Like this one.

Or this one.

It’s true. Periscope is a fantastic tool with lots of potential for the church. But before you change your entire social media strategy to incorporate it, ask yourself the following three questions.

1. Is my audience on Periscope or Twitter?

The primary question to ask is whether or not your audience is even on Periscope in the first place.

Recently I’ve begun to notice that my church‘s audience isn’t on Twitter very often, if at all. As a result, I’ve cut down on the attention given to the platform. It isn’t to say we shouldn’t use it, in fact, I need to post far more than I do, but I definitely have other areas of my work that are more important in this season.

If you have a decent audience on Twitter, however, then Periscope might be a great option. It integrates well with its parent platform and shares a similar audience.

2. Do I have capacity to launch this right now?

I’m fortunate to work at an amazing church with resources that allow me to focus on communications and special projects. But before I landed here, I worked for a smaller church that ran a lean staff. My ability to launch new projects and communication channels was limited.

When you have less time, you need to steward it well. So does launching on a new social platform make the most sense for you right now?

Keep in mind that informally testing out a platform is not what I’m getting at here. We recently switched coffee vendors at my church, but prior to switching we held a taste test for staff. I Periscoped the entire event for fun and learned a lot about the platform from the experience. I will probably continue to do so for a while as I decide if resources should be dedicated to the platform.

3. What other digital media might be more important?

Similar to capacity, what else are you working on that might need more attention right now? What digital media do you have in the works that will draw people to your website to learn more about your church and how they can get involved?

Social media is hugely important, but gaining likes, followers, and comments doesn’t do much for you in and of itself. We need to generate content that can be shared on social platforms but ultimately drives traffic back to the church website. Only there can visitors learn in-depth information about your church and how to get involved.

Social media should primarily serve to distribute your content, not create it.
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And let’s be real. We live in an on-demand culture where services like Netflix and Spotify dominate the landscape. People want immediate access to content. What can you regularly provide your church and its surrounding community that is accessible at any time?

Periscope is a fantastic tool and one that you should play with to see if it’s a good fit for your church. Just take care to not get lost in the excitement of new.

If you feel an audience is there, you have capacity, and your priorities and strategies are sound, then check out some great resources on the subject by Chuck Scoggins, Cleve Persinger, and Dave Shrein. Dave’s podcast also gives some good examples of how you can use Periscope for networking. I’ll have more posts on the importance of networking in the future, but if nothing else, get on Twitter and join the #ChSocM and #ChurchComm communities. You’ll be better for it.

Mr. Collins spoke about the five stages of decline for organizations, the warning signs, and opportunities to change direction. The concepts were brilliant, and I’d definitely recommend setting aside some time to visit his website and read more on the subject.

The first stage is hubris born of success.

The best leaders we’ve studied never presume they’ve reached ultimate understanding of all the factors that brought them success.

– Jim Collins, A Primer on the Warning Signs

Mr. Collins continued to describe the leaders affected by hubris, stating that Level 5 Leaders don’t talk about themselves, they put the organization and its people first.

This got me thinking about church culture and the misuse of honor that has the potential to distract us from clearly communicating the Gospel message.

Church leadership coach Tony Morgan writes:

When an unhealthy “culture of honor” is promoted, God’s people wait for “God’s man” to do the work of God. That may work for someone who only intends to be a preacher, but it doesn’t work if you are trying to be a pastor.

Tony Morgan, The “Culture of Honor” is Hurting Churches

The Bible clearly values honor:

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves.

– Romans 12:10 (NIV)

Our challenge is striking a balance between honor and hype.

Now before I go any further, I don’t want to give the impression that this is an easy topic to navigate. A culture of honor is NOT a bad thing to cultivate in your church. It’s important to lift each other up, demonstrate gratitude, and exercise humility. But as a leader in your church, it’s also important to communicate that honor goes up and down the chain of command.

So how do we as church communicators promote Biblical honor while keeping the Gospel as our central focus?

Celebrate people in your congregation first.

As communicators, we’re trying to inspire people to act in some way. As church communicators, we want to inspire people to choose Christ and engage in community.

By celebrating the people in your congregation first – their commitment to serving, life change, next steps taken – you communicate that you’re about people over projects and connection over numbers.

A great way to do this is by highlighting your volunteers on social media.

I’m fortunate to have many fanastic mentors in my life, but one of the longest standing and most influential has been Van Metschke.

Van taught me about honor by demonstrating it constantly. If you follow his Instagram or Twitter posts, he regularly highlights the volunteers serving under him, celebrating their milestones, hard work, and commitments to Christ. Van is a very accomplished leader, but he is always first to talk about the amazing work done by those around him.

When highlighting staff, make them relatable and avoid celebrity.

I’m fortunate to serve alongside amazing leaders at Willamette who seek their identities from Christ and exercise humility on a daily basis. When we communicate anything about or by a member of our team, we make every effort to focus on the work Christ is doing in and through the individual.

The easiest example to begin with is Sunday sermon quotes.

We will often create shareable graphics with message quotes from Sunday and attribute them to the author, but the post itself will focus on the point being made. Typically it will include some sort of prompt to encourage our congregation to respond by thinking about how the point can be applied to their everyday lives.

Now, this doesn’t mean highlighting your staff is a bad thing. In fact, one of the first pages a prospective visitor usually visits is your staff directory. Why? Because they want to see if they fit in!

A church staff is usually pretty reflective of the types of people you’ll find in the congregation. A visitor will find it comforting to see someone similar in age, race, gender, or even style.

Finding ways to showcase the unique people on your staff is helpful for those trying to figure out if your church is for them. One of the best ways to do this is by integrating your staff into regular communication. Use them in your videos (if they’re good on camera), have them write articles for your church blog, and make sure they post regularly on their personal social media accounts that are available to the public.

We can build a culture of honor in our churches that goes both ways. As one of the primary voices of our communities, we must focus on leading by example through humility in our communication.

I’ve recently been doing a lot of study on empathy and its impact on building trust, and ultimately, good leadership. Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston and has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.

In the above video, she outlines empathy as one of the most important ingredients in human connection.

Dr. Brown highlights four qualities of empathy:

1. The ability to take the perspective of another person
2. Staying out of judgment
3. Recognizing emotion in other people
4. Communicating our ability to recognize their emotion

On a personal level, this is golden information. The ability to generate empathy, connection, and trust is what separates average leaders from great ones. It’s what makes friendships more than acquaintances.

Empathy is also the quality that determines how effective your communication will be, regardless of your audience.

Our communication can go one of three ways. As stated briefly in the video, sympathy communicates that we don’t understand what the person/audience is going through. It lacks connection. Similarly, apathy finds itself on the other end of the spectrum and communicates a lack of desire to understand. Empathy, however, communicates that your audience matters and you understand them.

Empathy communicates that your audience matters and you understand them.
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We all want to be understood, no matter who we are. It’s a universal desire. So it should make sense why this is incredibly important to understand in church communications.

Let’s look at how apathy and sympathy can cause communication breakdowns.

Does your church bulletin ever read like a dictionary: emotionless and boring? Are your church emails and website a generic list of current happenings? This is where apathy invades our communications, and sometimes, it’s not that easy to see that we’re doing it. Apathy can still hide in the midst of exciting adjectives and multiple exclamation points. You might be excited about what’s coming up, but why should your audience? What need is your church filling in the lives of the individuals attending?

Church communication demonstrating sympathy can be found within singles and care ministries. It is often assuming in its tone. I’ll try not to get on a soapbox here, but I usually find the language used for singles ministries to be incredibly condescending, treating singleness as an illness to be cured or a problem to be fixed. Honestly, that language offends a lot of single people I know and doesn’t build trust between churches and individuals. How can we craft language that demonstrates a desire to fill a need as opposed to fixing a problem that may not exist?

Your communication is automatically weakened if your voice lacks empathy.
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Empathy creates a connection between you and your audience that could lead to someone giving church a try for the first time or help someone be vulnerable as they take their next step of faith.

If we are to inspire our audience to action, we have to walk a mile in their shoes. Understand your audience, speak to them as an authority that doesn’t sit on a pedestal, and watch how much more effective your efforts will be.

My first job out of college required an hour long commute through a major bottleneck. Many bottlenecks occur when freeways decrease in the number of available lanes. This was a significant issue here, but it also suffered from the ending of a carpool lane. This resulted in cars jockeying for the far left lane in hopes they could pass through the affected area more quickly, which of course, was laughable.

Sometimes the default move in church communications is to bottleneck our promotions in the same way. It’s not difficult to work a last minute announcement into a bulletin, video announcement, or all-church email. The question is, are you actually getting anything from it? I’ve heard people make the argument that those following a Simple Church model can get away with broad announcements, but that seems a bit nearsighted to me. Awareness of an event, initiative, or product is great, but awareness doesn’t generate action in and of itself.

Our job in church communications is to inspire our audience to action.
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Are you wanting people to register for your next women’s/men’s event? What about signing up to get more information on serving? You have to target your communication if you want to see people act the way you’re hoping.

Dedicated Lanes

Why is targeted communication a big deal?

Think back to your last experience on a freeway. Carpool lanes target a specific traveler – one who is either traveling with multiple passengers or driving a low-emissions vehicle. In Portland, the carpool lane on the 5 (Sidebar: I’ll always be a Californian, therefore, it’s called the 5) is only active during rush hour. The dedicated lane doesn’t serve everyone traveling, but those who use it get to where they’re going faster.

The same is true for communications. By using the right platform for the right audience, we can increase the number of people who respond to our call to action.

I’ll give you an example.

Middle School Camp: Black Lake

At Willamette Christian Church, we have an incredible student ministry. Seriously. If you’re in the Portland area sometime, come check it out. One of our most popular ministry events for middle schoolers is the annual, week-long summer camp. While its reputation drives a lot of registrations, every year new families begin attending our church and new middle schoolers enter the program. This year, we’re promoting the camp across multiple mediums to target various audiences.

Target Audiences

1. Middle School Parents – The key audience here are those who have middle school students. We need them to know that the camp exists, important details about registration, and an overview of our camp experience.
2. 5th Grade Parents – Our current 5th graders are invited to attend the summer before they transition into middle school. This is a great opportunity for them to connect with their future small group leaders and fellow junior highers. We have to provide a good overview of the camp for new parents in the middle school program, as well as address any concerns about the length of time their child is away from home (many for the first time).
3. The Church As a Whole – While the parents of high school students or a newly married couple may not have the ability to participate in our middle school camp, this major event has the ability to communicate the extent of ministry our church provides. We want our congregation to be encouraged their church is doing such great ministry!

Communication Channels

Once the target audiences were identified, we were then able to begin planning a strategy to reach each of them effectively. Below is a basic outline of our approach.

Sunday Promotion

The first step in our promotion process was to cast the net wide so that everyone knew it was time for Middle School Camp sign ups. We wanted to create a small buzz around the church. As a quick side note, our camp is switching locations in 2015. Prior to this year, the camp was referred to by its location (“The Peak”) as opposed to its function, a middle school camp. Consequently, we needed to build awareness that the location change wasn’t affecting the quality of our program.

We utilized our existing in-service video announcements to raise awareness about the location change and quality of programming, as well as announce the opening date for registration, as spots are limited. We also included information in the bulletin to support visually what was being shared verbally.

During our middle school service, we showed a special, age-appropriate promotional video. It doubled as a location-reveal video, aiding in the building of anticipation. Our Junior Designer at Willamette, Mitch Wilson, absolutely killed it on this video. Using footage from our past location, we highlighted activities that we know are possible at the new one.

To be honest, I’m jealous of our middle school students after seeing this video. Check out the awesomeness below (and probably turn your volume down a tiny bit, haha).

Email

Email continues to provide incredible opportunity for churches who use it well. I’ll talk more about this in future posts, but for now, I’d encourage you to begin exploring how you could effectively use email in your church. For our promotion of the Middle School Camp, we used it in two ways.

The first was to include it in our weekly email update, an opt-in communication that people can receive by letting us know on our website or their connection card on Sundays. It’s a great platform, but really is the 30,000 foot view of our church and its happenings. There’s not a lot of room for compelling detail, so I never rely on it alone to inspire someone to act. It’s definitely a communications vehicle I’m excited to enhance in 2015.

We’re also preparing several targeted emails. One will be directly to parents of existing middle school students. Most are familiar with the camp and their kids are at an age where being away from home is less likely to be new or a point of concern.

The other targeted emails will go to current 5th grade parents. Over three messages, we will introduce them to our middle school pastor and program, provide a detailed overview of the yearly camp (specifically highlighting its multiple years of successful operation), and then address common concerns and frequently asked questions. At the end of each email, we will provide links with custom URL’s to track click-throughs for evaluation purposes.

Miscellaneous

Finally, we’re doing a several other smaller initiatives to maintain awareness and interest. 11”x17” posters will be hung in the middle school room, local Starbucks and supermarkets, and around the city. In addition, we will post information on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with the hope of directing people to our website to gather more details and register.

We truly believe this camp can positively impact a middle school student’s life and have heard countless testimonies that support this. Therefore, our goal is to help middle school students and their parents get all the necessary information and register. Promoting everything from the stage might work, but as I’ve highlighted above, there’s a lot to consider. We aren’t just looking for registrations or positive buzz. We also want our parents to be confident that this camp is for their student and that it’s a safe, positive environment where they can grow.

To accomplish this means focused communication through dedicated lanes. In doing so, we will hopefully inspire the right action/response from each individual in our congregation.

I hope this post has been helpful to you and given you something to think about! When have you had success with focusing your communications to specific channels? I’d love for you to tweet me your thoughts (@andrewkhansen) or send me an email!