{"id":713860,"date":"2020-06-18T23:13:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T03:13:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=713860"},"modified":"2020-06-17T23:15:18","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T03:15:18","slug":"three-easy-steps-to-assess-your-churchs-communication-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/three-easy-steps-to-assess-your-churchs-communication-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Easy Steps to Assess Your Church’s Communication Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we move to a more digital-focused world, your church’s communication strategy will become more critical as you navigate this new terrain.<\/span> Your church’s communication strategy will be the roadmap to helping you determine what effective communications will look like for your church and congregation.<\/span><\/p>\n

In this post, we’re going to walk you three key questions that will help you hit the pause button and take a step back to assess your church’s communication strategy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Question 1: Does your church’s communication strategy have a clear goal?<\/b><\/h3>\n

When you look at your strategy, do you have a clear goal for the strategy? This question is crucial because it forces you to understand what you want to communicate clearly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think of your goal as a call to action. What is the one thing you want your congregation to do when you execute your communications strategy? For example, do you want people to join a small group, go on a mission trip, or invite a neighbor to church?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another way to look at a goal is to figure out your definition of success. How do you know if your communications strategy is a success? What are the key indicators that would let your church know that your church’s communication strategy is working? <\/span>Without knowing the goal or what success looks like, you’ll have no idea if you have the right strategy.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Question 2: Can the strategy be explained on a single sheet of paper?<\/b><\/h3>\n

Communication strategies tend to grow larger over time. It’s easy to begin adding new methods of communication such as email, texting, and mobile apps. However, as the new methods accumulate over time, they can start to weigh down your strategy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you effectively answer the first question in this post, you should be able to boil your strategy down to a single sheet of paper. You should know what your strategy’s goal is and then remove anything from your strategy that will not help you reach that goal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In essence, you should be able to sit across from a member of your church and in thirty seconds or less explain what you want to do and how your communications strategy will help you achieve it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Question 3: Does the goal of your church’s communications strategy align with your church’s mission and vision?<\/b><\/h3>\n

With the proliferation of communication channels (social media, live-streaming, etc.), it’s easy to begin to feel like your church is being left behind. So to keep up, you try to adopt as many new strategies as your church can handle. However, this rapid adoption of strategy can come with a price.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you’re not careful, a misaligned communications strategy can create sideways energy; to the point where communications is almost an opposing force to where the church is being led.<\/span> This misalignment is avoided by ensuring that your communication strategy reinforces the execution of the church’s mission and vision.<\/span><\/p>\n

If your communication strategy is not aligning with the missing and vision of your church, then you need to ask the following questions:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Do we have a clear understanding of the mission and vision of our church?<\/span><\/li>\n
  • What communication strategies will it take to execute the mission and vision of the church?<\/span><\/li>\n
  • What communications strategies do you need to abandon to make room for new strategies that support your church’s mission and vision?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    The questions above will help you gain realignment with your church’s communication strategy and its mission and vision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    One final note, the reason why assessing your church’s communication strategy is so important is that as the church moves more towards inhabiting digital spaces (i.e., Facebook, YouTube, etc.) our strategies from the physical world might not translate into these new digital spaces. However, <\/span>by assessing your church’s communication strategy, you’re preparing your church for the future and what lies ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"our church’s communication strategy will be the roadmap to helping you determine what effective communications will look like for your church and congregation.","protected":false},"author":8044,"featured_media":713861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-713860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communications"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThree Easy Steps to Assess Your Church's Communication Strategy | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Your church's communication strategy will be the roadmap to helping you determine what effective communications will look like for your church and congregation.Y\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, 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