A natural byproduct of working with a smaller-than-usual communication team is that sometimes things just get left out. I think this can be especially common in the church, where the staff is especially short-handed and ill-equiped to balance so many “spinning plates.” Perhaps the most glaring omission many of our teams make is moving on to the next big thing without completing the story of a previous project.
For instance, many churches (my own included) do a fantastic job of building interest and generating content for a specific campaign or event, but after that event has come and gone, it’s easy to forget to tell the stories of community impact, lives changed and lessons learned.
I don’t necessarily think this is intentional; I know that among our staff we’re constantly exchanging stories and excitement about how God has used a specific service or event to touch somebody, but sometimes we just forget to finish painting the picture for our audience as a whole. Reflection and thankfulness is an important part of the Christian journey, and it should be an important part of your communication strategy as well. I hope to do a better job of this myself in the future.
Do you have any creative examples of reflection or celebration, or a good strategy you would like to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Seems like Twitter at minimum is great for this. We did a “for every one who come to Christmas Eve service we’ll give a person clan water for life” campaign recently at Providence Church. We simply announced the results by Twitter.