The responsibilities of a church communicator can be vast and wide-ranging—any given day could include photography, video, social media, graphic design, and more. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with everything you should or could be doing. Here at Church Juice, we like to remind you of one core principle—You don’t have to do it alone. Ministry is better when it’s done in community!
Building community & empowering volunteers
One way church communicators can lean on their community for support and, at the same time, empower those in their congregation is by delegating tasks and utilizing the skills and resources of volunteers.
There are likely people in your congregation already with the skills you need to build out your communication ministry. They may even use those skills every day in their work or life. Maybe a mom who attends your church runs a blog on the side and has experience with web writing and SEO. Maybe a young professional who attends your church works in business and marketing and has experience with email campaigns. The list goes on and on.
There are many ways you can get the people in your church involved in your day-to-day ministry tasks—here are just three examples to get you started:
1. Church photography
Church communicators are always looking for more photos of real people and real events to use on social media, promotional materials, and their website. What if rather than trying to take these photos yourself, or paying to hire a professional photographer, you enlisted volunteers to help capture these images?
It’s likely that someone in your church has expertise or experience in photography, or access to good photo equipment. Even if they don’t, modern cell phones often have great camera quality! Could you designate a volunteer to snap photos and short videos for social media each Sunday, or instruct all of your volunteers to be on the lookout for picture-worthy moments each weekend?
2. Church graphic design & social media
From social media posts to sermon series graphics and Sunday’s slideshow, graphic design can take up a large part of a church marketer’s time. Luckily, this is another great area to enlist the help of volunteers. Many business and marketing professionals (and even college students!) have a basic grasp of graphic design concepts and tools. You could even create pre-made templates for volunteers to work off of when creating new designs.
Not only can volunteers help you with designing these assets, but they could also help with coming up with content ideas and other tasks like social media scheduling. Think of how valuable that experience could be to a college student studying marketing or another creative field! If you’re unsure where to start, check out these free tools to upgrade your church's social media feed.
3. Online church service moderation
As online and digital ministry grows in popularity, it has become one more thing for church communicators to keep up with. For many churches, a non-negotiable part of their digital ministry is the weekly live stream of their Sunday service. Having an online service moderator for these live streams can help those attending feel more included in the community aspect of an online church.
Let me guess — do you have other Sunday-morning responsibilities? Luckily, this is one more awesome area to involve volunteers in your ministry. A volunteer moderator can enhance your online service by greeting viewers, responding to comments, asking engaging questions, soliciting prayer requests, and more. This is an easy way to involve volunteers and simultaneously increase the quality of your online service experience!
The body of Christ is meant to work together and serve alongside each other to accomplish the mission of the Church. As a church communicator, you are no exception to that. You need other people!
Utilizing volunteers in your day-to-day ministry will not only free up your schedule, but it will also empower those in your congregation to use their God-given talents to serve the church. Where will you start?
