Church Communications by Chuck Scoggins

Do the people in your congregation have a tendency to wait until the last minute to register for events? This is a phenomenon that is common in many churches and something that plagues communications directors. Late sign ups make planning the event tough and also makes measuring the effectiveness of the marketing efforts difficult.

I have a theory about why last minute registrations happen. It is based on my experience…no scientific research involved. It comes down to two things:

• Too many church activities, and
• Promoting the event too early

The quantity of church activities is a controversial topic and something I’ll address at another time. What I want to briefly delve into today is the timing of event promotion.

In my experience, promoting an event too far in advance causes people to have this line of thinking (usually at a subconscious level):

“That event is something I’d like to participate in, but I’ve got a month (or two months or six months) before I have to sign up. I’ll register for it a little closer to the deadline.”

Then, because their lives are busy and they get hundreds of media messages shouted at them every day, they ignore all of subsequent mentions of it. Three weeks pass and suddenly the person thinks, “Shoot! I was going to sign up for that event! I better do it today!” Boom! You have a plethora of last-minute sign ups.

How can we prevent the last minute rush? We have to find the sweet spot in timing the promotion of upcoming events, which will vary greatly from event to event. People tend to plan their lives two to three weeks out. If we go further out than that in promoting an event, we get the “I’ll sign up later” effect. Any shorter than that and you’re probably not giving them enough time.

There are certainly events where people need more advanced notice, such as events where travel might be necessary, where a long term absence might need to be accounted for, or where a large sum of money might need to be raised (think missions trips). However, for the majority of events, that “sweet spot” time frame will work better.

The point isn’t necessarily the specific time frame…it will vary based on context…but rather the fact that we might be causing our own demise.

What are your thoughts? Have you found a “sweet spot” time frame for promotion of ministry events?

This might be the most important concept I’ve run across in my career (pardon the drama, but it really has shaped nearly every aspect of my work in the communications and design field):

“People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.”
-Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice

To put it another way, (beyond the first few options) the more options available to an individual, the harder it becomes to make a selection and the less satisfaction there is in making the decision. After a certain point, the easiest and most likely decision is to make no decision at all.

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of the book.
Here is also a good article on the topic.

This post is part of a 3-part series on publishing documents on the Amazon Kindle.

Once you’ve completed the design process, you’re ready to start exporting your publication and converting it to the proper formats. Export to ePub The first format you will export to is ePub; and you do that from InDesign. Go to File > Export For EPUB and enter the following settings:

• Under General:

1. Enter the name of the publisher (for us, it was the name of the church).
2. If you know your unique identifier, enter it. If not, don’t sweat it because it will auto-generate one for you or you can manually enter it on your own later.
3. For ordering, select the “Base on Page Layout” option.
4. If you have bullets and numbers, you can designate how those are handled.

• We stripped out all (or most) of our images so need to worry about the Images tab.
• Under the Contents tab:

1.  For the format, we want to use XHTML.
2. For the TOC, we want to make sure the “Include InDesign TOC entries” is checked.
3. For CSS Options, tick the Generate CSS option and make sure all three checkboxes under that option are selected.

• Click “Export” and you’re done in InDesign.

Calibre For the next step, you need to download and install the free ePub management software called Calibre. Once you get it installed…

• Click the “Add Books” button to add your ePub file to the Calibre library.
• Click on your ePub document in the list of books in your Calibre library. Then, click the “Edit Metadata” button to add metadata.
• Give your book a title and an author and list how to sort them.
• Click on the “browse” button and add your cover that you designed.
• Once you’re done editing the metadata, click “ok.”
• Now it’s time to (re)export your file into the variety of formats you need.

1. First, click on the “convert books” button and select ebook from the output drop-down menu. You want to use this new exported file (which now includes your metadata and cover) as your new ePub for Nook and other ePub readers.
2. Next, follow the same process to convert the book to a .mobi file for the Kindle. This time you’re selecting .mobi from the drop-down menu.

This post is part of a 3-part series on publishing documents on the Amazon Kindle.

Introduction For most of our message series at Calvary, we publish a devotional journal to help people take Sunday’s learning deeper throughout the week. Recently, we decided to offer our next journal in both print and digital formats. As I was working on the Kindle version, I thought that someone else out there might be interested in the Kindle design process so I thought I would detail it here. Even though this is a bit of a technical process, I think anyone who is familiar with InDesign can learn to publish to Kindle. For organization purposes, I’m going to break this down into three posts:

1. Designing For Kindle
2. Exporting A .mobi File
3. Publishing In The Kindle Store

Designing For Kindle Our printed devotional journals are 9 in wide by 7 in tall. We design them in Adobe InDesign, which has built in support for exporting ePub documents (which is a format we will need to export to in order to eventually get to the .mobi Kindle file). However, InDesign on its own does not do a great job of reformatting a document designed for print into a digital ebook format. It mostly has to do with how InDesign reads the file and converts the XML that the Kindle needs to read…it simply isn’t made to handle that conversion smoothly. Since I like to control the look of my document, I decided to reformat it into a size and style that will be better for Kindle. Step 1 – Reformat Document After doing some research and experimentation, I found that a file that was 6 in wide by 8 in tall would work the best. I copied the text (including all of the paragraph styles) from my original journal file and placed it my new file. Though some ebook readers, including the Kindle and the various Kindle Apps, can handle images, color, etc. I decided to strip out all of the presentational design elements and just work with only text for my document. Step 2 – Build TOC The next step was to use InDesign’s built in Table of Contents (TOC) creator to make a table of contents. This step is important because the Kindle will read the TOC information and use it for the table of contents function within the Kindle. Simply follow these steps to create the TOC:

1. Make sure your chapter headings are mapped to a paragraph style.
2. Go to Layout > Table of Contents to tell InDesign which style matches up with your chapter headings.
3. InDesign will then attach the “place text box” icon to your cursor and you can click anywhere outside the canvas to place your TOC.

Step 3 – Map Styles To InDesign Tags It’s very important to use paragraph styles when designing your document because they become the tags that the Kindle uses to determine how your document looks on the Kindle device. To map the styles to the tags follow these steps:

1. Open the Tags pallet by going to Window > Utilities > Tags.
2. Make a new tag (click the new tag icon at the bottom of the pallet) for every paragraph style you used.
3. Open the pop-out menu on the tags pallet and select “map styles to tags.”
4. Match up your styles to the tags you created.

Step 4 – Cover Image The last design task is to create a cover image. Once again, you’ll want to create your file at 6 in by 8 in. I went ahead and created a full-color cover since some devices (like the Nook) and apps (such as the iPad Kindle App) can display in color. However, on actual Kindle devices, the image will adjust to a grayscale image. Save this image as a .jpeg but do not place it in your InDesign file. You’ll add the cover to your document during the export and conversion process. That’s pretty much it for the “design” phase. In the next post we’ll look at the process for getting your document exported out of InDesign into the .epub format, then converting the ePub to the .mobi format for the Kindle.

If you follow me at all, you probably know that I’m on a Mission Trip for Creatives this week. I thought I’d share a few things that I learned this week:

• It’s pretty amazing what God can do through a few people who are willing to use their gifts. On our two-man team (one of four teams) alone, we served 6 churches, provided about 60 hours of complimentary communications work, and gave an estimated $8,300 in goods and services away. But that’s not even the amazing part. The amazing part is how God is going to take our humble efforts and multiply them for his amazing purposes. That is something to get excited about.
• There are some churches that are doing amazing things here in the Albany / Hudson Valley area. It is a good reminder to me that in spite of size, resources, and communications ability, God can and is moving in mighty ways.
• The creative communication of the Gospel is of the utmost importance. My new friend Jon Rogers said it well on his blog:

No, we didn’t build a church building or construct an orphanage. No we didn’t run a VBS or witness on the streets. We have created sustainable solutions for churches to effectively communicate an ultimate message of God’s never-ending love for each community these churches are involved in. Yeah, we all know that design is not what’s going to grow the churches we work with on this trip but it can help to remove the barriers for outsiders looking in. It’s still and always will be all about Jesus and his people devoted to growing in their faith and reaching out to others.

• It’s really important to know your calling and work where you (and your gifts) are celebrated. Sometimes when we get into the daily grind, it’s easy to forget that God has called us and gifted us. This week was just what I needed for renewal and rededicating.

Some people that I would like to thank for making this trip possible if you will indulge me for a moment:

• My church (Calvary) for getting behind the vision enough to release me from my duties for a week.
• Cleve Persinger, the guy who dreamed up Creative Missions.
• Andy Burns and Eric Murrell, two guys who really came alongside Cleve to make it happen.
• Michael Buckingham, Danielle Harland, & Phil Bowdle who were team leaders.
• My parents who gave a generous donation to make this trip possible.
• My amazing wife who stayed home to take care of the kiddos; and my inlaws for coming to help her out.
• All of our sponsors/partners (Center For Church Communication, Mid America Seminary, Media Salt, Hudson Baptist Association, Our Shirts Don’t Suck, and others too numerous to name).

If you’d like to hear more about Creative Missions, I’d love to chat with you and tell you our stories. Please feel free to give me a shout. If you’re interested in future trips, check out www.creativemissions.to. If you’d like to help sponsor a future trip, hit up Cleve.

Rae Michalski gave me the honor of creating her wedding program. It’s simple, but I’m quite fond of it. If the picture doesn’t show it, the colors are deep-plum purple and black. Here’s the low-res PDF. Congratulations Rae & Mark!

We (Calvary Church) are going back to a weekly bulletin. In spite of the recent trend in some churches toward producing a monthly bulletin, we have come back full circle to producing a weekly publication. Background Perhaps some quick background information might help. About a year ago, we were producing a weekly bulletin. It was bloated and full of information that was irrelevant to the majority of our target audience. Our metrics were showing that few people were reading the information in it and it was pretty ineffective. On top of that, it wasn’t providing us with the opportunity to tell the Calvary story, one of our stated goals for the publication. Our Monthly Bulletin Journey So, about 6 months ago, after some inspiration from Tim Schraeder and Park Church, we decided to move to a monthly format where we would produce the bulletin once-per-month but hand it out to every attender every week. It still had an over-dose of information in it, but the layout was much more aesthetically pleasing and provided us an opportunity for storytelling. Perhaps the biggest up-side to the monthly format is that it allowed the Communications Team to work together with the Leadership Team to create a communication plan for the upcoming month (determining which ministries and events  would be promoted at what time and in what venues – bulletin, service promotional videos, platform announcements, website, etc.). There were some significant growing pains. At first, our staff was not very fond of the advanced deadlines to the monthly format. We also had to print a weekly “insert” to cover all the information that came in after the print deadline or that pertained to a specific campus. In spite of all its down-sides, it was a significant improvement over our previous weekly format. That is, until a few weeks ago… Full Circle A few weeks ago we realized that we were losing a significant amount of readership (and, thus, event registrations, information dissemination, etc) in the later weeks of the month and it was causing a strain on our ministries’ ability to function. So, the Communications Team entered once again into a dialogue with our Leadership Team and came to an agreement that we would return to the weekly bulletin format with some stipulations. The main stipulation is that we would still determine what would be in the bulletin for the given weeks of a month in advance as part of an overarching communications plan. This would allow us to remove information about events that had passed (less noise and clutter) earlier in the month, but still have a plan to coordinate the items remaining in the bulletin as part of the larger communications plan. So far, after one month of implementation, the new production plan and schedule seems to be working very well. As always, time will tell how truly effective this strategy will work, but I’m very excited about the dialogue that has opened between our leadership staff and communications team as we’ve taken this journey together.

I’m currently re-reading Kem Meyer’s book, Less Clutter. Less Noise. This is probably my 5th time reading it (I feel like a stalker) and it has dynamically changed the way I think about church communications. If you do anything church-related, go get it. Now. Don’t finish this post. Go! Are you still here? There is a passage that I keep getting stuck on, and I thought I’d share it with you.

People are busy and life is hard. They have too much information bombarding them from everywhere (not just one hour on Sunday) and never enough time. But, they’re still looking for answers that make a real difference in their lives. Being part of something bigger than you makes a difference. And, people experience that life change one step at a time. The value we provide grows in direct proportion to how easily people can find and say yest to their next step. And the opposite is true: the value we provide decreases in direct proportion to how hard we make it for people to do what they’re trying to do. The minimalist approach here is all about breaking a big leap into smaller, incremental steps. A person’s journey away from God does not happen in one step, but rather in a series of steps and decisions that seemed otherwise perfectly rational at the time. One day, he wakes up and realizes just how far he traveled as a result of the sum of steps in the wrong direction. And, what about when he’s ready to start taking steps back? How hard are we making it for him?

This certainly makes me re-think the way I do a lot of things.

Teaching others has always been something that I really enjoy. It’s fun when I get to share my (limited) knowledge on a subject with others – particularly in matters relating to design and design software like Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, etc. So, I was really excited back in December when Lindenwood University (in St. Charles, MO – just outside of St. Louis) called and asked me to teach a course on Digital Design Concepts (Print Concepts and Web Concepts). The class is a graduate-level 9 credit-hour course designed to teach concepts through applied methods using design software. I thought I was going to be awesome at it given my passion for teaching. I have taught communication classes before, but never one on design concepts (abstract) specifically. What I learned was, sharing your knowledge in an informal setting is much easier than in a formal setting. Giving someone a software tip or shortcut over their shoulder is much easier than preparing an hour-long lecture and trying to explain the nuances of design – balance, harmony, movement, color, type, etc. Add to that lesson plans, attendance tracking, and grading papers and it has been a much more challenging experience than I expected. Nevertheless, I am doing the best I can to do just that – to formalize my knowledge into a classroom experience. Hopefully my students have learned enough from me that they can be successful in their future classes and in their endeavors to find employment in our field. Hopefully, if nothing else, I’ve helped to inspire students in their art form and help them realized that it takes hours and hours of dedication to hone their craft. In spite of the unexpected difficulties, the teaching experience has been very rewarding. I love building into the lives of future designers. And, I must not be doing too bad because he school has asked me to teach the course again in the summer. I think it is really important for people in any field to pass on what they’ve learned. What are you doing to raise up the next generation in your area? I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences, etc. in the comments!

Cultivate 09 was a fabulous one-day conference. Thanks to Tim Schraeder, Dawn Nicole Baldwin, Kem Meyer and others for coming up with the concept. It was an amazing chance for me to get to know a lot of my friends from Twitter in person and to learn from some of the most gifted people in my field. Rather than recap my session notes from conference (Tim took great notes over on his blog), I thought I’d give a few points from the lessons I’ve learned. Stories 99% of what I do as a communications professional is (or should be) story-telling. Even when promoting events & ministries, I need to tell stories. Branding is, in essence, telling a story. Most people think of story-telling (in communications terms) as something done with video – and video is a great medium for visual story-telling – but it is also done through every other thing we do. The parking lot attendants are telling a story. Brochures, either directly or indirectly, are telling a story. The tricky thing about story-telling is that everyone else is telling a story as well. In this current age of digital communication, there are shorter messages and more messages being sent. The challenge is to make our particular story relevant to the audience we’re trying to reach. One key to doing just that is to make sure we don’t fill up our stories with so much of  ‘us.’ By leaving a little extra space in the story, the hearer can have room to find themselves in and share a part of our story. The connection of two people or groups with separate stories in a common experience has the potential to speak loudly. Youth Audiences The differences between Generation X and Generation Y (Millennials) is significant. If we’re trying to reach both generations, we’ll likely fail to reach either of them. Gen X-ers are “me” focused while Millennials are “we” focused. That significantly effects what story we tell and what story they hear. Speaking of the story they hear, that leads me to the biggest lesson learned at the conference: It’s not about what ‘we’ are saying, it’s about what ‘they’ are hearing. Web Site Design I wonder what people are hearing when they visit websites that I’ve designed. I know what I (or the organization I work for) is trying to say, but I’m not sure that message is always being heard. In the web communication breakout I attended, I was challenged to re-evaluate all of the design techniques that I use when designing digitally with the end-user in mind. I learned that I need to be more community focused in web design. I also was challenged with the thought that the computer or even the traditional web site is no longer the first contact, but rather the mobile device. I need to design towad that idea. To Sum It Up At a conference full of Macbooks and iPhones and the latest, coolest trends in communications, there was one additional comment that was made that really struck me: The question isn’t what’s cool at the moment, but what people will respond to. The question is what will bring about life-change. Our job is not to send the right message; our job is to release the right response. My I never be more concerned with the tools than the people. May my love for the latest technology never be stronger than my love for God and love for others.