Smarter Church Communication
I bet you’ve heard more than one person in your church complain, “You church leaders don’t communicate with us well.” Isn’t it surprising that in an age when there is the website, social media, email, texting—so many communication channels available to us—communicating well seems harder than ever!
There are two communication rules that you need to keep in mind to upgrade your communication habits as a church leader.
Rule #1: Use multiple communication channels to communicate with your people.
Rule #2: Use each communication channel for the means it best serves.
Use Multiple Communication Channels
Earlier this year my wife formed a women’s book club that drew about twenty women together weekly for eight weeks. When she asked how best to communicate with them it seemed every woman had their own preference. One said she only used email. Another said if it wasn’t in a text, she would never see it. Others wanted a Facebook group and there was one technological holdout who wanted a personal phone call. Another person even wanted announcements printed in the Sunday bulletin! It was overwhelming and frustrating.
This book club experience illustrates the complexity of communicating anything in your church. Despite the frustration, we’re all going to need to live by Rule #1: use multiple communication channels to communicate with your people.
Use Each Communication Channel For a Purpose
Each channel has something that it does best, and it has other things it is not capable of doing or should not be used for. Let’s use a funnel as a visual.
Top of the Funnel
In the upper-level, the widest part of the communication funnel, are your social media channels— your church’s website, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These channels are the most impersonal, but they have the capacity to touch the most people. For your church, think of social media as your front yard. This is what people see as they drive by. You want these channels to project curb appeal.
These social media channels perform best for invitations and announcements that are applicable to anyone and everyone in your church’s network. What you put on these channels should be appropriate and meaningful to anyone who sees or reads them, whether they are part of your church or a “drive by” guest. Social media channels are ill-suited for arguing, trying to change peoples’ minds, or addressing controversial topics.
Middle of the Funnel
At the mid-level of the communication funnel are the communication channels that allow you to restrict who receives them. These are tools like email, church bulletins, and texts. You control who is on your distribution list. You have a definite relationship with them. This relationship lets you be more specific and use more insider language in these channels. Additionally, you can deliver information quickly, accurately and in ways that give people a record.
Mid-level channels are best for sharing precise, time sensitive information. They do not communicate emotions, sympathy, and sensitivity well. People will fill in the blanks on emotions. What you intend as an easy-going, non-threatening point may be taken as angry and inflammatory by the recipient and you won’t have any way to reorient them more accurately until your reader’s emotion has already gone on high alert.
Bottom of the Funnel
At the lower-level of the communication funnel are the most personal and emotionally sensitive channels: phone calls, video chats, FaceTime, and face-to-face interactions. These are your most intimate, people-oriented channels. These channels allow you to communicate feelings and emotions. You get immediate feedback from people and have the opportunity to clarify, redirect or expand on what you are communicating. These channels are where you can address emotional issues and provide critique or direction. These are also the best place for recruiting, mentoring, and training.
I hope this communication funnel and these two rules help you communicate with your church more effectively. You might also enjoy this book by Phil Bowdle, Rethink Communication: A Playbook to Clarify and Communicate Everything to Your Church
Blessings friends, Dr. Stan Granberg Heritage21 Board Member [email protected] (360) 609-6700 Heritage21, 629 West Main Street, #10210, Oklahoma City, OK 73102 |
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