We all know it—church communications can ... challenging. But with the right tools, it can be a lot easier! In this video, Jeanette and Bryan share some of their favorite church communications tools, and how you can use them, too.
Jeanette:
In today's world, technology has become an integral part of our daily lives, and that is the same for the church. So with so many different tools available, it can be overwhelming to figure out which tools are a right fit for you and your church. In this episode, we will highlight some of our favorite tools and discuss how you can use them in your church to streamline communication, create impactful content, and engage with your community.
Bryan:
That's right. Hey there, church communicator. Welcome to the Church Juice Podcast, where we are energizing church communications, one 20 minute episode at a time. Whatever your title or role is at your church, this show is designed and dedicated to give you the communication tools, resources, and community that you need to be successful. My name's Brian Haley. I'm the producer of Church Juice, and I am joined as always by my co-host, who is awesome, Jeanette Yates. Hey, Jeanette.
Jeanette:
Hey, I'm excited about what we're going to talk about today.
Bryan:
Me too.
Jeanette:
Because I have been all in the tools this week, and so it's on my mind. And so I'm all jazzed up because I tried a bunch of new things, so I can't wait to talk about them.
Bryan:
Well, I think that people ask all the time, what do you use for this, or how do you organize your files or, whatever? So this episode is really us just going through and listing some of our favorite tools that we use and why we like them or why a church communicator like you, as you're watching or listening, might use these or how you might use them. So this also kind of piggybacks off of last week's episode a little bit where we talked about time management. So we're going to talk about some of the tools that we use to help with time management, but also some other communication applicable tools. So we'll talk about project management, we'll talk about team communication, we'll talk about social media, maybe even file management and things like that. I've gotten that question lately. So let's just dive in and start talking about what we use.
Let's start with project management. A lot of churches use either just a to-do list, pen and paper or post-it notes, but one question that I do receive a lot is how to organize projects. Get the staff or team, or even if it's just yourself, get yourself organized so that you can manage even big picture down to the granular details of what you're doing for any given project or any given week, really. So I'll let you talk about what you use because we both use two different tools for project management.
Jeanette:
Yes.
Bryan:
And I'll tell you what I use and why I like it.
Jeanette:
Okay.
Bryan:
So start with Monday.
Jeanette:
So I do want to say for churches, for those of you watching and listening, listen, you know we always talk about in the church like the silo, there's silos where one ministry's doing their own thing and one ministry's doing their, and it's very hard sometimes, especially for that church communicator. Well, one of the things a project management tool can do for you is to put everybody on the same page, literally on the same digital page. And so it's really important to start thinking about trying to implement one of these tools. So at my job, we use monday.com for all of our project management. And some of those, it's long story short, there's some boards, let's say, so the marketing team may have a board that has all of our projects in it.
Now, if you think of it like a digital to-do list, it's like all of our to-do lists are in there. So my to-do list. My colleague that works on graphics is in there. The person that's working on YouTube is in there. But we can all see each other's projects, so when we're collaborating on something, we already kind of know where to go, oh, I need to collaborate with the person on YouTube because I'm on social, I want to make sure that we're doing... So sometimes there's two separate blocks or they call them groups and they're on that same board. So it's one long, you're just scrolling, but we're able to see what each other is doing, and then we can collaborate very easily. And that's what I really like about it.
Now, I will say, if you're the only person using Monday, it's not going to work. Unless you just are like, I need to manage my own projects and I don't care if anybody's using it, then it will work for you, but if you're trying to make other people using it and they're not, it doesn't manage the project very well. But if you're able to say, this is the tool I'm using and this is what we're going to use and this is the way it's going to be, if you're able to do that, I highly recommend something like monday.com.
Bryan:
There are two ways to use the project management tools. If you're a one-man shop or a one-person shop, then you can use these tools, great. If you're trying to collaborate and get everyone in sync on a project or whatever, then you really do need the buy-in of the rest of your team, no matter what tool you use.
Jeanette:
Exactly.
Bryan:
Whether it's a to-do list or not, whatever tool that you're using to manage the project, you have to have the buy-in of the whole team with anything that you use. The more you use it, the more useful it is. So absolutely. One thing that I love about Monday is how visual it is.
Jeanette:
Yes, it's very pretty.
Bryan:
Yeah, it looks very nice. It's clean. The colors are bold and big, and it's a very visual way to organize tasks and projects, and even things that aren't necessarily tasks, but resources or contacts that you just want to keep organized in a place. Essentially, Monday is a glorified spreadsheet, right?
Jeanette:
Right.
Bryan:
Or a ton of glorified spreadsheets. So another tool that you could use that I know, Jeanette, you and I both use quite a bit is Google Sheets or Excel or whatever, but Google Sheets and spreadsheets are a great way to organize your projects that you don't have to spend any money on if you already have Google. So it could be a way for you to organize some of those projects. Google has even made updates to its spreadsheets lately where you can, just the dropdown menus and you can tag different cards in them. So it's kind of evolving into something that is more useful for project management too. But that's an easy tool that, spreadsheets have been around for decades, so you can manipulate them and make it look and work the way that you want it to work. So that could also be a solution, right?
Jeanette:
Well, and there are ways to make spreadsheets look fantastic. Some of my colleagues, I'll go into their Google Sheet and it won't even look like a Google Sheet. It won't even look like a spreadsheet. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is gorgeous. And I'm going to tell you right now, I can't do that. But if you're just like, I need to have this stuff organized, it does not have to be pretty, which maybe where you need to start, just go with your spreadsheet, Google Sheets, Excel, whatever, and just get the information out there. We talked about that in the last episode. You have all that stuff in your head that you have to do, put it on a list, right?
Bryan:
Right.
Jeanette:
That's really how we use Google Sheets a lot. I was telling you before we hit record, I'll tell the story really quickly, but the other day I had this big idea and I was telling my colleague, I was like, oh, this would be so great if we did this. And I'm just telling a story y'all, like I do. And the whole time she's just sitting there like this, and I'm like, does she hate it? Does she love, what's happening? And what she was doing is all the things that I just thought I was telling a story, I was casting a vision, she was putting in a spreadsheet. So by the time we had that 15-minute meeting over, we had a spreadsheet that then we could go forward with that project. Isn't that great?
Bryan:
It's always good to have that balance of friends and coworkers, the one super creative or imaginative or visionary, and then the one who's like, yeah, I can put this in a spreadsheet. I can do this as we're talking.
Jeanette:
Right. I see it as a big cloud. She sees it as a spreadsheet, so.
Bryan:
Right. The project management tool that I use and we use at Church Juice and ReFrame is Asana. And I love Asana. I've been using it for six years or whatever. It is grouped by projects, so it's easy to visualize what needs to be done, where you're at with different stages. There's different ways that you can organize your content and things like that. And so it's another one that you can try. The one downside, I guess, that I would say in Asana is that everything is a task. So if something is not a task, it's still in Asana as a task. Does that make sense?
Jeanette:
Yeah. And I think both Asana and Monday, you can assign yourself things.
Bryan:
Right.
Jeanette:
And then I know on Monday, and I'm pretty sure I've used Asana before too, I liked it as well, you could go and then say, just show me what I need to be doing this week, please just show me.
Bryan:
Yep.
Jeanette:
Because otherwise the spreadsheets can get overwhelming. But I have a little tab that's like, oh, this is on your plate this week. You got to write this blog post. You got to go to the, you know.
Bryan:
Yeah. So I organize my, I think it's even called my tasks, that section, I organize them in like, hey, these are quick wins, these are some creative things that I need to do, these are things that I need to get done, these are things that I can schedule for later or are coming up later. So even in that in Asana, in your list of tasks, so you can organize them in different ways that could be helpful to you. So there's a couple of project management tools that you could use to start getting those to-do lists online, organized, whatever. And if you have a larger team, great ways to collaborate with your team. Assigning tasks and due dates. You can have conversations in both Monday or Asana. You can have conversations with your team that's working on that or give status updates and keep track of things that way too. So those are some of the project management tools that we use. Let's talk about communication among your team. What do you guys use for team communication?
Jeanette:
We use Slack, and it is amazing. The thing that I love about Slack is it takes all of those text messages and group texts that you are probably sending right now with your ministry people, and it gets it out of your messages. So now you're, instead of opening up your messages' app, you can open up Slack and you can create different channels. And I don't know how the pricing works or what the deal is, how many channels you can have, but you can have different channels for different ministries, for different things. So in our Slack channels, each team has their own channel, and then we have one that's for all the team and that's where we celebrate birthdays and share stuff. And then we have different, so that you can focus the conversation based on what channel you're in.
So it's not just this one big conversation. So you can, I need an answer about this, I need to talk to this team member. And then of course, you can have DMs too. Going back to messaging, you can message individual members as well. So again, you're taking that kind of out of your personal messages. And of course, for me, I have it on my phone, but I also have it on my Mac. I don't know what we would do without it. What about y'all?
Bryan:
Yeah. We use Slack too. And I think, I was actually part of a church when we first moved to Grand Rapids, a smaller church, 150 people or something like that, where because I was using Slack, I was like, hey, this is an awesome tool, why doesn't our leadership use it to communicate? Because we don't need our communication to be synchronous, so we don't need to fill people's inboxes either. They actually got most of the church to start using Slack because it's easy if you're using it for work or for other things. So you can use it not just for your staff or whatever, your leadership, but you could involve different ministry leaders, different volunteers, things like that, to communicate with them. One question that I get a lot, or statement, I guess, is just the idea of adding another tool. And so one thing that I think is important, if you have a little bit of a larger staff or a larger leadership team, Slack is a great way for you to add in more communication.
Yes, it is another tool, but it is, like you've mentioned, it is taking some messages that are work related or ministry related away from your personal phone or your personal messages, taking it away from that, so that again, that work-life balance is helpful. And you're in ministry, I understand that people are bombarding your phone all the time with messages, but when you have conversations about specific projects, specific ministries, events, whatever, you have a channel in Slack for that. And that can be a great way for you to communicate without adding more emails or phone calls or text messages to people, because when they are focused on that, then they can collaborate and communicate in that tool. So I think that Slack is a great tool no matter what size your staff is, really, because there's so many ways that you can use it and communicate it. And if you're using it with lay leaders, they might be using it at work too. So it's just easier to get people to use it for church too.
Jeanette:
So while you were talking, as soon as you said people are like, one more thing. No, thanks. It made me think of, and it's so cool that we're talking about Slack because I have heard Michael Hyatt talk about the growth mindset, which I think we also mentioned on the last episode.
Bryan:
We did.
Jeanette:
And the story he shares about why it's important to have a growth mindset or an experimental mindset is because trying something new doesn't mean you have to stick with it forever. So in the story he tells, he's talking about when his team first started using Slack.
Bryan:
Oh, really?
Jeanette:
He was anti-Slack. He was like, no, thanks. But he decided, you know what? We're going to do it. We're going to give it a shot. We're going to go all in. So we're all going to agree to be on board for X amount of time, and then we're going to see what happens. And then we either like it and we stay with it or we don't. And then at the end of this block of time, so not I tried it once, I don't understand it, I'm out. But at the end of this block of time, we can make a decision if we want to keep trying or if we want to get rid of it. And so I think that is, whether we're talking about Slack or any of these other tools that we're talking about, having an experimental mindset, having that growth mindset of what we're doing now is not working, messages are getting lost, my texts are blowing up all the time, I don't want this, we've got to try something different. Then try something different, and then if it doesn't work, you can try something different again.
Bryan:
Alternatives to Slack, if you're using Google, Google has its own chat. It might be called Google Chat, I really don't remember. And then if you use Microsoft, Microsoft Teams is kind of the Microsoft version of Slack a little bit. So those are tools that if you're already using that suite, you may be able to incorporate those. But yeah, like you were just saying, if you know your communication or your collaboration, whatever is broken, then you're going to need to find some way to fix it. So give a tool a try, get people to buy in and be a part of that like anything.
And you may find that Slack or whatever you use solves a lot of your communication issues. All right. So next, let's talk about social media. Your favorite topic. So you mentioned before we started recording that you use some tool that I've never even heard of. But for most churches, I think, there are a few ways that you can schedule out or design or whatever when you're managing social media and that content. So let's start with the design work. So when we're creating posts, what do you use for social media?
Jeanette:
So when I was working with my church, Canva was just starting to be a thing, and I did the best I could with my limited skills and their templates that work great. If you're not a very techy person, then something like Canva that has, there's a couple more alternatives out there, but Canva does have a great nonprofit deal and all that kind of stuff. So it's a very easy way to create graphics. I also am not ashamed to say, I'm just going to tell y'all, I used Word Swag. Have you ever heard of this app? It's literally a little app that you can create quick images and it gives you a little-
Bryan:
[inaudible 00:16:32].
Jeanette:
No, it's like you can, it's an image.
Bryan:
All right.
Jeanette:
So there's stock photos or you can upload your own and then put words over it or whatever.
Bryan:
It's all mobile app?
Jeanette:
Yeah, it is an app on your phone. So I did use that. And then another thing, which isn't on here, but another thing for creation of graphics and stuff like that that I used, when I was literally I know nothing, is Church Butler has a graphic design option similar to that type of template. And then also Sunday Social was a great, because they're specifically geared toward, both Church Butler and Sunday Social are, but specifically geared toward creating content for churches. So in Sunday Social, you would go in and they would be like, this is what we have for this month, here's scriptures, and then you could use those or modify those and things like that. So Sunday Social, man, it got me through. It gave me some ideas and then helped me learn what to do, and what not to do.
Bryan:
Yeah, Sunday Social's great. They have made-for-you graphics for basically all the platforms. I think they even have reels and things like that now too. They also have captions with each post. Suggestions for what to post each day. That line up, if there's holidays, things like that too, or important dates. So Sunday Social's a great and always growing tool too. That was a great tool to add to our list. Canva, I think, has evolved in the last few years to the point where now Adobe, Photoshop and all that, Adobe, the creator of that, has made a Adobe version of Canva and trying to take away some of that market share, whatever. So Canva's great, and you can get the pro version for free as a nonprofit. Adobe has Express, which is another version. So if you're used to using Adobe, maybe that's another option to quickly make, they have templates and things like that. But for scheduling, a lot of churches that I talk to either use just the native tools, so Facebook.
Jeanette:
Right, which is totally fine.
Bryan:
Facebook Business Manager or whatever. And then Buffer is another one that I hear quite often that churches use to help with scheduling. And so if you're looking for a way to plan ahead and think ahead about how to schedule, when to schedule, you can use either one, the native scheduler within each social media channel, or use a tool like Buffer. And I think either way, you can get analytics and it'll tell you the best time to post, things like that.
Jeanette:
And using the native scheduler, I mean, it can be kind of a pain in the neck to use, what do they call it? Meta Business Suite or whatever the tool is in there for Facebook. But if you have your Facebook and Instagram connected, then it really does make it easy to say, I need to schedule this. And then one of the things that has happened to me is I use a scheduler that's not native, but if I have to edit a post, because even with my best efforts, sometimes there's an error, there's a typo or something, and I have to fix it, it lets me go into the creative studio and edit it natively, and then it fixes it everywhere.
It's not all, once you get the hang of it, I'm sure if I've invested the time to learn it, I'm sure I could, like I said. But I think especially if you don't have a budget for another tool, there's some less expensive. But if you just want to start, like I would love to schedule out something, especially if you're doing our time management that we talked about last time and you're like, I would like to schedule out, then start there and then you can branch out as you get more managy of your time.
Bryan:
All right. So those are some of our favorite tools. Some of the things that we use or that we know of that churches use on a daily, weekly, whatever basis. So I think that there's a lot here. We will provide, this week we'll provide some articles and different resources to go along with this episode to really dive into some of these tools that we've talked about and some that we didn't even have time to get to because I know that there are other areas that you are trying to find the right tool for as you figure out communications, so we'll add some more. If you have questions about a specific area or a specific tool, feel free to reach out to us. You can join our Facebook group and add a question there. You can just send us an email. However, I would be more than happy to help you figure out your church's communication and how to take it to the next level. So I hope that these resources that we talked about today were helpful, that you find something useful from them and that it helps energize your church's communication.
Jeanette:
I do like that at Church Juice.
Bryan:
That's right. Well, thank you for taking time out of your busy day today to listen to the Church Juice Podcast, but listening is really just the start. To take today's topic to the next level and hear from other church communicators, head to the Church Juice Insiders Facebook group. You can find a link to our group along with all of today's show notes at churchjuice.com/podcast.
Jeanette:
The Church Juice podcast is a listener supported production of Reframe Ministries, a family of programs designed to help you see your whole life reframed by God's gospel story. Church Juice is produced by Brian Haley with post-production by Minimal Media Company in Grand Rapids, Michigan. For more information about Church Juice, visit churchjuice.com. For information on Reframe Ministries and our family of programs, visit reframeministries.org.