A crowd gathers in a large room (hint: to reach them you need to tier for church communication). They quiet down waiting for something to happen. Each person has a lot going on in their heads. They’re all prepared to inform the group. Then someone figures that no one’s in charge so they take the lead. She clears her voice and starts telling what she came for. Then another person realizes if he’s going to get his message out, he must say his information too.
The first person feels shouted over, so she raises her voice louder than the second guy. Another person announces their information too. Soon the whole room is shouting and no one is heard. Chaos ensues.
They quiet down. And leave. So nothing is accomplished.
This is what happens regularly in our churches. No one is ultimately in charge of our many ministry’s communications. So everyone voices their information so everyone can hear. But the congregation ends up hearing nothing in the chaos of messages being pushed.
How does it ALL get pushed effectively?
Your church has dozens of ministries and each ministry has dozens of details. This is the Communication fear of almost every church.
The truth? It can’t be done. Someone in charge of communications must decide who gets a public voice and when they’ll get to speak. Seriously, all the events and ministries that are happening in your church aren’t equal. And every detail certainly isn’t equal to the others.
You must set priorities and tiers for communications. Or nothing ends up being heard.
Here’s an example for setting up a tier system for your ministry’s communications:
- Create the loudest voice. That would be Tier One: all-church events or ones that attract a lot of people while reinforcing your brand positioning (what you’re known for in the community). Almost every single person in the church would want to hear about it because they are invited (for example: a Sermon Series). Then, who has the second most important voice? Tier Two is all-ministry-wide events or probably seen as Tier One of individual ministries (for example: a Student Dept all-student sports night). Tier Three is all other events happening within Ministry areas (for example: a Sunday School class’ Mall lunch). Then if your church’s outside groups conduct events on your campus, you can have Tier Four.
- Give every voice a mechanism of communication. Create a standardized system for communications for each Tier. For example: Tier One: website homepage banner, bulletin mention, Newsletter mention, social media rotation, etc. (virtually everything you offer). Tier Two: almost every communication tool that’s easily segmented for the particular invited group. Tier Three: handouts for the small group or suggestions so the ministry leaders can promote it. Tier Four provides resources (logos, photos, etc.) so the outside group can do their own promotion with their tools and networks.
When someone experiences your church service, you must simplify your communications. Everything heard publicly (Tier One) has a unifying theme of what the church is about OR it’s an event that would interest almost everyone. Stop the communication chaos and the fear that everyone needs to hear everything!
