Communications Strategy (Part 2)
This post is part two of a series of posts on how we developed a new communications strategy for Calvary Church.
In the last post, I discussed how churches often approach communications backwards and began discussing some of our new approaches. Let’s turn our attention to some specifics about our new strategy.
Nothing Assumed
Our new strategy is to not assume that we were going to create any given communications piece just because “we’d always had one.” In other words, we’re not assuming that we’re producing a weekly Bulletin. We’re not assuming we producing a monthly newsletter. We’re not assuming that we’re producing an announcement video to play in the weekend services. We are now asking, “What do we need to communicate (message) & what’s the best way to communicate it (tool)? What response do we want to release?”
Vision First
The primary piece in our communication is now our three vision principles (worship, serving, and growing). Whereas before we might communicate the mission and vision of the church one Sunday a year or present it on an obscure page on our website, now we try to weave it into everything we say and do. Our website’s main structure is based on the vision. The weekend message teaching topics are scheduled around our three vision principles and we are beginning the process of scheduling ministries and events around next steps from the weekend messages. Structuring this way makes expressing the vision a natural outflow of the life of the church, rather than feeling like it’s a forced presentation.
Storytelling
Another way we communicate vision first is though using storytelling. For example, on a Sunday where we were emphasizing our value of spiritual growth, we had a message was on finances (specifically finances in marriage relationships), we offered Financial Peace University as a “next step” for people to take, and we had a storytelling video about a couple who had applied those methods to break free from financial bondage and as a result are growing spiritually.
Non-traditional Methods
By focusing on vision and storytelling and not assuming that we are producing the communications pieces that we’d always produced in the past, it freed us up to create some pieces that were not very traditional, but that we’ve found to be very effective so far.
On a weekend in the Christmas season, we emphasized our value of serving and instead of having a traditional bulletin as our service handout, we gave out “A Time to Give” booklets that highlighted several community-serving opportunities. We followed up with the Pastor taking a few minutes to tell about some of the impact our serving had in the community.
Our services in December featured a longer drama element that had an airport as it’s setting. So, to reinforce the message of that service (which was tied to our vision) we produced an inflight magazine for the service handout. Part of the emphasis was on missions so we put in a “flight map” showing all the short-term mission trips our church has arranged for 2011.
For the launch of our series in January we produced a promotional postcard and handed it out for people to use as an invite tool.
We wanted to emphasize reading the Bible in 2011 so we created a “Read Through The Bible” bookmark for our service handout one week.
The important thing isn’t necessarily the specific pieces we used, but rather the strategy to first ask what needs to be communicated, then ask how is the best way to communicate it.
In the next post I’ll discuss a new system we put into place that provides a common language for our staff as we discuss priorities about what we need to communicate. Until then I’d love to hear from you: what communications are you doing that you do “just because you’ve always done it?” What strategies have you put in to place to help you focus on the “what” that needs to be communicated? Add your voice in the comments.
