In my consulting with churches on communications strategy, we talk about tools: from emailed newsletters to social media to messaging to web sites.

We talk about message: the church’s narrative, its marketing thrust, the visuals it uses to tell its story. We talk about who should be doing the communicating: the pastor, a professional communicator conversant in technology, a staff member with many duties, or a volunteer.

But I have come to realize that the most critical topic of all is audience. Who is the designated audience? Whom is the congregation trying to reach? With whom is the church trying to build a relationship?

What I see too often is a narrow and self-defeating understanding of audience. The church talks mainly to itself. It sends its newsletter only to members or long-standing constituents, that is, to people it knows and not to strangers. The newsletter serves as a modern bulletin board, telling members what the church is doing and calling them to care about certain things, such as prayer concerns and scheduled activities.

These communications use an in-house language that has built up over the years, referring to events without explaining them, naming locations with minimal directions, naming people as if everyone knows who they are.

If the pastor does a blog, it tends to be in service of this same audience. It uses churchy language, focuses on common concerns, and reflects a vision that leaders have developed.

This inside-the-walls conversation matters, but it is too small. The future of the congregation doesn’t lie in having this small conversation more and more effectively. It lies in reaching the vast majority who live outside the bubble, who know little if anything about your congregation but whose yearning for God might lead them to care. Your future members come from this larger world. Your relevance in mission comes from this larger world. Your identity should be coming from this larger world. Your sense of overarching purpose lies out there beyond your walls.

To this end, you need to add another set of conversations to your communications strategy. One is with people who know you exist but have no other connection with you. They come to your strawberry festival, attend a noonday concert, vote in your parish hall, attend your preschool. This much larger pool – probably numbering in the thousands – isn’t asking questions that can be answered by knowing your Sunday worship schedule or your budget. Your in-house newsletter is just noise to them. If anything, normal church talk about normal church concerns is a turnoff.

An even larger conversation you need to have is with total strangers. They won’t be like you. They are browner, younger, and less prosperous. This larger population cares nothing about Sunday worship, church traditions, doctrines, or hierarchies. Your in-house narrative is almost surely a negative to them.

And yet they are your neighbors. They are the ones whom God is calling you to love. They are your future.

The strategy for having these two larger conversations is complex. It involves creating large email databases, numbering in the tens of thousands; developing a second and third newsletter to communicate with people outside your normal sphere; developing a second and third blog that establishes your pastor as a person of interest and of faith, not as a church leader.

You don’t care if they ever attend Sunday worship. You do care if they identify you and your pastor as a helpful presence in the community, a trusted partner in addressing their issues (not your issues.)

Having these two conversations will require you to develop new ways of understanding a church’s purpose. You don’t exist to do worship; you exist to serve people. Your call isn’t to perpetuate denomination, but to advocate for justice and mercy. A “win” isn’t necessarily their name on a membership form and their fanny in a pew. A win will be their helping you build a Habitat house, working in your community garden, and taking seriously what you send them.

Most of your members won’t care about reaching these two audiences, especially if doing so means something other than getting people to Sunday morning church. Leaders will need to step out front. You will need to invest in communications that don’t directly benefit the in-crowd. You will need to teach about purpose and mission. Even if the in-crowd pushes back, you will need to keep reaching outward. For your only future lies out there.
 

About the Author

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of Fresh Day online magazine, author of On a Journey and two national newspaper columns. His website is Church Wellness – Morning Walk Media