Chuck Scoggins | Web + Print + Video Design

Check out my new ebook…

Getting Started in Church Communications

Landing a job in the field of church communications can be tricky. There is plenty of information available for the person trying to break in to communications in a corporate or business setting, but how does one go about it in the church world? In this e-book I seek to answer those questions. Originally published as a series of posts on MediaBleep.com, and based on my 10+ years in church ministry, this book lists resources and tools to get you off on the right foot in the world of church communications.

Whether you’re graduating college and looking for a job or are a volunteer trying to get your church started with a communications ministry, this book should help you get started.

Chapter titles include:

• Learning The Trade
• Landing The Job
• After You’re Hired, Now What?
• Appendix: Getting Started With Print
• Appendix: Getting Started With Web
• Appendix: Getting Started With Video
• Appendix: Getting Started With Social Media

Click here to purchase it
in the Amazon Kindle store.

Click here to purchase
Nook & PDF versions.

Are you thinking about jumping into the church communications world? If so, you will inevitably be involved in an interview process. Interviews are a great time for churches to learn about you, but also for you to learn about your potential new employer and place of ministry. Here are some questions I’ve found to be helpful as an interviewee in discerning whether a church is a good fit for me:

1. Why are you looking to add a communications director position to your team?
This question tells me right off the bat what the church’s intentions are for this position. Will it be a leadership position or a “doer” position (or both)? Do they view communications as an essential ministry or as a support or central services-type department. Often, I can determine whether a church would be a good fit for me based on this question alone.

2. What would people in the community say about your church? What would other churches say?
This speaks to community engagement (does the church think beyond its 4 walls), reputation, and kingdom mentality. 

3. What are the church’s two greatest weaknesses? Are there any skeletons in the closet? A year from now, what will I wish you would’ve told me now?
How they answer this question will tell you a lot of things: how they view gossip and loyalty, how transparent they are, and – of course – if there are any red flags you should be aware of. 

4. How does this church handle “stress” (and let them define what “stress” means to them)?

5. What big vision goals does the church have?
I always want to know if they know where they’re headed…and if those goals align with my goals for a prospective place of ministry.

6. If I take this job and hiring me is a “home run,” what will I have accomplished 1 year from now?

7. What is the work environment like? (formal, informal, casual, relaxed, fast-paced, etc)

8. What is the staff culture like?

9. What systems do you have in place to do the daily “work” of the church such as pastoral care processes, database/management software, project management systems, financial systems, etc?

10. Why have you waited as long as you have to hire a communications director?
It may very well be that they didn’t need one until now, but this will subconsciously help elevate the importance of communications ministry in their head and make them think through the significance of your future role there.

11. What does the communications (or worship services or equipment or, really anything) budget look like?
Churches, whether intentionally or inadvertently, budget for what is important. This question will let you know the heart of the church. If the budget and the vision (see question 5) don’t align, something is amiss.

12. What type of admin support with the communications director have?
This is one of the most important questions to ask and often one of the most overlooked. Interestingly, if the church thinks they’re hiring a communications director to be more of an administrative person rather than an executive-level position, it will almost always show up with this question.

13. What teams will I be expected to lead?
A follow-up might be to ask about the health of these teams and/or to meet leaders of these teams. 

14. Given the choice between building a new building, purchasing/upgrading some expensive equipment/technology (like the sound system), or hiring a new staff person, which would this church choose? Why?
Again, this question will let you know what the church values.

15. What is something or a few things that the leadership of this church has done to develop and build into the lives of current staff members in the past year.
If a church isn’t growing and nurturing its leaders, there is probably a high rate of burnout and turnover, and an unhealthy staff culture. 

What about you, what questions do you ask when you’re being interviewed?

Image credit: Chris Baker

Once we’ve determined your target audience, we can then begin thinking about what theme, concept, and/or message would be most likely to connect with that audience.

Theme

In design, there are a multitude of themes that we utilize to reach various audiences. To name a few:

• grunge
• graffiti
• clean
• minimalist
• dark
• organic

Similarly, depending on our target audience, we can choose a theme for our Christmas services or outreach. Are we going to have a family carnival theme? Perhaps a warm and traditional theme? Do we want to do something modern and technical? Some themes will work better than others in various contexts.

Concept

We can develop a concept once we know our theme. For example if we’re going with the carnival theme, we might choose to do an entirely outdoor experience with hayrides through christmas lights, petting zoos, a live nativity, games for children, etc. Or, we might want to go with an indoor puppet show, craft areas, and carnival-type foods. If  our theme is more of a modern approach, we might do something similar to Grace Church’s Little Drummer Boy program or Church on the Move’s Thriller/Grinch production:

Message

Ultimately our concept and theme will all need to work together in order to convey the message, brand, and image that we want guests (and regular attenders) to walk away with at Christmas. It goes without saying that we want them to hear the message of the birth of Christ, but are there other messages we want them to walk away with as well? How about the message of hope or peace? How about a message of avoiding consumerism or materialism. How about messages about our church such as, “we value the arts,” or “we are all about families here?” All of these factors are important to consider before we launch into the busyness of pulling off the concept.

The point is, we need to think about our audience first, then our theme, concept and message.

So far we’ve looked at how to design / edit your file for Kindle, how to export and convert your file, and all that is left is getting it in the Kindle store. Luckily, this is the easiest part. Here goes…

Kindle Store

1 Create an amazon account (if you don’t already have one).

2 Go to kdp.amazon.com (the Kindle Direct Publishing site).

3 Create a KDP account.

• Enter your publisher info.
• You’ll need your Tax ID, EIN, or SSN.
• Determine how you want to get paid.Note: Amazon does not allow the distribution of free books anymore. So, if you wanted to give away your book, you’ll have to find a work-around. There is a rumor that if you offer your eBook on Smashwords and set the price at $0.00, Amazon will price match it down to $0.00. However, this process is said to be irreversible, so make sure you never want to sell that book again if you use this workaround.

4. Click on “Bookshelf” and follow the instructions to create your first book.

That’s all there is to it. It’s really quite self-explanatory and if I was able to figure it out, I’m sure you will be able to as well.

If you complete this process, I’d love to see your work. Leave a link to your eBook in the Kindle store in the comments below!

Day two was great (although day one had a little bit more beneficial information and interaction for me). Here are my take aways from the main sessions:

Charles Lee

• Ideas take time and money.
• Choose to sacrifice in the short-term to gain in the long-term.
• Our role is to not dictate our environment but to stay faithful to what God has called us to do.

Richard Kang

• Mobile usage will surpass desktop computer usage in four years.
• Every time there is a shift there is an opportunity.
• What if we provided interactivity to mobile giving? What if we let people direct where their offerings go? I know “designated giving” is scary, but why not allow it?

Mark Horvath

• Homeless people need housing, jobs, and health services.
• So many of our charitable acts are done to make us fel ebtter.
• We can’t use prayer as an excuse to do nothing.
• We have more resources… we have the potential to make more impact than we could even imagine.
• Authenticity has replaced production value.

Day one was an amazing experience. I got to engage in some really great conversations and hear from some top-notch speakers. Here are my take aways from the main sessions:

From Phil Cooke’s Session

• Big organizations change with small interventions.
• If you are trying to get people to change, you need to get on the level of the people you are trying to influence. Speak their language.
• God might have put you in your organization to be the change agent or creative spark.

From Danny Yount’s Session

• As believers, we have the ability to hold back the tide of a negative culture.
• We can influence the world in a way that preserves it (much like salt is a preserving agent).
• Everything that is visual communicates.

From Mel McGowan’s Session

• Design is/can be proof of God’s image in us.
• Church isn’t an event. It’s a communal experience.

From Shelene Bryan’s Session

• Are you being faithful to God where you are?
• My fear is that we’ll become very successful at things that don’t matter. Do the work that matters.

Were you there? What were your main take aways? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments.

Occasionally on Tuesdays I’ll give you my thoughts – random and off the top of my head. Well, here goes…

• In May, I’m privileged to be able to participate in a couple of fun opportunities:
  • Cultivate 2011 is May 4-5. I attended the inaugural Cultivate conference 2 years ago and it is unlike most other conferences. It really is about conversation. A group of creative folks getting together and learning from the collective wisdom of the group. I’m really excited to be participating again this year.
  • At the end of May, I’ll be joining a group of creatives from around the country in Albany, NY to help some deserving churches with their communication needs in what we’re calling a Creative Mission Trip. There are a number of ways you can participate and support the effort. Check them out here.
• I’m finishing up Seth Godin’s book, Poke The Box and I can say he’s done it again! Seth is challenging us to initiate…to get started on your calling…to poke the box! I’m sure that everyone has read this book by now, but if you haven’t, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? Seriously. Go get it. Go now, I’ll wait.  ::: I’ll try to post some notes and a review soon. :::
• Tony Morgan has released a new, free eBook – Developing A Theology of Leadership. I’ve only made it through the first few chapters and scanned the rest of the book, but what I’ve read so far is really great! Again, I’ll post a review soon (although it’s short enough you’d probably do just as well to read the whole thing).
• Me and my wife took a little weekend trip to Dallas last weekend. It was great to visit The Village Church and hear Matt Chandler speak. It was one of those weekends where God uses the words of a great communicator to speak directly to me and to clarify/reinforce my calling as a church communications guy.
• We had baptism celebrations this weekend at Calvary. It’s always amazing to me to see people taking their next step in their faith journey. You can catch a couple of the stories here.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. What’s going on in your world?

So far we’ve covered how churches do communications backwards, how we’ve begun asking different questions, and how a tier system helped provide a common language. For the final post in this series, I want to talk about the most important part of a new church communications strategy: relationships.

Church work is all about relationships. This fact is no different for church communications. If you don’t have people as the primary focus of your communication strategy you’re set up to fail from the very beginning. The systems should exist to help people take the next step in their faith journey.

Staff Communications

To take this thought a step further: the most important people I need to serve are the people I serve with. The most important type of church communications is staff communications. If I’m serving the needs of my fellow staff members through the communication strategy we have in place, I am ultimately serving the congregation.

Until recently, I made the mistake of assuming that my role was congregation first, then staff. That was backwards thinking. If the staff can’t trust that I desire to put their needs first, how can I expect them to live by the strategy I put in place. They need to know that I’ve got their back and that I want to serve them through the strategy.

There are two ways that I try to build trust:

• As Communications Director I try to spend a lot of time outside my office. My primary goal is to be a “friend” to other staff members and their ministries. Yes, deadlines are still deadlines and the tasks have to get done, but I try to get out as much as possible.
• I also try to hold the strategy with an open hand. Just yesterday someone walked in and offered a suggestion about the strategy that was very wise and pretty obvious – yet, I had missed it. I realize that as designers, artists, and creative people this is a hard thing to do. I tend to fall in love with my designs and my processes, but feedback really is a friend. The systems exist for a purpose and it’s good to stick with them, but it is still important to hold them with an open hand.

Wrap It Up

Well, that’s the story of how we put our strategy in place and continually evaluate it for improvement. Hopefully you’ve found some parts of it beneficial. I’d love to hear how you approach communications and what you’re learning. If you have a second, add to the collective conversation by leaving a comment.

So far we’ve covered how churches do communications backwards and how we’ve begun asking different questions in order to determine what to communicate and which tools help us to do so. Now let’s take a look at another problem that we’re addressing in our new communications strategy.

Expectations

As we receive requests for publicity in the overall church communications, we try to give those making the request an idea about what they can expect. Often, however, we were finding that what people expected to receive and what we could realistically provide in terms of publicity are two very different things. Although we had clarified the vision and helped people realize that we are making communications decisions based primarily on next steps from the vision, our ministry leaders were still not clear about the priority of their event or ministry.

Everyone believes their ministry or event is the most important work of the church. To be fair, we would not want it any other way. Who else, if not the children’s ministry pastor, should be advocating for children’s ministry. We want ministry leaders to be champions for their area. That passion, however, does not translate to everyone receiving equal promotion and publicity at the all-church level.

Common Language

We decided that we needed to come up with a common language to help the leadership of the church effectively communicate the priority of each ministry or event and, thus, what communications support they should expect to receive. We decided to develop a Tier system to provide this common language (thanks to Katie Persinger and Stacia Gibson at The Chapel for the inspiration on this system).

Tiers

Here’s a quick run-down on how it works…

The Leadership Team of the church decides on Tier designations (with recommendations from the Communications Staff) for all events and ministries. Based on the Tier designation, ministry leaders get an idea of how to approach their communications. It also helps the Communications Team to know when to help a ministry leader find alternative communication methods that fall outside of all-church promotional tools.

Tier 5

This is the top tier. There are probably only a few (3 to 5) of these a year. Examples might include capital campaigns, new message series, and major emphases. Tier 5 events and ministries should expect “the works” when it comes to all-church communications.

Tier 4

These are big events and ministries that don’t quite meet the Tier 5 status but still impact a large portion of the church and should expect quite a bit of all-church promotion. Some examples of these include VBS, Summer Camps, all-church serving days, seasonal campaigns, major classes (like Financial Peace University) that are linked as next steps to message series, etc.

Tier 3

These are events and ministries that impact a good portion of the church or an entire campus. Tier 3 events and ministries are the lowest Tier that should expect to receive all-church publicity…and they will receive noticeably less than Tier 4. These might include Men’s or Women’s Retreats, larger sports leagues, growth classes (not necessarily tied to a message series, but part of a larger growth emphasis), etc.

Tier 2

Events and ministries that impact a big group but not a large portion of the church or a campus belong in this Tier. A large training event might be an example. Tier 2 events and ministries will receive some support from the Communications Team, but will not be included in the overall church communications plan.

Tier 1

Small niche groups make up this Tier. A few examples include support groups, smaller ministry events, and small training events. While it’s not out of the question for Tier 1 events and ministries to receive communications support, they should expect it to be limited.

Some notes:

• It’s important to understand that a Tier 1 ranking does not mean that a ministry or event is unimportant or that we do not value it. Some of the most important things the church does falls into this category. It simply means at the given time it is not given priority by the leadership in the current vision placement.
• Tier designations can fluctuate based on the context. In other words, an event or ministry that might ordinarily be a Tier 4 might drop down to a Tier 3 if it is in a close communication cycle with a Tier 5.
• We (the Communications Team) hold the Tier system with an open hand. We realize that it is a tool and at times may need to be tweaked or stretched. Having said that, the temptation will be to stretch it during busy communications times; however, that is precisely when holding closely to the system is most valuable.
• Our primary goal is leverage communications to help every event and ministry be as effective as possible. Part of accomplishing that goal is helping ministry leaders know where they fall in the overall church communication strategy. The Tier system isn’t meant to be restrictive but rather to create clarity and help with expectations. It really helps when everyone comes to the table with an abundance mentality and a bent toward clarity.

In the next post, I’ll walk you through how I have found that making any communication strategy work is all about personal relationships. Until then, let me know what system, if any, you use for a common language. Leave a comment below…

Several people seem to be having trouble, so here is a fix for Twitter to Facebook posting:

Go to http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Uncheck the box that says “Allow Twitter to post updates to: Facebook Profile”
Refresh the page to make sure that the box really is unchecked.
When the box is unchecked, send a tweet. This will obviously not get posted to FB.
Go back and re-check the box. Refresh the page to make sure it is really checked.
Now send another tweet.

[edit: Tony Morgan has more detailed instructions (with pics) and another potential fix on his blog: http://tmlive.us/gTQ4J9 ]