3 Communication Challenges for Churches (Part 2)
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We’re getting into that busy back-to-school and ministry ramp-up season. If you have communications issues as a ministry, they will start showing up big time this time of year.
When it comes to church communication, most leaders just try to reach everyone. But the truth is, you actually have two distinct audiences: insiders and outsiders.
This week, we’re talking about your communication with your insiders—your congregation.
In this episode, I caught up with Blue Van Dyke at Studio C. We talked about the need for churches to get better at communicating with insiders (especially at large churches where it can go so wrong) and shared practical ways it can get better.
Everybody is at a different place and runs at a different pace, but the problem is sometimes we communicate to everybody as if we’re all at the same place and going at the same speed. [episode 409] #unstuckchurch Share on X A wrong message is not neutral; it’s counterproductive. [episode 409] #unstuckchurch Share on X We have to start communicating with our members in a personal, engaging, relevant way with messages. [episode 409] #unstuckchurch Share on X Data is not a sin. You can use technology to serve people better. [episode 409] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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More Episodes in This Series
Better Team Communication – Episode 408
Better Communication with Outsiders – Episode 410
Transcript
Sean:
Hey, Unstuck listeners, before you skip forward to today’s conversation, I wanna make sure that you’re considering Planning Center for your church. I use Planning Center in my churches to schedule volunteers, create service plans, and share really key information. But Planning Center does so much more. It’s really an all in one church management software where you can easily do things like track first time guests, facilitate event signups, and utilize an excellent check-in system. They also have a great online giving solution. Best of all, you can start using Planning Center for free. Visit planningcenter.com to get started.
Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host here with my teammate Amy Anderson. Amy, last week we started a new series on communication, and here’s why we’re getting into that busy back to school and ministry kind of ramp up season. And if you have communication issues as a ministry, they’re gonna start showing up big time this time of year. And we identified three areas that we believe churches could take it up a notch and be really best in class organizations when it comes to how they communicate with both insiders and outsiders, and then also with their staff. So last week we talked about internal or team communication. Amy, do you want to introduce this week’s topic for us?
Amy:
Well, this week we’re gonna be talking about your communication with your congregation, with your insiders. And by the way, we’ve got a great interview to share as part of this conversation.
Sean:
You actually caught up with Blue Van at Studio C, and he has such a strong conviction around the need for churches to get better at communicating with insiders, and especially at large churches where we’ve seen this go very wrong.
Amy:
Yeah. And it’s really practical ideas about how it can get better.
Sean:
Yeah. So let’s start today’s episode with that conversation with Blue, and then we’ll wrap up with a few other practical ideas of our own. So here’s Amy’s conversation with Blue Van Dyke.
Amy:
Well, Blue, to kick off this conversation, can you just share a little bit about why you’re so passionate about helping church leaders communicate better with people in their congregations? Like, why does this matter so much?
Blue:
I love the question actually because I wasn’t always sure that I even knew where that intersection was at that point. I mean, I grew up professionally or classically really in the marketing space. And outta grad school. I was fortunate to get into, you know, a tier one automotive company in the marketing side of it. And I jumped ship and I actually ran an agency for a while, got into it, but I always thought there was sort of like, that’s what you do in the marketplace. And then they’re a church. Right?
And then I joined a church and I came on board, an executive pastor, and I saw that there was this demand for all those things I’ve learned over there. Right? Had an application for it here. And for me personally, it really is the blending of this background that I didn’t orchestrate. I really do feel like, you know, God reveals himself to me sometimes in his strategy, and I wasn’t smart enough to come up with a strategy that said, you should go learn engagement over here with Mercedes, or you should learn personalization with the agency, or you should learn that. And then at some point, what I kind of felt like him say was, Hey, I’m gonna ask you, you know, you practiced all that stuff on things that don’t matter, like luxury cars and cigarettes or whatever. So now I want you to take that same skillset and just bring it to the things that do matter in my house. So, personally, I’m incredibly grateful that I found a union where I can serve the kingdom with the tool belt that God gave me, on a personal level.
But you know what? I think, Amy, I’m passionate about it because it matters, if that makes sense. Right? I think people are incredibly desperate to feel known right now more than ever. We’re in a digitally saturated world. I think they wanna belong to something. They wanna grow. They want authentic, spiritually deep, meaningful community. And I think the church is incredibly well positioned to provide that to them right now. Right? I always say that at the end of the day, what we really want do is we wanna make sure that our members feel, or church members feel known and cared for. Because they are known and cared for, if that makes sense. We just don’t always show that or demonstrate it. Churches, I haven’t met a pastor yet who says, I don’t even care about my members or, you know? I just think we sometimes sound like we don’t because of the way that we message people.
Amy:
Yeah.
Blue:
You know, I often say it’s unique because I’m a, you know, marketing guy. I always look at everything on a lifecycle. Right? We can call that the church a spiritual journey or an engagement pathway or whatever we want. In the marketing world, it’s a lifecycle. Okay. We wanna pick somebody from not yet Christian to fully committed follower. And the problem is, is everybody is starting someplace different and they’re going at their own speed. So I always say everybody’s at a different place and runs at a different pace. And the problem is sometimes we communicate to everybody as if we’re at the same place and going at the same speed.
Amy:
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, in our experience working with churches, it seems like the majority of them approach communication with insiders like this. Everybody, everywhere, all the time. Isn’t there a movie called that? I think you’re right. Everybody everywhere all the time. That’s the insider, you know, communication strategy. Tiffany from our team, when she worked in a PR firm, she said they called this a lack of strategy approach, and they called it spray and pray.
Blue:
100%.
Amy:
So when you see, you must be seeing that too. Why do you think we do that? Why is it every, everybody everywhere all the time?
Blue:
You know what’s funny about it? It is great. I love it. I’m gonna steal, you know, Tiffany spray and pray. We call it shotgun messaging or shotgun marketing. The idea was we’re just gonna blast a message out to everybody. What’s funny, it’s not even that I’m taking the same message to everybody. I often say, I’m gonna blast it to everybody on every single channel I have in my means.
Amy:
Right.
Blue:
So I’m gonna send the same message on an email, a text, a, a dashboard, a, you name it, across the board and hope it just lands on somebody. I think there’s a couple reasons. One, I think honestly they just don’t know any better. And I don’t mean that any way, but nobody teaches, you know, engagement marketing in Bible colleges these days. I hope they do. I hope they change that at some point or another. So I don’t think it’s a lack of desire. I think it’s a lack of understanding.
Amy:
Sure.
Blue:
I do think it’s incredibly important because I try to tell people that, you know, a wrong message is not neutral. It’s counterproductive. It’s an important component that what we need to do. So when you have this shotgun messaging going out with, they blast this, it actually says, and communicates, I don’t know about you and I don’t really care about you. And sometimes I’ll be honest, sometimes that’s funny. So just on a tangent, there’s a, you know, a little example. We were with a church that we were working with and one of the pastors got a message about a breastfeeding class. Right? And he was like, what? Right? What am I doing exactly. So everybody giggled in the room, and we all laughed about it. We’re like, okay, it can be kind of funny sometimes. And then I had one where I was doing a podcast similar to this, and somebody put in the show notes that, just the night before the church had done the funeral for her husband, and inadvertently the next day she got a message that says, this is gonna be the best year of your life. Right? As a general shotgun message. And she said that one stung, she understood it.
Amy:
Yeah, yeah.
Blue:
So I think obviously the shotgun is incredibly important. I don’t think they do it because they don’t care; they do it because they don’t know. And then I think sometimes they do it because they just have the wrong structure. And what I mean by that is, you know, even in sort of my my venture capital days you could put organizations in sort of a simple structure in my mind. You have sort of executive leadership that sets vision and direction and values and where you’re going. Then I have a whole bunch of people in what I call a support layer. Support service, like hr, finance, it, and in the middle it’s what’s called kind of the three Ps of marketing. You have somebody that builds a product, somebody that you know, is responsible for the placement of the product, and somebody that’s responsible for promoting the product.
So, you know, the product, the placement, and the promotions. I think what happens is they often look at the placement or the communication as down in that support layer. They treat their comms teams kinda like a Kinkos, Hey, can you just build me a banner? Can you do something? And what I try to say is, there’s an entire strategy that people like me have gone to school with for a long time to learn how to get the right message to the right person on the right channel. And I think what happens is we don’t realize it’s important to bring that to the table along with those who are doing weekend planning of the experience, who are looking at your campuses and your distribution. So I think it’s a combination of not knowing, and it’s a combination of just robbing the wrong structure to pull it off.
Amy:
Great examples. Well, blue, could you maybe share a framework for a better way to approach this to make it simpler?
Blue:
Yeah. Thank you for offering that. I think definitively we have to figure out as a church, how to deliver a personalized experience even at scale. Right? If you look at the world today, Amazon has billions of customers, and yet somehow they know exactly what product I purchased, what I’m inclined to buy in the future. They send me nice little reminders. I’ve got Netflix that can kind of give me ideas about what I may like and wishlists. And so in this age where there is a digital strategy, I think that we have to start communicating with our members in a personal, engaging, relevant way with messages. So we, you know, one of the things that we did is we created this member engagement solution, this messaging platform that really is designed to help people through their discipleship pathway. So I think it looks a little bit like this.
First you have to define what your pathway is. Where do we wanna pick people? What’s that look like? Then I need to know where people are in that uniquely. So I need to be able to know exactly kind of where their starting point is. I need to be able to match them intelligently to something that makes sense for them next. And then I need a way to tell ’em how to do that. When to go right. When to go left and measure it. I kind of like to say it like this. I think our job a little bit as a church is like a big giant GPS. Right? I like to say that. Well, we brought sort of the tool, the GPS tool. It’s relatively complicated behind the scenes. I have no idea how my little maps GPS knows where I’m at right now.
Amy:
Right, right.
Blue:
I don’t know the triangulation. I don’t know how that works, but I just know it’s easy, right? So what I always say is that if like any good GPS, you gotta know where you’re headed. That’s your engagement pathway, right? Then I gotta know where I’m currently starting. That’s data that we pull in to do it. And then I need a way to tell you when to go right or left. And that’s the messaging platform. And so that’s what I would think about as I’m a church, is think of us as a GPS helping people through their engagement pathway. And I need to use these different components of it to help guide them.
Amy:
Well that sounds kind of simple.
Blue:
Isn’t that great?
Amy:
I like that.
Blue:
It’s easy for you. Just say it like this.
Amy:
That’s right.
Blue:
Implementation is a little different. So it’s great.
Amy:
Well, the church leaders that I talk to, they’re smart and they know the way that they’re communicating with insiders. They know it really isn’t working like they want it to most of the time. But even as you’re talking about GPS and all these things, sometimes just keeping up with the technology can feel incredibly overwhelming. So where would you recommend they start? Like, what roles do they need to invest in and what tech solutions do they need to invest in?
Blue:
Love it. I would say this first more than the tech is, you have to get alignment on the methodology, right? And you have to keep that simple. So I try to tell people it makes no sense buying a piece of technology if you’re not sure what problem it’s solving for you. Right? Because then you just have tech sitting around out there and you get all this stuff, you know, that makes no sense or doesn’t tie in. So the first place I say is really, do you believe in the methodology? And I try to oversimplify that. We wanna grow the kingdom. We believe we’ll grow the kingdom by engaging people. We think we’ll engage people by delivering personalized messages, right? So that’s this idea of, I say grow through engagement, engagement through personalization. If you don’t have alignment on that, don’t even worry about the tech just, right?
So keep it simple, dive that in. And then I think when it does look at, you know, some of the different roles, I think one of the things that people need to bring to that table, as I mentioned, is a marketing communication specialist. Often I see churches say, Hey, I’ll just grab my creative person and I’ll put them in and they can do all of my messaging. Now creative, I love it. You have to have that. But it goes way deeper than just what is the copy and what is the image I’m gonna use? It really is, when am I gonna send it? What channel am I gonna use? What frequency? Who’s doing it? So I would say look for a marketing specialist as a role to bring to the table. And then I would centralize that marketing communication. So you make sure that you kind of, you know, have a strategy of who you’re communicating with.
Amy:
Sure.
Blue:
But as far as tech to your, to your original question, looking at tech, I think there’s a couple foundations. You, you need a good church management system. At the end of the day, a church management system, my world’s like a CRM tool out in the marketplace. I just need to know some way I can store some data about people so that I can use that. And then what I’d say is, once you have that information that’s sitting there, and it’s not on a piece of paper in Bob’s desk drawer, right?
Amy:
Right, right.
Blue:
There’s some sort of access to get to that. Then that’s where you kind of look at some of the stuff where we’re saying, Hey, you need somehow like a warehouse to use that data and a communications tool that can use that data to sort and build segmented audiences and custom messages. And then I’d say the third piece is you need some place to send that message. So I call that my distribution channels. That’s a website. It’s a mobile app; it’s email. It’s SMS. Right. So where’s the data? How do I curate the data so I know something to do with it? And then where do I send the message off to? And I would say those are the core components of technology I’d, I’d focus on first.
Amy:
I was laughing when you said church management software, because see if you agree with this. I was talking to one pastor and he said, here’s my thoughts on church management systems. Pick one and then everyone can hate it.
Blue:
It’s so true. It is so in my world. I love it because I have some that’s on one, they’re, you know, from a switching to B, b switching to c, c back to a. And they always say, which one? What are you seeing? And I’m saying, I see you all changing to each other’s own systems, right?
Amy:
Yes,
Blue:
It absolutely is the truth. But I think the reason, you know what’s funny? I mean, the reason I think they do that is ’cause somebody, you know, bought that church management system. And it expected it to do everything. And I’m not a big fan of that. I believe there’s these multi-point things, you know, messaging platforms that are really good at messaging. You have data platforms that are good at storing data. You have, you know, business intelligence tools. I think the key is make sure you get one that talks well with others.
Amy:
That’s right.
Blue:
Who knows what’s gonna happen 10 years from now, there’s gonna be some hologram thing I’m supposed to incorporate. I am just talking, so. Right?
Amy:
Well, hey, can you share some of what Studio C is seeing work best for churches when it comes to communication with insiders, you know, in the realms of texting, email and apps?
Blue:
Yeah, absolutely. Here, the, the first thing I’d say is don’t think of it as sending out messages to your insiders. Think of it as creating communication journeys with your insiders. Right?
Amy:
I like that.
Blue:
That, so I call them campaigns. And the idea, another term of this is an omnichannel system versus a, you know, the multi-channel, multi-channel is, Hey, I got multiple channels, email, SMS text messaging, and I can send ’em out. Omni says, I’m gonna use those channels appropriately in part of the journey, right? So an email lends itself to long form. Please don’t ever send me a big old thing in text message, though. I’ll never read it, right? So what I say is, the first thing we gotta do is think about going through and building these journeys. We may invite somebody to join in a group on their mobile app. If they click yes, I can trigger an email that says, awesome on your decision, here’s what to expect. And then I can send ’em a text message the night before reminding them to show up.
Amy:
Sure.
Blue:
This whole journey through last year as we were looking at things over rolling 12 months. So in the last 12 months, we’ve had about 4.6 million new things done, new steps taken. Right? Somebody that wasn’t in a group, somebody that wasn’t serving. But what I try to tell people is that took us 14 million messages to get those 4 million steps. So it’s not just, Hey, Amy, get in group. And you say like, okay. Right? I’ve gotta tell you four times in four different ways at the appropriate time. So long and short, think of these journeys and think about using the right tools at the right time.
Amy:
My friend Kim Meyer used to say that when it came to like social media, she said, you have to understand the job description of each of these forms of social media. And in a sense that’s what you’re saying. There’s a job description for email, for texting, for web messages, things like that. Correct?
Blue:
I love it. Exactly right. Some of ’em were never designed to do some of the other things, if that makes sense. Right? So a dashboard gives me lots of messages about where I currently am, and email allows me to give a little bit more color or detail associated with you, right? There is a specific job that they were designed to play. The problem is we think they all play all jobs, right?
Amy:
Everything, everybody all the time.
Blue:
There it is; there’s your shotgun again, it sends out. So absolutely. I’d say be specific. And then also, there’s another thing that we always do. There’s some tools, like you can look at. We do event level communications, meaning not every event needs the same level of messaging.
Amy:
No. Thank you.
Blue:
Your A level events, we may go out 120 days for an A level; we’ll do a whole 120 day campaign. There’s some D level events where you’re gonna get a quick text message, remind you it exists, we’re gonna kind of move on, right?
Amy:
That’s right.
Blue:
So I think having a strategy and understanding of how to deploy it, and then the mix of tools that you’re gonna use, it’s a huge part of that.
Amy:
And this is where your marketing communication specialist comes in, they think through those things for you.
Blue:
A hundred percent. And then often what we said is, Hey, your marcom person is kind of like an agency and their client or the ministries in the campuses. So if they can come in, they can understand what is it you’re trying to accomplish when, and then they can put together sort of a MarkOps strategy. And then they also understand the use of tools, right? So our strategist, for instance, at our church, they went out and found that prospects, people who were considering going to your church were going to somewhere between 12 and 15 different church websites before they’d ever show up, right? And so when we ask them, okay, you’re going to 12 different church websites and you’re considering this church, what are you looking for? And by far, one of the biggest comments was, I’m looking to see if this church is weird or not. Right? What they’re doing. And so what we found though is that when churches were using their websites for their insider communication, sometimes that insider communication looked a little weird.
Amy:
Weird, yeah.
Blue:
One guy, I love this personally, but one church was doing like, a 21 days of fasting and prayer, okay? They had it splashed all over the website. One of our prospects in our focus groups looked at it, passed right on to the next website. So I asked him like why. He was like, man, if, you know, if I go there, I don’t get eat food for three weeks. So, you know, it can, what I try to say is, use the right tool. So we’re huge fans of your website for your prospects, your mobile app for your members. It allows you to, you know, tailor that. But that’s where that role can come in as well and say, Hey guys, here’s how we’re gonna use these different channels.
Amy:
That’s great. Well, Blue, it’s always so good to connect with you. Do you have any final thoughts for our listeners before we wrap up?
Blue:
Oh, you know, first of all, it’s great talking to you. I feel like, you know, I should be on the other side. I get good intel from you all the time that help us build these things. I just get to layer on top of smart things people are doing with some technology. I really would, this is a Blue thing for sure, but I believe technology is and should be submissive to the methodology or the strategy. Technology is not the thing. We’re the supporting actor. So if there’s not clarity around the thing and what you’re doing, I think churches or anybody for that matter will waste a lot of money on technology. So I’d say start with the methodology, then find the technology that works for you.
The other thing is, I see a lot of churches really going through this debate of, Hey, should I buy or should I build, right? And what I don’t know if they always understand is the cost of building something doesn’t stop at the end of building that thing, right? There are maintenance. So roughly I try to tell people, plan on whatever you spent to build it, spend about 20% of that annually to maintain it. Right? And then on top of that, just know that whoever built it, you need that skillset ongoing. So if they’re gonna leave, you’re gonna be in a hard spot or a bind in finding people. So I’m a huge fan to say, let’s, you know, I think companies should be good at what they’re good at. Churches should be good at what churches are good at, and let tech companies be good at what they’re at and just make sure that they’ve got a heart for the kingdom and what we’re trying to do. Bring those together.
And I think the last one, I get this question all the time and I think it’s really starting to shift is, you know, you asked me early on like, what’s one of the issues why this is happening? I think there was a mindset that using data was a sin, right? That somehow using data to communicate with people was a form of manipulation. And I think what if I would is to shift that mindset to say, it’s not a form of manipulation; it’s what I want for you, not from you, but it’s my way to try to shepherd somebody personally and relevantly. So if I could in a final thought that has nothing to do with technology, understand that using these tools or this data is in support of your members and shepherding them well, it’s not trying to manipulate them into something that’s not good for them. So I would just call it, data’s not a sin; let’s go ahead and use that technology and serve people better.
Sean:
Well, Amy, that really was a great conversation. I really enjoy listening to Blue. He always has great insights and I always walk away from conversations learning from him. Let’s recap just a bit. When it comes to internal communication, what were the highlights for you?
Amy:
Well, of course, I love that he highlighted that data is not a sin. You know, I work with many churches that when we start setting specific goals and targets some of them just start to bristle. It’s honestly usually not like the lead pastor, executive pastor, but these churches haven’t had a culture where they actually talk about what success looks like and it feels anti spiritual if we, you know, use numbers or goals. And so, you know, numbers and goals of course are not communicating or should not be communicating that it’s about the numbers. It’s about people because of course people are numbers. So I love that he just called that out.
And then second, I love when Blue said, kind of related to strategic planning that somehow using data to communicate with people is like a form of manipulation. I think that’s another fear, right? No. It’s about getting personal with where people are in their journey so that we can serve them better. Sean, our friend Tony Morgan, he used to get so frustrated when he would get an email from his church to like get into a small group. He was in a group, not only that, but he was a small group leader.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
And if the church used their data, they would be sending him an entirely different message, that, you know, rather than someone who’s never even taken that step yet.
Sean:
That’s right.
Amy:
I just think that relates to Blue’s point, that as a church, we want people to feel known and cared for because they are known and they are cared for. And I think when we demonstrate that we’re aware of where they’re at in the journey, it actually helps us help them take their next steps.
Another insight, I think I said it was just this, everybody, everywhere, all the time approach, like Blue said, it’s counterproductive. It actually communicates the opposite. It communicates that we don’t know you. So I think as churches and as leaders trying to communicate with our insiders, we have to remember that everybody is starting someplace different, in the journey and they move at their own speed. So when we communicate to everybody as if they’re all in the same place, I just think we missed the mark. And instead of connecting people through our communications, we’re actually saying, I don’t know you, which can translate to, I also don’t really care about you.
Sean:
Right.
Amy:
So, the modern strategy for communicating with your insiders, for our listeners, it really starts with learning how to deliver a personalized experience. And again, even when you’re a large church, it’s probably even more important then.
And I agree with Blue that there’s a new role, that most of us need to make room for on our teams, and it’s a marketing communication specialist. We need someone who understands and knows this world of communicating with people in 2025. Really and beyond. We need someone with that expertise. And of course, they need to love Jesus. And those people are out there. The world around us has marketing specialists everywhere. Just check my inbox, check my text messages, check my apps. So this is a new role we need to be looking for.
Sean:
That’s good. Alright, well, let’s get really practical then with some next steps for churches. Where should they start if they need to get better in this area?
Amy:
Yeah, I think an easy place to start is just, as he challenged, let’s start giving some thought to the job descriptions of our different communication channels. Like which ones are for insiders only, which ones are for outsiders, and where does it include a mix? I think we have to understand that, and I think it even gives then who’s ever overseeing communications, just real clarity. This is how we’re gonna voice. So just for example, as we talk about the website, I’m on the same page with Blue. I know you are too, that the website is primarily should be voiced for outsiders. Insiders will use it too. But we wanna be voicing this and designing this for the people who are coming to check out the church and see what it’s like. And we’ve highlighted this before and we’ll probably shut down their website again. But Prairie Lakes Church, Jesse Tink is the lead pastor there. They have an outstanding website that’s voiced towards the outside, and you can go to that at prairielakeschurch.org and take a look at it.
Sean:
Yes. I love their landing page, Amy.
Amy:
Yes!
Sean:
Just the first page that you land on for me as someone who doesn’t know their church, it answers every question that I have. And I know the insiders can go a little bit deeper into the website to find the things they’re looking for, but for me, as a brand new person, it answers every question. I absolutely love it. That’s a great example.
Amy:
Yeah. And if the website is really that primary space for outsiders, I would say your church app is the primary space for insiders. That’s what I see most churches doing. So let’s name that because we’re gonna design how we’re communicating in that app for the insider voicing that we wanna do. And then of course, when it comes to things like public social media, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, all of those, those are probably a mix. But again, because they are public, I think you wanna lean towards a primary focus being for the outsider. There’s gonna be exceptions, but I think we wanna have that thought. And then of course, email is gonna be a mix. But even there, I think you should still have the conversation, talk about the job description when we’re emailing to outsiders versus when we’re emailing to insiders. We need to have different lists for that, and we need to kind of look at that more long form channel and make sure we’re voicing you correctly.
Sean:
That’s right. And Amy, I’ll let my geriatric millennial come out a little bit, but I absolutely love email. I love a good insider email newsletter where I can just distill a lot of information really quickly. So there, that’s my confession.
Amy:
Very good. Thanks for that. You’re welcome. Moving away from that job description, the second like next step that I think any church can take is think about preaching your announcements once in a while. Meaning, you know, like one way to dramatically improve your communication with insiders is to weave your key, I’ll do air quotes, “announcements” into your actual preaching. In other words, instead of always relying on like some two minute announcement or whatnot, our other channel to get the word out, man, we gotta preach that once in a while because often what we’re announcing are big next steps. Small next steps that we want people to take.
And by the way, when you do have just announcements, please try not to let who’s ever carrying those get into the weeds because people just tune out. You know, this, Sean, I’ve shared this and I love this church, but when I was working with them on kind of how they’re approaching the weekend, 25% of their service was announcements. They were in different spaces throughout that time together. But when you added up all the minutes, 25% was announcements. I’m just telling you it’s not effective.
Sean:
That’s a lot.
Amy:
My last thought on this, Sean, and this is the bigger step, and this is what I think actually starts to get overwhelming, especially for us, Gen Xers who are in leadership because technology keeps changing at the speed of light. But you do need to have someone who’s native to this. You’re geriatric millennial, have them start exploring your technology options. You need to have a technology that’ll match the strategy that you wanna be able to engage people with. And there are lots of tools out there, but you need ones that will serve your ministry objectives. And again, we’re big fans of Blue and Studio C. If you wanna learn more about them, you can just find ’em online at thestudioc.org. You know, Sean, I don’t know if you’re hearing this, but the few churches that I’ve been talking to that have started working with them recently just cannot say enough good things about their service.
Sean:
Yes, absolutely. And, it’s very impressive. Some of the things that they’re able to do on the technology side to help a big church feel small.
Amy:
That’s right.
Sean:
And I say big church, I mean, big church can be relative to what the person who steps inside your church for the first time feels. So even if you may not think about yourself as a big church, you probably feel larger to that person who’s brand new to your church. And Studio C can help a big church feel small. This has been really good. I appreciate all of the practical thoughts that, you’ve been able to share today, Amy, too. I think that’s really helpful. Anything that you wanna leave listeners with as we wrap up today’s conversation?
Amy:
Yeah. You know, blue made the comment that many churches that they engage with, when they start to bring a technology solution, many of them have never really thought through their own ministry methodology. Like the defining the next steps they want people to take. And actually that’s where the relationship began with us in Studio C. They’re like, we are the technology. We aren’t strategic planning people. We aren’t people who have that kind of gifting. So Blue was experiencing so many churches who wanted their technology solution, but hadn’t done the work of figuring out the next steps they want people to take. And so I’ll just close with this. If you haven’t done that work yet, that’s actually your next step. You need to get clarity around how you, what, what journey you want people to be on and what that pathway is. And of course that’s what we help churches do. And so we’d love to help you if you need to get that defined.
Sean:
Absolutely. Well, thanks for joining us today for this episode of the Unstuck Church podcast. Don’t forget you can find our show notes and additional resources to go with today’s conversation at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. You can subscribe via email so that you never miss an episode. This is one of my many emails that I get in my inbox that I like Amy to have access to the full resource archive of all of our past episodes as well. And we’ll be back next week to wrap up our series on the three communication challenges for churches, talking about better communication with outsiders. And an interview featuring Phil Taylor of PlainJoe Studios. So you won’t wanna miss that. We’ll see you back here next week.
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