

A MinistryCOM stat to chew on:

14% of people believe the advertising they hear
86% of people believe what their peers tell them

The point: spending money on church marketing is important and effective if done well, but even when done well, it doesn’t rival the effectiveness of me telling my friends, neighbors and coworkers about how much I love my church or better yet, how amazing my life has been since I became a follower of Jesus.

The key to church growth isn’t strategic marketing materials, but people who love their church and love God, and get motivated to share it. We talk a lot here at Fairhaven about “Reaching 2.” Check it out…

Got a burning question about managing the local church? Send me your questions and I’ll tackle one each Friday, opening it up for your comments. Respond to pclark.fhc@gmail.com

wiki for telling the Story

I’ve asked our web programmer to design a wiki for the staff to use to tell their ministry stories.  We have to always “beat the bushes” to find the stories of the good things that are happening in their ministries. Like when we need a good print story or a videotaped testimony.  With a wiki, we can send out an automated weekly reminder for them to add any stories of ministry success, salvations, blessings, testimonies, stories of transformation, etc. to the wiki, and that way we can all read it when it is updated and be encouraged by what God is doing.  We’ll know what’s happening and can use the stories to draw from for video/print needs.  We’ll put it on our internal website, or intranet, so that it’s accessible by all the staff.  For now we’ll only use it internally, but depending on how it works, we may design something that the congregation can access on our website to tell us their stories. 

Solving the Fall Communications Wars

This past weekend we hosted our second Fall Kickoff. If you're church is like mine, there's a rush for available communication channels as September approaches. Every ministry has a message to get out, registrations to take and volunteers to recruit. In years past, it's been a battle to see who gets the airtime. It's frustrating because there are so many ministries going on and the need for each of them to reach their target audience is legitimate.

We've found an event that has seemed to satisfy everyone and has been very effective in accomplishing the ministry's goals. We bring all the ministries together in our multipurpose room, giving each one a booth, electric, signage, and whatever supporting print material they need, and for two consecutive weeks, we make every effort to get the congregation to walk through and take care of their fall ministry needs. Each booth is staffed by enthusiastic ministry volunteers who are anxious to share their passion with anyone who gets close to their table. It's been a great event, thanks mostly to Shelley Dulaney, our Pastor of First Impressions, and her awesome volunteer crew. They make it warm, friendly, relaxed, and running over with free Saxby's coffee. Most ministries come out of the event with the volunteers they needed and all their registrations completed, although there's still a ton of that done online through what we call, Common Ground.

Our media dept, HelloMedia, also publishes a 24-page Fall Kickoff booklet that outlines all the ministries kicking off in the fall, with calendars, registration forms, dates and times, and some unique stories. We pass that out to the congregation the week before the Fall Kickoff, so that people have time to go through it beforehand. Then we have extra copies available during the two weeks of the event. Shoot me an email and I'll send you a pdf for you to see in case your interested.

So at least for the present, we've solved the fall recruitment and communications wars. And the added benefit is, we hear people walking through saying, "I had no idea we have a ministry to the homeless." or, "I didn't know we have a group just for widows.", or "I'm sure glad we have a social action ministry." In a big church, lots of people aren't even aware of all that goes on!