Communication Decisions

I’ve been asked a few times how we, Henderson Hills, make decisions as to what gets included in our communication pieces. I’m including part of an email that I sent to someone trying to explain the steps we take to determine what gets promoted and what does not. 

Yes, you read that right….some things don’t get promoted! Now don’t get bent out of shape. Not everything gets front page status or gets promoted from the platform. We have a limited amount of space and time, so we choose what is promoted mainly by looking at what is touching the most amount of people.

Enough of that, here’s how I tried to explain how we work through what does and does not get promoted.

• Monday - Our bulletin team meets to determine what is included in the upcoming weekend bulletin.  We try our best to list items that fall into “The 4″ ways we achieve our Mission Statement: Connect, Grow, Serve, Engage. (The bulletin team has been functioning for about 3 years now.)
• Tuesday - Our Lead Team discusses what verbal and video announcements will be made during the weekend services. We usually limit the total announcements/videos to 4. ( This team has been functioning for about 3 years now.)
• Tuesday/Wednesday - The bulletin is distributed to the staff for proofing before printing.
• Thursday - The bulletin is printed, folded, and boxed to take to the church.
• Thursday - I determine what information is put into our weekend newsletter that goes to all our Small Group leaders.  People can submit items to me for publication.  What they submit is most generally included in the newsletter.  It is then printed and distributed to all Small Group folders for the weekend groups. 
• PowerPoint Slides - These are created/updated from information given to our Graphic Designer for upcoming events/activities that need to be promoted.  We are least restrictive in this area.  Just about any ministry can get their information listed here.  The slides run before each service and also on our plasma screen TV’s in our lobby. These slides are created by our Graphic Designer.
• Web Site - Most likely, only main event activities/events will be listed on the main page. (I am the person who determines what goes on the front page with input from the Lead Team)  All ministries are responsible for updating their own web pages.  We use Element Fusion for our web site developer/host.  They have a great CMS system that easily allows non HTML type people to update web pages.  If you would like more info about Element Fusion let me know.  I wholeheartedly recommend them.
• e-Newsletters - Each ministry area has the ability to create and distribute an e-Newsletter.  Right now all but one area is allowed to send only one e-Newsletter per month.  The exception(s) to this rule is the e-Newsletter sent by the Teaching Team that goes out weekly.  We also have allowed two other daily e-Newsletters to be distributed.  One was for a Christmas daily devotional produced by the Women’s Ministry.  Ladies had to subscribe to it to receive it.  We are currently sending out a daily e-Newsletter for our 100 days of prayer.  Both of these were short term e-Newsletters and people had to subscribe to them via the church web site.  I have scheduled the e-Newsletters so that we don’t send any more than one e-Newsletter to a particular group per day and usually no more than two per week.  One from the teaching team and then one from a specific ministry area.  If you would like to subscribe to one of our e-Newsletters you can do so here: Subscribe Now

I think this quickly describes how we communicate to our church members and who is responsible for making the decisions as to what is communicated.  Right now it’s working well.  There are times when people get frustrated.  Mainly due to lack of preparation on their part, they don’t get the info to the right people until after a deadline.  Or, their information does not relate to a large enough audience.  The larger we get as a church and the more we offer as a church the harder it is for each ministry area to get the “Prime-Time” publicity.

Tell me what you do at your church. We’re certainly open to new and better ways to make this process more effective.