Communication

The fact is, Christians spend hundreds of hours each year staring at this tiny screen. We use phones to connect and build relationships in ways that were not imaginable 20 years ago. So, shouldn’t the Church jump onboard?

There’s a word that crops up and plagues churches in the media far too often, a word nobody ever wants to hear associated with theirs: scandal. Whether it’s a staff member embezzling funds, a pastor acting inappropriately toward a child, a bad accident, or even just a leadership transition gone awry, these stories come out — and the churches they come out of almost never saw them coming.

For all intensive purposes, Facebook's Newsfeed is one of the most powerful content delivery channels in the world. Exact percentages of how much content they drive varies, but recent studies show as much as 25% of web referrals come via Facebook. With that kind of percentage, its no wonder that 13% of all time spent online occurs at Facebook. A staggering 14 hour per month average for U.S users alone.

When done right… effective guest follow up can be completed in less than 45 seconds per guest. It sounds crazy, but it’s not. Churches all across the county are leveraging technology to do it every week.

When it comes to social media management the volume of options available is amazing. If you're just starting out you may find it easiest to go to each network and manage things there. As your reach and strategy grows you'll quickly find a need for a more robust solution.

Without rocking your world too much I'd like to state the obvious... Volunteers are the life blood of your church. While we all would acknowledge that fact. It's easy to forget about in the day to day of ministry. They dutifully arrive every week, with a smile on their face (real or painted on) and serve. Regardless of their motivation, our effectiveness long-term depends on them. We could never hire the volume of people needed to run our church and we shouldn't have to. The challenge comes down to expectations.

Like most church leaders, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about your ministries, your people, your budget and operations, next Sunday’s service, and a million other things. Keeping all of those things on track is more than a full-time job — so how much time do you have to focus on your church’s culture? In working with thousands of churches over the years, I’ve found that you can be ‘doing the right stuff’, but without a healthy church culture your ministry will never reach its full potential for the Kingdom.

There may be no nip of Fall in the air yet, but thoughts are already on getting your Christian private school ready for a new term. This can take weeks of preparation to make sure that your administrative staff, teachers, parents and of course students are all prepared to make it a successful one.