Communication Skills for Church Leaders to Navigate Post COVID-19 Challenges

“The more complicated the message, the greater the audience, and the more diversified the channels, the more likely that clear communication will be impeded. It is, therefore, imperative that churches develop a plan for communication.” – Tricia Brown

Dr. Oyewole Sarumi

If you want people to hear, if you want people to learn, you must utilize available tools to help promote and enhance the message you are trying to share.

Proactive leaders should start planning your church communication right now because they are aware that post-COVID, engagement of people is key to their survival strategies.

The fact is that most of Church leader’s failures would have been reduced and the after-effect less troubling if they’d learn to just communicate better especially in the post-crisis situation.

When you are not the primary leader the need to communicate becomes twice as important. By primary leader, I mean, you are not the GO, ultimate head of the entire church organization, etc, but in your present position, you still communicate upwards through reporting, taking instructions among others.

Communication is most important for leadership especially during a crisis.

The Need for Communication Plan

Someone said “Communicating is not as easy as it might seem. The more complicated the message and the greater the audience, the more likely it is that timely and accurate communication will be impeded.”

What a truism especially in times like this when your congregation is eager to hear from you, and your workers are salivating to know the next steps in the mangrove of today’s prone crisis. So, church leaders need to develop a plan not just for their sermons, but on how they communicate with the church various stakeholders.

According to Hubspot, ‘a communications plan enables you to effectively deliver information to appropriate stakeholders. The plan will identify the messages you need to promote, to whom you’re targeting those messages, and on which channel(s).’ Communications plans can be used in times of crises. But they are also used when pitching new initiatives or launching new outreach posts or meeting places.

Dear church leaders, the issue is if indeed you’re interested in giving your church a voice within and without, you must be clear and intentional in your communication.

A strategic communication plan can help you to do the following: define your audiences, avoid redundancy and omissions, clarify your communication goals and assists you be more intentional while maximizing your outreach effort on all fronts.

My investigation shows that the lack of communication plan was responsible for slumber of many churches during the COVID-19 lockdown. The fact is if your church doesn’t have a communication plan, you’ll be unprepared when disaster strikes.

Forms of Church Communication.

Communication takes many forms. While you might automatically think of the sermon as being the primary form of communication within a church, there are many other avenues as well. Think of these categories and the variety of forms of communication that fall into each.

Word-of-mouth: audible announcements and phone prayer chains
Print communications: bulletins, newsletters, fliers, Sunday school curriculum, small group studies
Broadcast media: sideshows, radio or television programs
Internet/Electronic avenues: social media, website, emails, texting
Advertisements: print advertisements, radio and television ads, billboards

Structure your Communications Plan From the perspective of effective church management

Basically, we can look at communication from two sides. First, there are those involved in the communication and the messages and or between members of your congregation as well as church workers and staff communication.

This is called internal communication as it is primarily directed to those within the church corporation. Second, we have external communication, which includes information and messages focusing on people outside the church family and within the community where the church is located and beyond. Apparently, means and process of communication with the in-church audience would be different from the how and what you communicate with the out-church community.

Tricia said ‘how you promote a church event or sermon series among members may differ from how you promote the same thing among the community at large.’

How to Write a Communications Plan

To write a good church communication plan, most church leaders need training. But majority are in denial pretending to know what to do. There are several things to unlearn, many things to learn and huge things to relearn in this information age to be relevant in the new normal.

Please find below a Hubspot brief template you can adopt to craft your own individual church communication plan.

Conduct an audit of your current communications materials.
Set SMART goals for your communications plan based on the results from your audit.
Identify the audience to whom you plan to deliver your communications plan.
Outline and write your plan, keeping your audiences in-mind.
Determine the channel(s) on which you need to deliver your messages.
Decide which team members are responsible for delivering the message.
Estimate a timeline for how long each step should take.
Measure the results of your plan after presenting to stakeholders, and determine successes and areas for improvement.

A typical church we all know handles the diverse and huge amount of communication, and putting each in their right perspectives may be an agonizing task even for a brilliant administrator.

Simplistically, the task of organizing yours are highlighted below using [sub headings from Tricia Brown] a couple of few steps as a guide to follow:

Determine your purpose/goal.

You will be able to determine this once you carried out a proper audit of your communication in the church. Look at your message, how you transmit it, to who, who are the handlers of your church communication. Examine the channels and the frequencies of your message etc. Thereafter, the audit review will show you areas that require focus, hence you can now set goals for specific areas of concern and need.

For example, you may want to receive 400 visitors in your church/year.

Decide your audience.

In our example above, you may want to target a diverse audience based on your community dispersion, your church demographics among others. In this case, your congregation and the community make up are key parameters to know the audience desire in your visitors’ quest.

Create the message

Now, you must include specific and relevant information that the audience above would be able to relate to, or else, it will be over their head, and wasteful.

Choose the Proper channels of communication you will use:

Since the message is being sent to members and the community, an invitational message to attract visitors would most likely be included in church announcements, the Sunday bulletin, and perhaps the church newsletter. In addition, you would want to post information on social media, the church website, and possibly in text reminders. The specific church communication software you may be using would come handy in this scenario.

Implementation Plan

You need to set time to break the promotional advert to the two communities. How often will you speak/send/post information and reminders out? Who will be in charge of each form of communication? Evaluation could be set on a quarterly basis to help follow-up in the next section.

Evaluation & Follow-up.

There is a need to monitor performance on a quarterly basis. You may need to interrogate your numbers based on target set. Did you meet it? How many new people actually came monthly and for the quarter? What proportion – male. Female and other set indices? Investigate the form of communication channel that was most successful in helping reach your goal? Is it in your plans to do a ‘’visitors banquet’’ every quarter or twice/year? Look for areas for improvement next quarter or year as may be necessary.

NOTE: To craft, a communication strategy requires effort and can seem naughty to get ahead. That’s why some churches engage the services of church consultants to work them through the thicket. For your information, there are a lot of free tools available online. The Community Tool Box can walk you through each step of developing a communication plan, Mind Tools even offers a free, downloadable communication planning worksheet while Hubspot has about 12 templates that you can adapt for your use. Additionally, Courageous Storytellers and Multiply Leaders have teamed up to create an EXCELLENT TOOL called the leaders planning bundle. It helps church leaders strategize, organize and manage their goals so they can more effectively communicate.

Areas where Leaders need Communication Improvement

The two areas where most leaders could improve their communication are in their frequency and channels employed to disseminate the message.

The Frequency of your Communication

Effectively discerning the frequency needed for communication is important when in communication with other people in your spheres of influence/control and even beyond. According to Kevin Spratt, there are three levels of frequency as discussed below:

Often

You need to communicate more often with your pastors – and with my peers. Don’t be prescriptive, but if you only talk once a week, then you aren’t communicating enough. Sometimes a text is all you need, for others a 5-minute drive-by to their office will be extremely productive.

Regularly

A team needs regular communication. This may or may not be a group of peers and could be specific to a project like launching a new outreach. You could encourage scheduled conversation at least every other week. In between meetings send a digital check-in, like an email, to check progress.

Periodically

These meetings are for your entire staff or congregation. They need to be concise updates on problems that you are solving or upcoming projects. Typically, these are informational and reflect the decisions that have been made.

Please note that during COVID-19 or any crisis, often meant meeting daily, regularly meant meeting 2-3 times a week, and periodically meant communication weekly to our congregation. We must understand this: the situation you are in should dictate the frequency of your communication.

The Channel of Communication

The second area of communication is the channel of communication employed. Lets briefly look at some common channels available to church leaders:

Face-to-Face

When decisions have to be made you should get on the phone, get in a room, or get on a video conference. Decisions should never be made over email or text messaging.

Group Messaging

A group text or communication app like GroupMe, WhatsApp, Kaizala etc. should be utilized when communicating quick changes or to give status updates. You can also use any of the church communication software in the market based on your needs and preferences.

E-mails should be sent as a review of uncompleted tasks or as a summary of a meeting with action points.

Mass Communication

Every situation needs to be reviewed individually. When communicating to the staff at large or the congregation you must remember to be clear and succinct and to be prepared to follow up with multiple messages through emails and texts as may be necessary.

Please note that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all communication method. Church leaders must consider the message, to who, and when before deciding on the channel to use.

Consequently, the need to keep working on improving communication constantly cannot be over-emphasised. Great leaders are continuous learners and are eagerly looking for where they could learn to communicate better and how to best communicate with people in their congregation and community at large.

Last Word:

In the final analysis, I will leave you with this word from Bill Gates, who says: “I am a great believer that any tool that enhances communication has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other and how they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.”

In this post COVID era, the importance of communication cannot be overemphasized. As leaders, you need to do it often and develop a process that is well institutionalized within the fabric of your church internal system that all can identify with.

References

Tricia Brown. How to develop an excellent church communication plan. Retrieved Sept.30/2020 from https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/how-to-develop-an-excellent-church-communication-plan

Kayla Carmicheal. How to Write an Effective Communications Plan [+Template]. Retrieved on Oct/03/2020 from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/communicationsplan#:~:text=What%20is%20a%20communications%20plan,on%20which%20channel(s)

Hubspot. Crisis Communication and Management Templates. Retrieved on 30/10/2020 from https://offers.hubspot.com/crisis-management-communication-kit?hubs_signup-url=blog.hubspot.com%2Fmarketing%2Fcommunications-plan&hubs_signup-cta=null&_ga=2.110809933.957757616.1601663416-1980013595.1601663416