5 Do’s and 5 Don’ts of Church Communication During the Holidays
The holiday season is a perfect time for churches to connect with the congregation as well as potential first-time guests.
I teach a newly-wed Bible Fellowship class at our church. It’s really a Sunday School class, but someone decided that Bible Fellowship sounded better than Sunday School. But that’s a whole other issue for another blog.
We have a dynamic group of almost 30 people in their twenties. They interact with each other and with our lessons. And many get together between classes for Bible Study and social events (small and large). These are the people who Pastors want as part of their growing ministries. They’re not having babies yet, but the calendar is starting the countdown I’m sure for many of them. Our class has the potential to grow a nursery ministry!
It’s interesting that this group is teaching me many things. I used to be that age (sadly, about 2 decades ago) so I thought I’d quickly understand them and relate to them. But times have changed.
Just 10 years ago, people were just getting cell phones, the internet was incredibly slow (you could barely watch a video streaming) thanks to dial-up, twitter and facebook weren’t even heard of, and reality tv was just finding it’s groove. Remember when we actually watched sitcoms?
All these things that just started in the last few years, have shaped this new generation. It’s defined who they are.
Sadly, the Church has stuff that hasn’t changed while the next generation is changing and progressing. I’m not talking about the church’s doctrine and belief system — since God and His Word don’t change. I’m talking about the systems in the Church that this generation don’t readily respond to.
One of those things is the news.
My small group of up-and-coming professionals don’t watch the news. Don’t read the news. Don’t care about the news.
I mentioned the other day a huge news story that generated large quantities of time and pages throughout the week. And I got blank stares. After class, a few people came to me and asked basic questions about the story that I was tired of, because of all the coverage.
What does this mean for the church? They don’t care about your “news” either. They aren’t drawn to your hallowed “bulletin” or “worship guide”. In fact, I doubt if any of my crew read any of it. We can tell by the amount of questions we receive about upcoming events in the church. They aren’t pursuing the information. Do you find the same thing?
So what’s the solution? We need to consider that this generation wants the information pushed to them in an entertaining way. This is the generation of YouTube and Twitter. They want only the news that affects them.
I think you get my drift. You need to push your material to the 20-somethings if you want to motivate, encourage and inform them. Have fun with it. Be simple, think less and add wit. It’ll take more time, but you’ll get a better response.
The holiday season is a perfect time for churches to connect with the congregation as well as potential first-time guests.
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