Wayne Hedlund

Category: Web Presence

  • Why A Ministry Blog Beats Email Everytime

    Last week I wrote an article entitled, “Build Momentum & Create Unity With A Blog“. I’ve received a lot of questions about this topic recently. Underlying many of these questions has been the more foundational question of, “Why?” In particular, “WHY go through the pains of learning new technology and building new systems to create a blog when email works just as well?”

    Answer: Because email DOESN’T work as well.

    Reasons Why A Blog is Better.
    Let me explain why. Following are some of the top reasons why I want you to consider creating a ministry blog. Remember, I’ve outlined three target audiences for three kinds of ministry blogs: congregation, volunteers, leaders.

    • It Gives People Options
      Unless your target audience is living in the last decade, email is no longer the preferred method of communication for the world at large. Yes. Most people now have email, but in today’s social media driven culture, people want to have choices. A blog gives those choices to people. The tech savvy may choose to subscribe to your blog via a blog reader like Google Reader, NewsGator, or BlogLines while the less tech savvy still have the option to utilize email.
    • It Leverages Social Media
      Similarly, there are ways to connect blog entries to various forms of social media. For instance, every blog post could also be connected to your personal or church Twitter, FaceBook, or LinkedIn accounts.
    • It Encourages Feedback
      If you keep your blog’s ‘Comments’ feature turned on, then you will encourage input and feedback from your readers. Sometimes blog comments can become a great place for people to get engaged in the topic, especially if the author stays connected in the comment discussions.
    • It Expands Your Influence
      A good blog will make it very easy for readers to re-post individual articles to their friends and family – as well as to the world at large. For example, at the bottom of this post you will find several buttons that you may use to repost this article on your social media medium of choice (including email). You may also ‘Stumble’ this article which will increase the chances that stumbleupon users will find your website.
    • It Is Searchable
      It is easy for your readers to find you or a particular article. In fact, often they can search and find what they need right from a Google Search. For instance, if you Google “Ten Systems of the Local Church” you will very likely see several of my posts show up in the results. Additionally, you can add a search field to your blog, making it easy for your readers to search your blog for something you said in an old post.
    • It Stays Active
      Emails come and go at the click of a button. It shows up in the inbox, we read it, then delete it. Not true for blogs. Every entry is saved and readily available for your readers to quickly find and read again, as needed.
    • It Can Be Organized
      One of the best benefits of a basic blog is the use of labels or tags. An intentional blogger will tag every article with a category or label of choice. For instance, blogs promoting events could be tagged, “events”; devotional blogs could be tagged, “inspirational”; leadership blogs . . . you get the point. Again as an example, check out the labels on my blogs to the left on this site.
    • It Maximizes Communication
      It is so easy to help new members, volunteers, or leaders ‘catch up’ on things you have communicated and said in the past – especially if you use labels effectively. For example, let’s say you have a Host Ministry blog for your greeters & ushers. Every new recruit could be sent to the blog with instructions to read all entries labelled, “How To Greet” as part of their initial training.
    • It Gets Things Done
      Let’s face it. You probably don’t have the time or emotional energy to write a ministry or volunteer manual. To do it right you would want to include a lot of great material, like inspiration, instruction, policies, procedures, and especially values. You never get around to it because it’s such a big project. Your blog gets it done. Assuming you blog regularly, you will be closer to your goal in 18 months of blogging than you have been in years.
    I could go on. Suffice it to say, a ministry blog beats a email as a standard communication medium any day. NOTE: I am not suggesting you replace personal email communications with your blog. Let’s be very clear. I’m talking about ongoing encouragement, inspiration, and communication to your readers. I’m not talking about personal interaction. That will happen best face to face, over the phone, email, etc.
     
     

  • Build Momentum & Create Unity With A Blog

     
     

    I am a proud father of four fantastic children. Every day I get to hang out with my preteen daughter, gradeschooler, preschooler, and toddler. As you might expect my daughter and her three younger brothers attend the youth and children’s programs at my church. My wife and I want to stay informed about what’s going on with our kids at church. Elim Gospel Church’s Children’s Pastor, Rob Hagstrom, is doing a great job.

    In the last week I’ve received three communications in my personal inbox because I am subscribed to his blog. On Monday I received a summary of what my gradeschooler has been learning all month. On Tuesday I received a post entitled ‘Understanding Your Toddler‘ and this morning I received one more informing me that there will be no kids program this Sunday night as well as information on upcoming kids ministry events, Sunday morning message topics, and Scripture memory verses. I am well informed.

    I am pretty certain EGC’s communication to parents has never been better! Here’s the important part . . . IT’S REAL EASY TO DO AND IT’S FREE!

    How You Can Enhance Communication With A Blog
    I’d like to suggest several ways a simple blog can revolutionize how you communicate with your congregation, volunteers, and influencers. In a future post I will share some tactical tips on getting started with a free blog platform like WordPress or Blogger.

    FOR THE CONGREGATION:
    This section highlights some ideas on how the pastor can maximize communication to his congregation. Note: Some churches have a ‘church blog’ that includes several authors, not just the Lead Pastor.

     
     
    • Recap the Sunday Morning Message
      I have a surprise for you pastors. People don’t actually talk about your sermon all week long. In fact, you’re lucky if they remember the theme of your message by Sunday night. Sorry. The good news is that you can refresh their memory with your blog. Probably the best time to do this is on Sunday night or Monday morning (within 24 hours of your message).
    • Communicate Big Events
      Although I wouldn’t recommend you blog about every single event in the church, it can be very effective to blog about upcoming events that you want everyone in the church to get excited about with you.
    • Share a Devotional 
      Let your congregation get extra input from you during the week, besides the weekend sermon. Share a brief word of encouragement during the week.
    • Setup Your Message
      You may want to occasionally encourage your congregation to ‘get ready’ for your upcoming message with a short story, Scripture, or quote.
    • Get Personal
      Your blog could be a great way for your congregation to stay current on various and interesting things going on in your life. For instance, if you just had a baby – post a pic!
    • Highlight A Story, Person, or Current Event
      People love stories – and they want to hear from the leaders in their lives. Use your blog to tell transformation stories from people in your blog. Or invite an elder to post a devotional thought or story as a guest blogger. Finally, link your readers to another blog, article, or news piece that you feel is relevant to them.
    • Enhance a Sermon Series
      At Elim Gospel Church we have occasionally utilized Pastor Josh Finley’s blog to emphasize a sermon series. For instance, in our “New Thru 30” series (we read the New Testament together in 30 days) we organized various church leaders to write an article and arranged them into the blog so that church members received an article every day for the 30 day series.
    FOR VOLUNTEERS
    This section highlights ideas on how a ministry director could utilize a blog to effectively inspire, instruct and inform volunteers in each one’s unique area of ministry. For example, your Greeter Ministry might create a blog for your greeters, cafe hosts, and ushers; or your Children’s Ministry might create a blog for the preschool and/or gradeschool volunteers.
    • Inspire
      Your volunteers will be most effective when they are inspired. Use your blog to motivate them towards fulfilling your church mission and vision by sharing stories, links, articles, etc. For example, this would be a great place to share a short devotion with the Worship Team about the ‘audience of One’ during worship.
    • Inform
      Everyone knows that confusion breeds anxiety; and lack of communication breeds confusion. There’s probably no better way to frustrate volunteers than to keep them in the dark about what they should know to be a success. Things like volunteer meetings, volunteer schedules and information about what they are supposed to do, when, and how are all extremely important. Additionally, your volunteers want to know about your new strategies and ideas before you implement them. A ministry blog is a perfect place to roll out any or all of those things. 
    • Instruct
      Another way to create a frustrating environment for volunteers is by holding back on the pertinent training, resources, and procedures needed to be successful. Your ministry blog can help to facilitate this by providing links, articles, and information on how to do their job. For example, your could write a simple article for your Greeters one week entitled, “How To Greet Parents”. You could share three simple steps. Again, as an example: (1)”Offer assistance with doors and coats.” (2)”Greet the child(ren) first.” (3)”Greet the parent next.”
    FOR MINISTRY INFLUENCERS
    This final section highlights ideas on how you might utilize a blog to encourage unity among your members and leaders. For example, you might encourage all of your members to subscribe to this blog so that your leadership can effectively keep them informed about strategic plans designed to fulfill your church’s mission.
    • Missional Momentum
      Your blog is a great place to systematically reinforce your church’s mission. This can be done with key stories, exhortations, and short teachings that reinforce and remind your influencers of ‘Why We Do What We Do.”
    • Values Reinforcement
      Similarly, a leadership blog can be very effective in strengthening your church’s core values. For instance, if you have a core value of ‘integrity’ or ‘caring’ or ‘family-focused’ you can highlight that value on occasion with an example of what fulfilling that value might ‘look like’ or ‘sound like’ in the context of ministry in the church body.
    • Culture Shifts
      Most church leaders understand that culture shifts can be a long and tedious process. Your leadership blog can help to build or maintain momentum with culture oriented strategies. For example, let’s say you have been intentionally focusing on building a ‘guest friendly culture’ or a ‘prayer culture’ in your congregation. That won’t happen overnight; but it CAN happen over time and with consistent reminders from your influencers blog.
    • Vision Casting & Strategic Roll-outs
      You want your influencers to be informed and have time to process change and new initiatives. A well thought out blog series can play a big role in setting your leaders up for success as they have time to give their own input and feel part of the beginning stages of your vision. For example, you may be getting ready to start a new small group initiative. You could write several articles over the course of a few weeks to your influencers first letting them know the development of this vision and asking for input and feedback. The result will be greater buy-in and trust from your leaders.
    • Feedback
      Since this particular kind of blog is dedicated to your ministry leaders and influencers, it can be a great platform to get honest feedback without worry that guests or the community is privy to conversations that could perhaps be misunderstood. Posing a question in your blog and inviting comments or inserting a survey into your blog can be very effective and easy.
    • Communication
      Similar to Volunteer oriented blogs, your leadership blog can be a great tool to request or remind your influencers to do something or be somewhere. For instance, you might write a short blog the week before Easter requesting all influencers to remember three things on Sunday morning: (1)Greet 3 People You Don’t Know. (2)Show Up 10 Minutes Early. (3)Let Us Know Of Any Problems Right Away.

  • Ten Church Strategies: The Marketing Strategy

    Here’s another one of those words that make some pastors and christian leaders cringe when associated with the church: marketing. I contemplated just calling this the ‘Outreach’ system since it is primarily about encouraging the community to visit the church. The problem is that we also associate Outreach to much more than that (like missions, and ministry to the poor/needy). So I’m keeping ‘Marketing’ as the word to describe this system.

    Despite the uncomfortable connotations of the word, nearly every pastor believes in marketing the church. If a church has a website, ads in local papers, info in the white pages, or a sign on the front lawn, then that church is into marketing. In fact, I recommend you check out this page located at, interestingly enough: www.churchmarketingsucks.com.

    In this installment of ‘The Ten Church Systems‘ I will outline several areas every church should develop in order to effectively attract the unchurched, overchurched, and dechurched (been there, done that) in their communities. If you haven’t already, I recommend you first read my ‘Getting Started Thoughts and Disclaimers’, written in three parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

    Key Sub-Systems of The Marketing System:
    Following are the key Sub-Systems related to The Marketing System. You’ll notice that a core value of marketing is effective and relevant communication.

    • Website System
      The church website is a vital part of The Marketing System. This system will include the development of a powerful website that is both attractive and easy to navigate. The best website will serve both prospective guests as well as longstanding members. The Website System will also ensure that content is consistently updated and relevant. (Check out ‘Guest Friendly Website’.)
    • Traditional Advertisement System
      This system will include a clear analysis and implementation of the most appropriate forms of traditional advertising. It may include things like newspaper ads, TV or radio ads, and telephone book ads.
    • Social Media System
      Unless the church is reaching a very narrow group in the community, social media is and will continue to become a very important part of church promotions. This system will include determining the best types of social media to engage with and will keep each one relevant and up to date. Social media systems may include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more.
    • Special Event Promotion System
      This system will focus on the effective promotion of special church events that may draw the community. Church productions, Christmas programs, unique outreaches, upcoming message series, and key classes are just a few examples of possible events to promote outside the church. The Special Event Promotion System will get the word out to the community in the most effective ways possible. It may include touchcards, posters, billboards, radio ads, and more.
    • Word of Mouth System
      The best marketing happens informally through attendees who are excited about the church. The Word of Mouth System will equip attendees to ‘talk it up’ through effective communication and hands-on materials they can use to supplement their invitations. Pastors and church leaders will intentionally tell church attendees about upcoming exciting events or services so they can get the word out. The best system will also put something in their hands to use as an invitation – like posters, flyers, or touchcards. Obviously, an updated and exciting website and social media should support and supplement this system as well.
    • Church Communications System
      Church communications is probably one of the most challenging systems to develop for pastors and church leaders. This system will ensure all church activities get promoted appropriately. It will prevent some events from getting over-promoted while others are under-promoted. The Church Communications System will provide a simple way for church leaders to submit communications requests. Those requests will eventually be approved after consideration has been made as to what methods of promotions they will receive – for example, verbal promo, newsletter, e-blasts, bulletin inserts, website page, etc.
    • Branding & Graphic Arts System
      This system will determine what needs to have a specific brand within the church. Of course the church itself should have a relevant logo, but sometimes specific ministries or events should be branded as well. Often, individual message series, sermons, or special events will have a unique brand too. This system will develop brands and graphics and distribute them to the other Marketing sub-systems.

    Note: Inspiration for the Ten Church Systems comes from Nelson Searcy and the Eight Systems of the Local Church he proposed in his free e-book entitled, ‘Healthy Systems, Healthy Church‘.