Communications Strategy
It would be difficult to overstate the importance of communications.
Our faith is grounded in "Word" -- the desire of God to communicate with humanity -- and the ministry of Jesus was an exercise in communications. From beginning to end, he taught, healed, served, died and rose again in ways that brought people closer to him and to God, that enabled them to see beyond the immediate, and that were intended to form community.
As our world has grown more complex and noisy, the task of communications has become more critical. We require information in order to live effectively. We must learn to process information in order to make wise decisions. We must learn to discern and to assess information in order to maintain our freedom and integrity.
The tools of communications have grown more sophisticated, interesting and powerful. But so has competition among users of those tools, including those who use effective communications to intimidate, to prey and to lead us astray.
The healthy church will accept the critical importance of communications, adopt the best possible strategies and technologies for communicating effectively, and stop wasting resources on communications that don't work. We must care as much about what we say and how we say it as Jesus did.
The communications environment has changed dramatically over the past fifty years, leaving many churches stuck with costly and ineffective communications tools. The environment continues to change, as new technologies emerge and people's lives change. The most significant change, of course, is the emergence of the Internet as a primary tool for communications. That tool, in turn, changes daily.
The current Internet-centered communications environment is a "level playing field," meaning that any organization can stand up an effective Web site at reasonable cost and use e-mail and messaging. Moving away from ineffective tools such as print-on-paper newsletters can save a substantial amount of money. The bad news is that a level playing field only rewards those who play effectively. The stakes are high. A congregation that refuses to embrace new technologies will find itself invisible.
Communications, in other words, epistomizes the critical nature of "best practices."
