January is an excellent time for personal and ministry renewal, initiating new ideas and stopping things that haven’t been successful. Take this time to dream about church communication resolutions as we enter the new year.
Church communication is anything that your audience needs to hear, or be reminded of, from your local church ministries. And that’s a lot, so set some goals.
Church communication is a complex, multilayered and never-ending process. Whether you’re a pastor who does almost everything, a solo communicator (or assistant) who accomplishes the communication tasks or one member of a creative team that manages all the communication requests, here are five church communication resolutions to help you get a great start in 2024:
RELATED: Check out more stories from Mark MacDonald on church communications here.
1. Prepare sooner. If you’re a pastor or ministry leader who supplies information (sermons, events, social posts, etc.) to someone to prepare the communication materials, resolve to prepare earlier. Give the people waiting for your material more time to produce creative communication. And if you’re the person creating the communication materials? Start sooner. Most creatives don’t need more time, they just need tighter deadlines.
2. Tell them why they need you. Resolve to regularly put into words the reason your audience needs the material you’re communicating. If you don’t, they won’t figure it out. For you, it helps you process their needs, concerns or goals and how you’re being a solution to them. Often the church doesn’t know specifically how they’re helping the congregation or community. If you don’t know, they certainly won’t.
3. Be more consistent. Of all the church communication resolutions, this is the most critical. To effectively communicate in a way that will be received, understood and acted upon, your audience needs to understand your consistent pace, your reliable channels and your high content standard. This consistency creates an environment of “never wasting their time.” They’ll trust you more.
4. Weekly improve your website. Your church website is the foundational center of your digital hub. It needs to be the solution tool your audience goes to when they’re not sure about anything in your ministry. To have a website that’s helpful and desired, you need to spend weekly time improving organization, editing, adding and deleting content, and learning and implementing Google’s SEO rules. Your website content needs to be discovered by your community. Set up your content properly.
5. Build a better communication ministry. Effective communication is a vast amount of content that needs to be delivered when your audience needs it and how they want it. It’s about loving your audience so you meet their needs. Your church communication resolutions need to be about building a ministry, not just a task-oriented team. Done properly, your communication will communicate the gospel while meeting the needs of those who need your other ministries. Be known for love.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — Mark MacDonald is a communication pastor, speaker, consultant, bestselling author, church branding strategist for BeKnownforSomething.com, and executive director of Center for Church Communication, empowering 10,000+ churches to become known for something relevant (a communication thread) throughout their ministries, websites, & social media. His book, Be Known for Something, is available at BeKnownBook.com.
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