More often than not, churches need to simplify how they’re communicating.
We think that we need to throw the message out there in every way possible for people to hear what we have to say. We assume that if we throw everything at the wall, hopefully, something will stick.
The problem is that people are used to hearing the same messages over and over. If they continue to listen to the same message, they begin to ignore that message. We start to sound like a dull drum, beating over and over again. We’re talking, but nobody is listening.
So what do we do?
Simplify. Streamline your methods of communication.
Hopefully, you already know what’s working and what’s not. If something’s not working, then you need to be okay with getting rid of it. There are many good things we could be doing, but we want to focus our attention on what’s best. Sometimes, that means we need to adjust our strategy. Simplify how you’re communicating. Streamline what you’re saying.
One great way to do this: create a central hub for all of your communication. Create one place where anyone can go to get whatever information they need. Do you need to know if it’s your Sunday to serve in the nursery? Go to the central hub. Can’t remember what time the neighborhood outreach starts tomorrow? Central hub. All of your church’s communication flows out of and points back to the central hub. That’s where people can rely on getting the information they need.
Where is your church’s central hub? It could be an online space (your website, maybe a secondary website, an email list, or a mobile church app). It could be a physical location (the lobby of your church building or the weekly bulletin).
As you simplify your church’s communication streams, creating a hub helps centralize how information flows through your church. It helps ensure anyone can get whatever information they need; people rely less on you to promote all information to every prospective attendee.
What kind of a central hub of information will your church have?
For most churches, a website is going to be that central hub. It’s easy to access from anywhere.
There are lots of ways to create a central hub on your website (a landing page with quick access to all areas of ministry, or perhaps a secondary website). But if you need a little more help visualizing what this might look like, maybe you’ll find this explanation from Nucleus church websites helpful.
Your central hub is the crucial piece to your communication strategy. While it’s important to use different, targeted, methods to promote something, all of those methods should point to your central hub. Grab their attention, and send them to the hub to get all the answers they need.
Examples of online central hubs:
This is an excerpt from our free resource, "Church Communication Strategy: A Guidebook." You can access the whole ebook here.
