Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Want some advice on how to grow your church? 

Hire a communications director.

Yes, you heard that right. A communications director. Not an additional pastor, not an education director or another musician. But a professional communicator to craft an effective narrative, develop a marketing campaign, and use latest digital technology to push your message out to people you don't know yet,

Let me unpack that job outline. First, a professional -- someone who has training and experience in using digital technology, email campaigns, social media campaigns, push marketing, inbound marketing, and blogging. Not someone wedded to paper, and not someone whose primary focus is on internal communications. If you keep talking only to yourselves, your church will die.

Second, someone who can craft a narrative. That means persuasive content that will help people understand who you are, what you are about, what you value, the difference you hope to make in the world, and the benefits they will find in engaging with you. We are way beyond posting acolyte schedules and promoting parish suppers. Infinitely beyond internal budget discussions.

Third, it's about marketing. Yes, that is a term from commerce. Get over it. Marketing simply means going into the marketplace in a way that touches other lives. Good marketing, especially for a faith community, is grounded in honesty and transparency, and it seeks to draw people closer to you and what you value. All not-for-profits do marketing. Churches do marketing, too. They just haven't been doing it well. A sign out front is marketing, but it isn't enough. A web site is marketing, but it's too passive.

Fourth, using digital technology should be a no-brainer. It's effective, it's virtually cost-free, it's what the marketplace is prepared to receive, and it's your best way to reach all ages, from young to old. When older church leaders resist technology, it's usually because they don't understand it themselves and feel all-thumbs when using it. Get over it. 

For less than $100 a month, you can implement a suite of industrial-grade tools like MailChimp (the market leader in email campaigning), Insightly (a customer relationship management app that integrates with MailChimp), and SquareSpace (a web development tool that provides a blogging platform, easy-to-update web pages, and world-class design). 

With tools like these, your communications director can develop a comprehensive strategy for reaching everyone from longtime insiders to people you just met at the coffee shop. This strategy will use social media, but in a more sophisticated way than a single church page on Facebook. It will use both "push marketing" and "inbound marketing." It will use multiple blogs, each designed to speak to a different level of engagement between reader and congregation. It will use e-letters.

Churches must get outside themselves. Your future lies out there in a world that is increasingly unlike you. It is likely to be younger (average age 37), browner, less affluent, less educated and less influenced by religious ties while growing up. You have got to speak their languages, meet them where they are, discern their needs and yearnings, and make a fundamental commitment to serving them. In the end, it will be person to person, but to get connected to persons, you will need effective marketing. They won't just walk in your church door next Sunday. 

A good communications director won't come cheap. But he or she will generate more than enough revenue through growing your church's engagement with the larger community. 

This post first appeared on September 30 on Tom Ehrich’s Church Wellness blog. It is reprinted with permission. 

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