[We continue a look at the basics of church wellness. This week: Communications Strategy.]

Most church communications speak to the wrong audience.

They speak to insiders. Newsletters, whether online or printed, function as bulletin boards announcing events to members. Blogs help the pastor sell programs and convey inside-the-walls news to members. Lay councils use communications to pass along financial news and fund-raising appeals to members.

The net effect is that the already-convinced get a little more convinced – or maybe a little more discouraged, depending on the news. Members feel better informed.

This is all well and good. No one would argue for keeping members ill-informed. But picture this. Draw your church and how it communicates. Maybe a box with people inside, who speak, write, telephone and text with each other. Maybe the pastor is in the box, too, though most clergy tend to stand just outside the box. They speak to people inside, and those people speak to the pastor. If the arrow connecting them is well managed, each knows what the other is doing and thinking.

Now do another drawing. Put that congregation box in the upper right corner and make it small. Outside that box is the rest of your community. These people tend to be substantially younger and more diverse in every way. Some belong to other churches. The vast majority don’t participate in any faith community.

They are your future. This is where new members will be found, as well as new missions, new ministries, new ideas, and new sense of purpose. All of your communications should aim to reach this larger world. They don’t know you exist, and you don’t know them. Communications are your tools for getting beyond mutual not-knowing.

Instead of sending out, say, 300 emailed newsletters to members, you should be sending 10,000 blogs and brief posts to people beyond your walls. You should endeavor to respond to their needs and interests, even though those are likely to be different from those of members.

You should speak their language, both literally and figuratively. You should invite them to read more – not to come to church, but to engage with the pastor’s ideas or a mission team’s activity. Sell the sizzle of faith, not the rituals of belonging. Speak to their needs, not to your institutional concerns.

In most churches, there are three primary obstacles. One is technology. You cannot do any of this – which means you cannot have a lively future – without the latest technology: database, mailing lists, mailing service, social media prowess, graphics, blogging tools, video production. Remember: in the bid for attention, you aren’t competing with the low-tech version of yourself. You are competing with powerful marketing forces. Your email might look a little better than last year, but if it looks drab, wordy and long in comparison to other emails people are receiving, they simply won’t read it.

The second obstacle is a good mailing list. Most churches have decent membership lists. But to have a future, you need a huge list of touches, prospects and leads. I say 10,000 for a church of 300 members. You need to build that list one name at a time. (Ever wonder why every vendor and service starts by asking you for your email address?) So you need strategies for gathering addresses. You need a professional tool for managing your list, such as Insightly or SalesForce. You need a tool for sending emails to lists, such as MailChimp. You need a survey tool, such as SurveyMonkey. You need some professionally designed templates and blogs. You need a good landing page to send people, where they can subscribe, ask, read and engage. You don’t need a massive web site. You need a good home page, a blog page and a few basic services.

Third obstacle: personnel. Most churches need a full-time communications director – young, trained in modern communications, steeped in social media, knowing how to create large lists and to reach large constituencies. Even small churches need a communications director, unless they have a death-wish. Instead, many churches hand these duties to a church secretary or administrator who doesn’t have the training or openness to do modern communications.

Finally, church leaders must make a fundamental commitment to reach outside their walls. They need a narrative that isn’t just yesterday warmed over. They need mission and ministry that are compelling, not just maintenance-minded. They need to stop trying to feed everything into Sunday worship. They need to stop talking so much about the church budget. They need to know that a 25-year-old Hispanic worker is their next new member and ask themselves how can they (60-plus, white, affluent) communicate with this person. (Hint: it starts with listening.)

Communications strategy is the key, because it forces you to examine your identity and to ask, what do we have to offer the world? It forces you to examine your openness and will for change. It forces you to spend money on people outside yourselves. It forces you, in effect, to give your church away to people you don’t know and aren’t like you.

Most churches, I’m sorry to say, can’t do this, and they are dying. But many have figured out that reaching the large outside their walls is where their future lies, and they are investing in it.

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