It doesn’t matter what you say in staff meetings. What does the voice of your church, your communications, say are your priorities? Especially summer church communications.
Jesus told us that “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, (Luke 6:45)” and we know that’s true. If we are angry with someone, it always comes out. Maybe in nasty, little snide comments, maybe in screaming. If we love someone, we can’t help but smile when we are with them or thinking about them.
We may want to hide either emotion, but it seldom works. No matter what we say, “I’m not angry, just frustrated” or “No, he’s really just a friend” our words and actions will always show what is in our hearts.
It’s the same with your church. You can have the most biblical, Great Commission-centered mission statement ever. Your leadership board can decide that this year the focus will be on outreach and discipleship and the congregation can agree those are great goals. But are these truly at the heart of your church? Do you honestly care about reaching unchurched people with the good news of Jesus and growing your current members into mature disciples? Do these convictions result in action?
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Evaluate Your Summer Church Communication Strategy
This is very easy to evaluate. Look at the recent communications—your social media, newsletter, church bulletin. What are they about? As I write this, it’s summer and I had the opportunity to compare two sets of church communications from two churches where they talk about their communications. The defining details are changed so as not to embarrass any member of the Body of Christ, but here is a summary of each one from an overview of their summer communications.
I selected summer as a time to evaluate because we tend to be very intentional about this time. Churches have incredible opportunities to either make a great impact for the Kingdom of God or to be selfishly inward-focused. The following are true stories.
Keys to Summer Church Communication
Summer is the time where this church holds special outreach and training opportunities.
Once a week, they have a low-cost family meal at the church, free child care, and then different classes ranging from ones that are designed specifically for people not familiar with the church, “Why is the Bible different from any other religious book?” and ones for current Christians who want to grow in their faith such as “What does it mean to be a disciple of Jesus in the secular workplace?” and theological classes such as “An overview of GRACE in the Old and New Testaments” taught by professors from the local seminary. They do an extensive amount of advertising to get people outside the church invited to these events and invitations and social media are created for church members to enable them to invite friends and neighbors. They look at summer as a time for intentional outreach to their community and a time to challenge church attenders to grow as disciples of Jesus.
