By unSeminary: Thanks for joining in for this week’s unSeminary podcast. We’re talking with Jenn Clauser, the Director of Communications at Coker United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas. She’s with us today to dig deeper into online church and how to integrate it as a core part of our mission to reaching people who are far from God.

Optimize your website. // Before COVID, Coker felt led to make their online presence more robust. They partnered with Missional Marketing who rebuilt the church’s website for search engine optimization. By paying attention to what people are looking for in keyword searches online from month to month, a website can be made to do outreach for you. Coker layers these words into their website in an authentic way by using them in sermon series. Divorce, for example, is a high search term in the month of January, so Coker tends to lead into the year with a series about families. They might use phrases on their website such as: How do you avoid divorce? How do you care for someone who has been divorced? How do we strengthen marriage? By developing a strong online presence, you will be easily found by your community in their time of need.Create connections. // As online viewership increased during COVID, Coker began to ask how they could see the analytics as faces. These are real people looking for guidance and connections. Feed them where they are and offer them help and services online even if you can’t see them. Coker did this by connecting their online audience to meaningful community. A few steps they took included setting up a way where online guests could register their attendance and let you know their names and email addresses. They created a place for online prayer requests and a team responds to these requests in real time. Coker also offered people a free book in exchange for their email address, as well as one-off courses, like a simple marriage class. Have a connections expert who is in charge of reaching out to them see where their needs are.Launch classes online. // Within their online campus, Coker listed all of their courses online. Allowing all of your classes to be attended in that format opens the door to a new audience who may never have attended your church before. Coker has their classes set up similar to Google Classroom. People can get the class content, a Facebook group where they can connect during the week, the Zoom link, and other resources for attendees. Online classes provide a way to reach people that won’t walk through the doors of your church right away, but they feel comfortable being present in an online Zoom classroom. It gives them the chance to know others’ faces, and provides a bridge where they could feel comfortable attending church in person down the road. Don’t miss this mission field opportunity.Brainstorm new ideas. // Recognizing the opportunities that are provided by mixing online and in-person, Coker is brainstorming a lot of possible ideas right now. In the fall they are launching an intentional discipleship program where people take an online assessment, get their results, and then meet with a spiritual director who will guide their next steps. Depending on what the spiritual director recommends, people may then get involved in online classes to help them study the Bible better or dig deeper into prayer. Another new thing Coker is trying is assembling five community groups. Four of these will be in-person and one will be online. Each group will meet quarterly as a community gathering for things such as a BBQ, a study group, a monthly dinner, etc. Coker will see what organically grows from there.Listen well. // During this transitional phase it’s important for churches to be listening to what their community needs as well as how they want to connect with your church. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas and offer a mix of online and in-person services or events. Most of all, make space to listen to God. During the pandemic, God has shown Jenn that she needs to be intentional about her connection with Him. Pay particular attention to your sabbath, your time with God alone, and time with other people and how God might be speaking through them. Commit everything to prayer, and know who your Spirit-led experts are. Talk decisions out with other leaders at the church, but also don’t be afraid to use Google to research and learn!

You can learn more about Coker United Methodist Church at www.coker.org and visit their online campus at Coker.org/cokeronline.

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Leadership has felt pretty uncertain and divisive this past year. How do you make decisions when the future isn’t predictable and your team has different opinions?Download the FREE Pivot Ready Cheat Sheet to get help making progress and gaining clarity through rapid change and disruption. It will give you a framework that effective and resilient leaders use to make decisions and take action.

Source: Applying Pandemic Learnings from Church Online to Post-Pandemic Church with Jenn Clauser

The post Applying Pandemic Learnings from Church Online to Post-Pandemic Church with Jenn Clauser appeared first on Passion for Planting.

By: UnSeminary

This has been a strange season to be working in the local church. 

Just a few months ago, we all made the pivot to entirely digital and that felt like the biggest change in our history of leading in the local church. At that point, we thought it would only be a few weeks that we would need to be in lockdown. Now we find ourselves facing what seems to be an even more complex season of ministry. 

This transition to whatever the next normal looks like is going to be incredibly difficult to navigate. This will likely include some mixed variety of digital services, small group meetings, and some version of large group meetings in our auditoriums. 

I love church leaders. I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can be more effective and what we can do to reach more people around us. 

Over the last few months, I’ve spent quite a bit of time listening to and chatting with church leaders from across the country. While none of the fears that I write about here have been explicitly expressed by the individual leaders that I spoke with, they do resonate with the conversations that I’ve been having. My challenge to senior leaders today is to find time in the coming weeks to listen carefully to what your leaders are saying and even more carefully to what they’re not saying.

These fears represent some real pain points that our staff are going through in this season as we face what comes next in our churches. So, here are five fears about reopening that your staff may be feeling but aren’t talking to you about. 

I don’t like crowds anymore. 

This past weekend I was at an Ikea. It was kind of a fun experience lining up outside in a winding queue like I was waiting for my favorite Walt Disney World ride. It was interesting looking at the different types of masks people were wearing. But something hit me when I actually stepped foot inside the Ikea.

This wave of unexpected fear came over me as I stood in the silverware section with maybe 35 to 40 other people milling around me. I didn’t realize that months of being socially isolated had actually made me fearful in crowds. There is no doubt that some staff on your team are worried about coming back, and while we’re cheering that our churches are reopening and are looking forward to 30%, 40%, or maybe even 50% of our community returning to our buildings, there are some staff that will find this to be a fearful or overwhelming experience.

Giving our staff an opportunity to distance themselves from our community as they arrive will be an important part of our reopening plan. Even those affectionate folks among us who used to high five and hug everybody who came through the front door may find themselves with increasing amounts of stress when it comes to growing audience sizes in the coming weeks. 

I’m done with church online. 

A few weeks ago, I was enjoying a peaceful Sunday morning engaging with our church online while making some pancakes with fresh blueberries. When I came back to the screen to watch what was going on, a deep heaviness suddenly fell over me.

We’ve been celebrating this amazing season of digital ministry, but that’s mostly because we haven’t had any alternative. As senior leaders, we’ve been telling our people that this represents the future. We’ve been communicating how important it is for us to shift all of our ministries to digital and online in order to continue to connect with our people. However, I suspect that many of our staff are just done with church online. 

We’re starting to see that this is the case in the broader church, as attendance is dropping and engagement is decreasing. Many of our staff are probably fearful of actually telling us that they are also tired of it, despite the fact that their perspective might actually help us fix the issue.

Let’s create space to address the ways that church online isn’t meeting our needs and what we need to do to change that. If we could talk honestly about what is inadequate about the church online experience now that we’ve all been in it for weeks, we might actually be able push to a deeper level of innovation. 

What is it about church online that is so dissatisfactory? How do we change those things for the future waves of this pandemic and also for people who may never enter the doors of our church but are connecting online?

I work in kids’ ministry. We’re opening without my area. What does that mean?

One of the saddest things I’ve seen in this reopening process is that some churches across the country are planning to open without any form of kids’ ministry. 

The not so subtle message you’re sending to your kids’ ministry team is what they have suspected all along: kids’ ministry is nothing more than babysitting so that adults can sit freely in the main room. 

Over the years, we’ve used language that has caused our kids’ ministry people to be suspicious of whether we might think that kids’ ministry is second best to what’s happening in the adult world. If your church is looking at opening without kids’ ministry, you are making a grievous strategic error. 

Kids’ ministry has always cultivated some of the most innovative leaders in the church. Kids’ ministry is a growth engine and is one of the major reasons why growing churches are growing. To reopen a church without kids’ ministry, I would contest, is not actually reopening the church. If you cannot open kids’ ministry, do not reopen your adult ministry. There are many strategic reasons to consider here but think about the damage you’ll be doing to your staff and leaders, not to mention your wider church, if you don’t include kids’ ministry as an important part of your whole. 

I’m tired. (Like, really tired.)

I’ll say it again, this has been a very strange season for people who work in the local church. There’s a meme that’s been floating around that says, “How is it that we’re not doing any public meetings or anything at the church building, but our staff are busier than ever before?” That’s very true. I would suspect that in your church, many people haven’t taken any vacation time during these last three months because there hasn’t been anywhere to go or anything to do. On top of that, people have been wondering about the future of their jobs. So the thought of taking time off right now has not made sense.

The problem is we’re heading into a reopening phase that will be more demanding than the phase we just went through. The complexity of ministry is only going to increase in the coming weeks and months, let alone if we find ourselves with a substantial second wave of coronavirus that forces us back into a lockdown scenario.

Your team is tired.

I would strongly recommend that you think through what you’re going to do with vacation time in the coming weeks and months. People need to push back, unplug, and not worry about the live feed or what’s happening in the chat room. One more week to rest, to sleep in, to find some sense of new normal. I understand that this can be difficult in this season, but if we don’t give our people an opportunity to take time off, it will only impact our ministries and our team’s ability to stay healthy in the long run.

I feel a little lost. 

This has been a destabilizing season; there’s no doubt about that. There are people on your team today who are not really sure what’s next. The path is unclear. Ministry during normal seasons is already a bit destabilizing and uncomfortable because we’re constantly dealing with people who have real issues and our job is to help them take steps closer to Jesus. The wins are sometimes not entirely evident and the rewards can feel few on a week in week out basis. Our job in this season is to clarify the roles that people need to be filling and the work that we’re asking them to do.

In this season, it’s up to you and me as leaders to give clear direction, even if that means brand new job descriptions and weekly, monthly, and/or quarterly key performance indicators that our teams can push towards. Team members may feel strange raising their hand to say that they feel lost because they might fear that will reflect poorly on their ability to cope in this season. Take time now to get back to the basics around defining the win and clarifying the next steps for your team.

In times of great adversity, the church shines. 

There’s no doubt that these weeks and months have been filled with all kinds of adversity. We need to work carefully and closely with our teams to help them weather this season and to pivot well into what’s coming next. There are some resources below to help you with the conversations that you’re going to have in the coming weeks as you flesh out where your people are at and work through your reopening plan:

A Template for Discussion in a One on One Meeting4 Leadership Personalities Needed for Your Church Team6 Thoughts on Perfectionism and Church Leadership7 Leadership Tensions in Growing Churches

Source: 5 Fears About Reopening that Church Staff Aren’t Telling Their Leaders

The post 5 Fears About Reopening that Church Staff Aren’t Telling Their Leaders appeared first on Passion for Planting.

by Jeff Reed: You are a small church pastor, minister, staff member, or volunteer. You want to make a difference. You want your communication to move people. You want your invites to result in guests.

You likely ask questions such as, “How do I use what I have to make a difference in our community? How do I use online tools to reach people? Do I need a new camera, microphone, or software to do online ministry?” It is tempting to think that a new piece of gear, or a new method, or a new program will make the difference.

I want to show you a framework that you can use in a small church with a lot of tools or just a few. This works incredibly well in online ministry. I’m a small church pastor too. I clean toilets and take out the trash. And our church uses this framework to communicate in ways that make a difference online and offline.

The Storybrand framework is a way of thinking of marketing, communications, and strategy from the guest’s or customer’s perspective. It comes from Donald Miller’s book, Building a Storybrand.

Churches tend to think of communications, invites, and marketing from the perspective of the church’s goal, rather than from the guest, attender, or member’s needs, wants, and goals. This is especially true in smaller churches where staff and volunteers do multiple jobs and often have little training for things like communications and marketing.

Think of the difference between “Do you want to go to a marriage conference? Please sign up!” and “You want a great marriage. But maybe you’re hitting a rough patch. We’ve been through our own rough spots and believe every marriage is worth the work! Join us for our upcoming marriage conference.” One is focused on the event and the desire of the church (sign up). The other puts the couple and their desires and fears at the front (“You want…”).

Your communications will be more effective, no matter the tool, as you learn to shift your communication from church-focused to others-focused.

Learning to make this shift will help you reach your online audience, as well as, offline. Any tool you use becomes more relevant and useful. Your communications will make a difference when you reach out with something that is in some way relevant to a need that the user already feels.

Example 1:

Let me show you a way that we used this framework for a recent series. A typical church invite says, “We’re doing an exciting new series that you should join us for. Please come.” We wanted to flip that around and speak to a felt need that most people have as the reason they would want to join us.

Our big Fall series was called “Failure is Not Final.” Failure is not final is one of our core values. We believe God is near to the brokenhearted and that he does his work in and through our failures. Here is how we framed this series:

“Problems, challenges, failures. We all have them. But you don’t want them as your baggage. Join Belgium Community Church online and on Sundays starting September 8th! We’ll see that with God, Failure is not final.”

We created a landing page at belgiumchurch.com/final, did video ads, and sent flyers to every home in our village pointing people to this message.

Notice that the messaging is focused on not coming to church or engaging with us. The focus is on our community and their wants, needs, and fears. We did not start with a felt need. The series was a core value series for us. That was set. It was the communication of that series that started with a felt need. The communication method and messaging changed, not the message itself.

Example 2:

For our second Fall series, we went through the book of Titus. Instead of speaking to ourselves and how we will get more Bible knowledge (which is valuable), we spoke to the situation we all find ourselves in:

“These times can be crazy. Whether it is events around the globe or just down our block, life can surprise and overwhelm us. How should we live in times like these? Do we throw up our hands and retreat? Do we get angry and fight?In the Bible, the letter to Titus is for times like ours. Crazy times are an opportunity for us to live in such a way that we make the good news of Jesus attractive. Instead of being scared or angry, we are called to shine brightly.Will you join us on Sundays and online in October as we learn together what it means to adorn the good news of Jesus?”

Learning and applying the storybrand framework gives you an engaging and motivating strategy that can be applied with any tool. I showed us using text here, but we use the framework with video, audio, graphics, etc.

So then, if you have small budgets and volunteers, you can still communicate in a way that makes a difference.

What do you do?

Get the book Building a Storybrand by Donald Miller.
Read the book. Do it rather quickly (try to block off 2-3 times in a week to read through it. It is not long).
Go to their website: mystorybrand.com where you can build practice scripts or frameworks.
Practice on your next sermon series, community project, etc. Try to do it several times in the first month to get the hang of it.

What difference will it make?

Your communication will stand out and move people. You can use print, visual, audio, and video to communicate and get a response. You won’t waste time and effort anymore putting out content and invites and flyers and videos that no one responds to.

Any digital tool you use will have a purpose and be more effective. You won’t be stuck with a shiny camera with no message and no ideas on how to communicate.

Source: Storybrand for Small Church Pastors

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by Rich Birch: Today we have a returning guest to the podcast! Professor Katie Allred is someone you may know from this show or from the Church Communications group on Facebook. She teaches courses in Consumer Behavior and Audience Engagement at the University of Florida and in Database, Software Development and Social Media Analytics for the University of Mobile.

Today we’re chatting with her about her work with The Goodwork Agency and Church Communications, and how churches can use social media as their front door, injecting the gospel into those environments.

Don’t treat social media like a billboard. // Social media can be a great free platform for churches, but oftentimes they don’t take advantage of it in a way that’s effective. Katie hears from pastors all the time: I posted on social media, I said come this Sunday, I said to come to this event, and it didn’t work for me. Katie reminds listeners that social media is not a billboard; you must think about it differently.
Social media is a great doorway for your church. // Churches need to be considering how they can use social media for evangelism and discipleship, rather than just sharing announcements. Your church’s Facebook Page should be telling the story of who you are; what does your ‘house’ look like? Show faces of people who are a part of your congregation and tell their stories—stories of God’s goodness and faithfulness and grace in the lives of these people. If we learn to share these stories better, Katie believes we will see more traction with social media. Social media is supposed to be a conversation and has the capacity to offer real community. Let’s go deeper than simple marketing tactics and share our actual faith.
The church has a branding problem. // Katie believes that one problem the church has is that it tries to project perfect people when we’re not perfect. Christians love to tell pretty redemption stories that are wrapped up in a bow, but it doesn’t always happen that way. It’s ok to share there is still messiness in our lives as we work with God through situations. Whatever that looks like, we need to figure it out and walk with people toward sanctification. Katie points out that Elevation Church is a good example of telling baptism stories.
…

Source: Social Media, Communications & Your Church with Katie Allred

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