Most Churches start their fall calendar around Labor Day. The very thought sends delight through the minds of parents as their children hit the books and start new classes to end their summer relaxation.
But it also creates panic in a Church staff. Another year is starting! Things to do and start. Is the year going to be the same “old” stuff redone, or will there be a new start for new things? It’s almost too late to start something totally new, but here’s 3 things to consider that you can accomplish or at least start the process.

1. Social Media: Start a Facebook fanpage for various age groups (or your church). Perhaps a Youth page (remember someone must be 13 in order to get a Facebook account), a College page, Young Adults and/or Senior Adults. Or you could do topical pages (i.e. Missions, Choirs, Bible Study, etc). Ask someone to moderate each of them (you’ll need someone who loves Facebooking) and get them to determine the strategy of their pages. Things like: a regular gathering of our group outside of the church where we make announcements, interact and seek God. Be sure to hold them accountable.
2. Worship Guide Overhaul: Our church recently went to a scaled down version of their Worship Guide (Bulletin). It’s about half the size of the “old” one. It’s about time! I’ve been talking in conferences for about a year to scale these printed books back. It saves money; makes it easier to carry, and the best part… no one will miss the larger size (except the church leadership). So how to do it? Go digital for most of your information. Use Constant Contact to send our beautiful emails to your congregation every Thursday with your major announcements. If you’re really organized, you can set up Constant Contact with various groups so you can direct messages to individual groups. Of course, you’ll need to have an effective website to drive people to. And you’ll have to re-educate leaders that the bulletin is NOT the catch-all for everything. You may not be able to set this up for fall, but get started now, and introduce it for the new year (after Christmas).
3. Connect with your Members: This fall is the time to get a clean listing of your members. Take part of a service (or send it home) where you get everyone to fill out their primary contact information and their primary email (this will help with the previous Constant Contact point). You may also want to take this opportunity to have a photo release and an opt-in email release to give you the ability to post pictures online of your congregation and to contact them. If you don’t need all this now, you will. I promise!

It’s the fall! The clean slate, the optimism of great things to come in your church, the foundational time for new, exciting things. We’d love to help you with these or others. The time is now… before you know it, it’ll be next year.