3 Communication Challenges for Churches (Part 3)
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As followers of Jesus, we’re called to reach people outside of the faith. But doing so requires a strategy—both in the church and in your personal life.
We’re wrapping up our series on communication challenges for churches with a conversation about communicating with outsiders—people outside the church and outside the faith.
In this episode, Sean and I share some reality checks about outreach strategies. Plus, I got to catch up with Phil Taylor at PlainJoe about best practices in storytelling and branding through the lens of what connects with people outside the church.
Connect with Phil or learn more about PlainJoe by visiting plainjoestudios.com or emailing phil@plainjoestudios.com.
You can’t improve the way your church communicates to reach outsiders unless you’re personally connecting with people who are far from God in your own life. [episode 410] #unstuckchurch Share on X You communicate better with outsiders when you understand their context. [episode 410] #unstuckchurch Share on X We have to be students of our culture and what makes sense for where God has called us, and that means avoiding insider language. [episode 410] #unstuckchurch Share on X Your church's digital spaces should tell the same story as your physical spaces. [episode 410] #unstuckchurch Share on X
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More Episodes in This Series
Better Team Communication – Episode 408
Better Communication with Insiders – Episode 409
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 friend and teammate, Amy Anderson. Today, we wrap up this series on three communication challenges for churches. And this final topic is one that we have some passion around, right, Amy?
Amy:
Yeah. Today, we’re wrapping up with a conversation about better communication with outsiders, of course, people who are outside the faith and outside the church. And I had a great talk with Phil Taylor at Plain Joe Studios about best practices in storytelling, in branding through that lens of what connects with people outside the church.
Sean:
That’s good. Yeah, it’s a great conversation. But before we get into that, we wanted to kind of tee up this topic with a challenge to church leaders because if they don’t do this one thing intentionally, all of your efforts at branding and storytelling and reach strategies really won’t land. And when we started thinking about this episode, we were sensing this tension. You can’t improve the way your church communicates to reach outsiders unless you’re personally connecting with people who are far from God in your own life. People who are outside the church and faith.
Amy:
Yeah, that’s right. And you know, it can, we’ve been in ministry, Sean, it can often be a challenge for people in full-time ministry, right? To stay connected to people outside the church, because over time our world, it can just shrink down to almost exclusively knowing and doing life with other believers. And when we do that, like you said, we can lose touch with people, lose touch with the people we’re actually trying to reach. So we don’t really know them anymore, so we’re gonna go through some reality checks to go through this.
So yeah, the reality check number one is you will communicate better with outsiders when you understand their context. So are you spending time with anyone who doesn’t know the Lord? And you know, Sean, for me personally, this was a lot easier for me when we had kids at home because their schedules, their activities, they gave us these regular intersections with people who didn’t know the Lord. Again, both of us were in full-time ministry, so that put us alongside people who, you know, weren’t going to church, weren’t exploring faith. But as empty nesters now, it just requires a lot more intentionality. And I have to say, my husband does this a lot better than I do. Like he sacrificially, Sean, signed up for a men’s golf league. He does what he has to do.
Sean:
Way to take one for the team, Jay.
Amy:
I know in all seriousness though, as a lead pastor, he was actually pretty excited to drop into a group of men who didn’t know what he did, and he could just be with them. And, you know, until they asked that question like, what do you do? But you know, he enjoys golfing, and it gave him a great opportunity to just connect with other people. And, you know, that just reminds me, Sean, didn’t you do that with hockey as well when you were in full-time ministry?
Sean:
I did. Yeah. It’s the same story for me. You know, I was working full-time in a church, been doing it for many years. My kids were really little at the time, so we didn’t have those regular intersections yet at the ball field or at the hockey rink or other places. And I just looked around me and I recognized, personally, and I felt convicted about it. I really don’t know anybody who’s not a part of our church. And I love the people who are a part of our church.
Amy:
Right.
Sean:
They’re all great people and they’re great people for me to be connected with. But I knew I was missing something because I didn’t have relationships with people outside the church and faith. And I had heard someone challenge specifically that you could do this in areas where you were already at. It wasn’t something where you had to create something brand new. And so I jumped, I grew up playing hockey, and I jumped back into hockey and started playing in a local league for old guys, and got to meet some people who weren’t a part of a church anywhere. And developed friendships there. And, you know, it wasn’t as much of just the end result being inviting them to church. It was really beneficial for me to have some people and understanding of a context that was outside of the church context that I was in on a day-to-day basis. So, yeah. You can find that thing that you love to do. Like Jay found golf. Me, it was hockey could be something else and intersect with people outside the faith there.
Amy:
Yeah. I like that you brought it up. It’s not just about that invite to church, but you were in the weekend experience. So was I; I worked with the teaching team. When you have those people in your head, because you actually know them and you’re doing life with them you can help voice to them, you know, in your teaching. Also reminds me of our friend, pastor Chad Moore at Sun Valley Church in the Phoenix area. I think it’s been a couple years now, but he launched Cigar Preacher where he talks about, you know, with people, things that matter the most in life. And it’s for men and men share it, and it’s had just a lot of play, but it’s just one of his intentional ways to stay close to those that he’s trying to reach. The point is here, we need to get out of our bubbles and meet with and know the people we’re trying to reach.
And, you know, some pastors do this really well, and they also are good at leveraging their team to do this well. So what I’ve seen is some pastors, they just put a diverse team around them as they prepare messages. Not only things like age diversity, but when they teach on life issues that maybe they’ve never experienced, they invite people from the congregation, some high level volunteers to weigh in. I remember when my husband Jason taught on divorce; he has never experienced that. But he wanted to talk about it, teach about it, help, you know, a lot of our folks in our congregation were, you know, in that situation. So he just invited some folks from our church to help ’em understand their real pain and their real struggle. And he listened to their stories and they just had this front row seat that he had never had, and it made his teaching so much more relatable and able to connect with the people because of that.
So another, another one I think about is topics that we do throughout the year. Like Mother’s Day, right? For years I was in this camp of it’s Mother’s Day, let’s celebrate moms kind of all, rah rah, let’s get the flowers out. And then I got exposed to the real-life Mother’s Day, where I don’t, well, it’s painful, you know, for many people. Our son and his wife lost a full term baby, our granddaughter, Julia, unexpectedly about three years ago. And two months later it was Mother’s Day weekend. So we saw that through an entirely different filter, you know, other people have lost their moms, others can’t become a mom, and so I just think we, it’s this, we all know it in our heads, but do we really have the systems and do we hold ourselves accountable and our teams accountable to be, you know, up close and personal with those that we’re trying to reach? Because if we aren’t careful, we can end up being just so tone deaf with the people we’re trying to reach. We can convey a deafness to what they really need. What they really value. And when we do this, we sort of lose speaking permission with people outside the faith.
Sean:
That’s right. That’s a great reminder. I’m sure a lot of our listeners do this well, but what a great reminder that ministry leaders need to have some relationships with people outside the faith if they’re really gonna be relevant to the people they’re trying to reach. Amy, what’s the next reality check?
Amy:
Yeah. The next reality check is does our language connect with the people we’re trying to reach? Again, when most, if not all of the people we’re relating to are already believers, we can kind of unknowingly lose our ability to hear how we sound to people who are outside the faith. And who don’t understand what we’re talking about. And I pick on this one a lot, but one example on the weekend, again, do we use insider words like fellowship groups or referencing these internal brands, we’ve created these internal acronyms that everyone in the church knows, but others don’t. We have to be careful there. Or do we start the service as if new people are not in the room? Do we give them any cues on what to expect? I’m just saying, Sean, “Good morning, let’s stand and worship,” does not do a good job of inviting brand-new people into the experience, so we have to keep them in mind.
Sean:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And we touched on this in last week’s episode, but churches need to give all of their communications platforms, and you mentioned this before, that kind of job description, like, our website is primarily for outsiders. So in this case, when it comes to our website, we need to keep churchy language and insider information really just off that platform. Yeah. Or I would say off of the landing page or the kind of front-facing pages of that platform.
Amy:
Yeah, that’s right. Here’s some common social media examples of using insider language and content and spaces where we’re actually trying to connect with outsiders. And keep in mind it’s not that these things are bad, but they’re just not strategic. With everything we post as a church if we miss it, we miss the opportunity to share something that actually would connect with the new person. So I’ve seen this where they use social media to post Sunday set list to Instagram. And that’s really for insiders who already know the songs and know what worship is.
Sean:
That’s right. And I’ve seen some churches, Amy where the Sunday set list is almost the only thing that they post on social media. And that really doesn’t give an opportunity for people outside the church in faith to get to know your church other than here’s a list of songs that I don’t know.
Amy:
Which actually makes to feel like they don’t fit. Right?
Sean:
Exactly. Exactly.
Amy:
Similarly, posting who’s speaking this weekend on the homepage site. That’s really for insiders who already know the pastors and probably have a favorite and it’s just anti productive.
Sean:
Sure. Yeah.
Amy:
And I don’t think many do this, but you know, we have some of these Facebook pages where, you know, sometimes sensitive prayer requests about specific people can get posted. So again, you wanna guard that, make sure it’s a private communication channel. So yeah, the action here, the discipline is just to regularly audit all of the communication channels that you have that could feasibly be viewed by someone who’s outside your church or the faith, and evaluate what wouldn’t make sense to them? What would maybe push them away instead of drawing them in?
Sean:
Yeah. Alright, well, hopefully we’ve done a good job of setting up the tension and maybe creating a little tension for the listeners themselves as we did this. So let’s dive into our conversation with Phil Taylor from Plain Joe Studios on some of the best practices for communication with outsiders.
Amy:
Our focus for this episode is on how churches can improve the way they communicate with, you know, outsiders with people outside the church, but more specifically with people outside the faith. And we’ve been talking about just how critical it is for church leaders to know people outside the faith and understand their stories if they wanna get better at communicating the gospel. So just curious, what are some of the missteps you most frequently see churches making in this area? Like, what makes you cringe when you see it, besides a 12-word name of a church.
Phil:
Well, that’s definitely one of them. But, you know, I think one of the biggest things that we’ll often talk about at PlainJoe Studios is that a church really needs to be conscious of telling a consistent story across all platforms. Right? So you’re building your website, your logo, social media, print media, signage, you know, the t-shirts that the volunteers wear. It should all be telling the same story. And I think when a story is confusing or inconsistent, I think you feel it, even if you don’t notice it consciously, I think it really becomes that kind of subconscious thing. And so I think consistency is super important in your storytelling. We’ve worked a lot with a church in Indiana called Granger, which I know you’re familiar with there. And we rebranded them a few years ago. And then they came back to us and had us update their lobby and kids spaces that just opened within the last couple of months. We did all their new signage and all of that stuff, and it looks amazing. It looks so good. But they actually came back to us and said, Hey, now that we’ve got like this new brand and our building feels fresh, our website kind of needs to be telling that same story. And we said, yeah, you’re absolutely right.
Amy:
Sure.
Phil:
And so now we’re actually updating their website to match the look of their building so that their digital spaces are telling the same story as their physical spaces. And so I think it’s just super important to be consistent with all of that.
And I think another thing that people really overlook sometimes is just really recognizing that as we approach our communities, we really have to do so like missionaries going to an unreached people group. You know, I think so often we don’t see that, ’cause we live in what is sometimes called a Christian nation. But, you know, I came of age in kind of the emerging Gen X church planting movement of the late nineties and early two thousands. And what I loved about that era was that, you know, we were just asking ourselves what makes sense for this secular culture? How do we become more indigenous for the culture that we’re trying to reach. And do you even know who you’re trying to reach? And the answer can’t just be a city, right? It has to be a subgroup within that city. ’cause no one church is gonna reach every single person in a city. And so, you know, how do you effectively reach the people that you’re trying to reach? Do you know who they are? If you don’t know the answer to that question, you’re gonna be struggling.
And so, but once you do know the answer to that question, it really should drive even your communication strategy. Right? So, just as an example I helped plant a church in upstate New York in 2006. I was there for about eight years. And our goal was to reach the urban artsy, hipster academic, left-leaning, you know, types of the capital region of New York state. And so we launched our services in an effort to really reach that particular community. We launched our services downtown in a 200-year-old factory that had been turned into a microbrewery. Right? And it was awesome.
Amy:
Oh, wow.
Phil:
Like the place smelled like hops and barley all the time, and it was great. The floor was sticky. But, you know, it worked for who we were trying to reach ’cause we understood who it was that we were going after. And, you know, our marketing looked more like a concert poster stapled to the side of a wooden telephone pole because it literally was. And so, you know, it was just a different approach. And I think, you know, the thing to learn from that is that we have to be a student of our culture, what makes sense for where God has called us. And I think a big part of that also involves really avoiding insider language in your services, your sermons, your websites, your social media. Just talk like a normal person. Don’t use insider language in any of those spaces.
Amy:
Yeah. You know, I’ve been around church world for over 20 years, served on the executive team at our church here in Minnesota for 12 years. And, you know, it’s just was second nature for us on things like taboo words and insider language. Like, don’t say fire and brimstone. Don’t say narthex, don’t. And we talked about it actually recently on the podcast, but you know, what was behind this question is that it amazes me sometimes what we miss when we’re just in our church all the time. That’s why I was asking for common missteps. We had a guy on our team go work with the church and the signs, you know, like to direct you where to go in the parking lot was actually behind a huge oak tree. Like, nobody could read it anymore.
Phil:
You couldn’t even see it. Yeah, right.
Amy:
The church after our colleague shared that with them, they cut the tree down like the next week. But it’s interesting, and it’s hard to do, to take a step back and just take fresh eyes and what is our building? What is our website? What is it really communicating? And, you know, we challenge people all the time. Invite someone to church that you know that doesn’t go to church. You’ll see it with a whole new perspective.
Phil:
I think of it like just sort of breaking down one barrier after another, right? So like if you have a terrible monument sign on the side of the road next to your building, you know, is that gonna stop everybody from checking out your church? No. But it might stop a few people from checking out your church. Right? If you have, you know, a building that looks like it’s stuck in the nineties, or the seventies, is that gonna stop everybody? No. But it might stop some. If your website is just, you know, so ugly that it makes people wanna kind of throw up in their mouths a little bit. Is that gonna stop everybody? No, but it’s gonna stop some. Right? And so we just need to, I think as missionaries to a culture, we need to just consistently be breaking down as many barriers as we can. Little by little, you know, just check ’em off one at a time as you have the time and energy and finances to do that. Right?
Amy:
That’s right. Yeah. Your building, your signage, your website, all of those things are just strategies to accomplish your mission. So you do need to put ’em under the microscope once in a while and see if they’re still working. Even the name of the church, like you mentioned. Let me ask you another question. Are there things that you still see churches doing or saying in their like their outsider communication that really doesn’t work anymore for where culture is?
Phil:
Yeah. I think some of the things that I see is people using language that doesn’t have any meaning to people outside of the church. So, you know, let’s say you’re posting on your social media and you know, you say, you know, the Bible study is being led by Brother James. Well, nobody in the regular culture like says Brother James. You know, like nobody says that. You know, or suddenly your words sound like super spiritual. Like it’s like you’re reading the King James Bible all of a sudden. Or you’re using information that there’s no possible way that I can have if I’m not familiar with your church. Like, hey, the summer barbecue will be at the Smith Farm. Okay, well, if I’m an outsider, I don’t know the Smiths, and I don’t know where their farm is, you know, so like, give me a little more information. And so I think it can feel sometimes when you go to some churches, it can feel like you’re visiting somebody else’s family gathering. Right? And I think we have to really, you know, just kind of take another step back and say again, how do we make sure we avoid that insider language, you know?
Amy:
So funny you use that example. Sean on our team once did a secret shopper when we did that as part of our offering. And that’s exactly what he said to the pastor. He said, I feel like I walked into your family’s Thanksgiving meal, and I sat down and then no one talked to me. And I just kind of observed your family having your Thanksgiving meal.
Phil:
Isn’t that awful? And so often in those types of churches, the people are so used to that, that they don’t even approach anybody who’s new in the church because it’s really just become like a glorified small group, you know?
Amy:
It’s a club.
Phil:
Totally.
Amy:
All right. Well, specifically in the area of branding, can you share some examples of churches you’ve worked with who’ve developed their brand and story with a clear focus on the outsider?
Phil:
Yeah. I think one of my favorite stories, with some of the churches we’ve worked with, this has happened a lot, but one of my favorites is a church in British Columbia, Canada on Vancouver Islands. They were a hundred-year-old church with a name that honestly really felt dated. And our job at PlainJoe was to rename them and rebrand them. And as we work through the renaming process, we have a whole process we take churches through when we’re renaming them. But as we work through that renaming process, we talked a lot about how they were really focused on their island. They’re just on an island. And so they’re super focused on that. They’re not trying to, you know, reach the city of Vancouver on the mainland. They’re not trying to have campuses over in the big city across the water. You know, they’re really focused on the island. And they wanted to reach the island that was the mission field that God had given them.
And so everyone, everywhere on the island, wherever you drove you, you saw the shape of the island everywhere. Like it was used in, you know, everything from a coffee shop logo to like, you know, the logo on the side of a plumbing repair truck, like that shape of the island was just everywhere. And so it just became really clear that these people love their coastline, like the coastline of the island. It’s had a very distinctive shape with all these interesting bits to it. And so we ended up changing the name of the church to Coastline Church. That was their new name. And it just made so much sense for who they were and who they were trying to reach. And then of course we did a really fresh logo treatment and all new signage. And then we came up with this tagline for them, “On the island, for the island since 1923.” And so we played into their history of being there for a hundred years but we made it clear like, we are on the island for the island. And actually, if you go to their website today, I mean coastlinechurch.ca, you’ll see that that is the first thing you see on the island for the island since 1923. And they’re a great church doing amazing there in British Columbia. But they use that tagline everywhere.
Amy:
I love that. Yeah, how did the rest of it play out in the story brand? Like when it came to like the spatial design, did you do work there as well?
Phil:
So actually that was a really interesting piece. So as we were working on some of their spatial work, we identified that their building when it was built long ago, of course, several buildings built over a hundred years. But sort of what you would think of as the front of the building was on this very quiet city block with a residential building next door. And, you know, there was very little parking over there. And as the church had grown and expanded, their parking was on the other side of the building. And then interestingly enough, directly across the street from that parking lot, the city had built a big hockey stadium. And so here you had like 10,000 people coming in for hockey games and concerts, but when they looked across the street at the church, they were looking at the back of the church. Right?
Amy:
Interesting. Yeah.
Phil:
And so we said, well, wait a minute, what if we just flipped that and we made the back of the church, the front of the church? And so that’s actually what we did and what they did. And so we created this helped ’em create this whole new entrance. We did this amazing, you know, concept of a mural on the side of the building that utilized all their branding components. And it just turned out so well; I actually was just looking on their Google pics earlier today, and I saw that a few people had posted picks of that. So it’s, you can see it; you can find it online, but it just turned out so well. But the important thing is that it’s outward-facing to where all these people were coming for these events, right? And so now they go there and look, you’re gonna look across the street and go, man, I’m not much of a church goer, but that place looks cool. Like, that looks like that’s an interesting church, you know? So it just fits so well in this downtown urban fabric of Victoria British Columbia. So anyway, that’s a great example.
Amy:
It’s so funny. I worked with a church here in Minnesota, and they probably need PlainJoe when the time is right. They’ve got such a challenge because it’s a very old church. They’re so mission minded; they are so externally focused now, but when you drive up to their property, you see a very traditional kind of steeple. And it’s a cemetery all front. And have very little options. I think someday they might move their church because of the inability to communicate who they are effectively at the outside of their building.
Phil:
Yeah. That’s tough.
Amy:
One more question on this. So you said this is coastlinechurch.ca, for our listeners, if they wanna check it out?
Phil:
Yeah.
Amy:
What about the digital side of things? So tell me just a little bit about how you incorporated story and branding through their digital spaces.
Phil:
So we didn’t focus on their digital spaces, but I think, you know, the general idea when we’re talking about digital spaces is to really ask yourself, kind of put your website through a bit of a external audit. Like ask yourself you know, if I’m just viewing this website through the eyes of an outsider, somebody who’s not familiar with the church, perhaps not a believer, you know, is it clear that this church is not this internal thing that’s just focused on itself. So, you know, how do we set the tone for those who are not familiar with our church, try to read through every single page on your website with the outsider in mind. Is it geared for a visitor? Can I even find an address?
You know, I’m always shocked at how many church websites I go to where I literally like, spend five to 10 minutes just trying to figure out where the heck they’re located, you know? I was on this one website where they kept talking about how they were really focused on reaching the South Central region, and that was all over their website: South Central region. They had it on half a dozen pages, and that vision was super clear. They cared about the South Central region. Problem was that there was no city and no state listed anywhere on their website. And I’m like, well, there could be 15 south central regions of the country, you know. And so I’m like, what state are they in? I finally figured out, I’m like, okay, giving page, let’s take a look at their giving page. Down at the bottom of their giving page, there was like this little note that said, you know, if you would like to mail a check to the church, you could; here’s our physical address. That was literally the only place that I could find their actual physical address. And I thought, man, that’s such an easy fix to remove that barrier.
Amy:
Such an easy fix.
Phil:
So anyway. So, you know, I mean, you could do a website audit on your own for some really basic things or you can come to a company like PlainJoe and have us do that with you. But the important thing is that you really just put some eyes on your website through the eyes of a person who doesn’t understand who you are, where you are, what you’re doing, et cetera.
Amy:
Great advice. Great advice. Alright. Well, thank you for joining us today, Phil. You’ve got a captive audience. Any final thoughts you have on this whole thing about communicating with outsiders on storytelling and branding?
Phil:
Yeah, I think, you know, really I would just implore pastors and church leaders to return to being a missionary in your community, your city. Really take a deep look at the barriers that you may be unintentionally maintaining between you and the non-believers in your city. Really ask yourself, what does this community need that we can provide? And then begin to cast a vision to your people that the gospel demands that the church be concerned about the outsiders, not just the insiders. And so the reason why you might spend a couple million dollars on a building that is stuck in the 1990s and you’re updating it is not so that you can attract people from the church down the road. They already know what an old church smells like, and it doesn’t really bother them. The reason why you do it is to remove the barriers between your church and the people you’re trying to reach for Christ. And I think that’s worth it. So you know, we at PlainJoe, we get to the privilege of doing that with churches all over the country, and it’s just such a blast to be able to come alongside of great churches that deserve a great and fair shot. And they just need a little bit of help. So.
Sean:
Well, Amy, that was another great conversation to this series of podcasts. Really appreciate Phil’s insights there. And we say this a lot around here when we’re talking about reaching people, and I love that he emphasized it as well. We need to be continually thinking like a missionary.
Amy:
Yeah. Yeah. And the simple challenge to keep removing barriers for people outside of the church. I love that. I love that too. And here were just a few of my key takeaways or really confirmations from that conversation. One, you need to regularly audit your brand and your web presence. You know, Phil emphasized the importance of conducting a website audit to ensure it’s accessible and informative for outsiders. And he suggested that churches should view their online presence through the eyes of someone unfamiliar with their community. We’ve been talking about that.
Sean:
That’s good.
Amy:
And I think this needs to happen really minimally, do it annually. I don’t know about you, Sean but I think websites have a tendency to face complexity creep or get neglected over time. And both situations can lead to an unclear message that’s unfriendly to new people.
The second thing was where he talked about that consistent storytelling demonstrates care. Phil highlighted the need for consistent storytelling across all outsider platforms, including websites, social media, and physical spaces to create this cohesive and welcoming experience for newcomers. You know? It can be jarring for a new person to have checked you out online before they visit. And by the way, they will do that. And then your physical space doesn’t tell the same sort, the same story that they were expecting. We would find this once in a while in our secret shopper. We’d go to their webpage, and by the way, it was both positive and negative. Sometimes it was like remarkably better than what their website created. And other times it was remarkably worse than what I was expecting. So just to have that consistency.
And then lastly, you should keep your community in mind when you’re rebranding. I love that he shared that example of Coastline Church, that which aligned their identity with their mission to reach their local community. And I just thought that was a great example of thoughtful and very likely effective branding. And I’ll even give my home church a shout out here. We weren’t part of this, this was done before my husband and I started at that church, but they strategically branded their kids’ spaces with this outdoor cabin lake theme.
Sean:
I love that.
Amy:
And in Minnesota, that is our language. Almost everyone has a cabin or has found a friend that has a cabin on a lake, and that just defines summer in Minnesota. So new people, when they come in, they are drawn to it, they’ll walk up to it, they’ll be taking a look at all the different outdoor kind of activities that they’ve got posted in that space. So they’re drawn to it, they think it’s amazing, and they, it’s clear this is not the school style classrooms that many Minnesotans likely grew up if they went to church as kids. So just keeping your community identity in mind as you brand. I thought that was great and it was a key takeaway from me. And just by the way, before we close, if you wanna connect with Phil or learn more about PlainJoe, you can check them out at plainjoestudios.com.
Sean:
Yeah. Well, Amy, I think this series has been helpful for listeners as we begin a brand new ministry season here in the fall, and hopefully see a lot of new faces walk through our church doors for the first time. Anything else you wanna leave listeners with as we wrap up this series?
Amy:
Yeah. You know, we’ve covered Sean, a lot of ideas in this series that anyone can take action on. And I know you are, I’m a podcast listener and I know it’s easy to just binge on content and never actually take a next step. So that’s my challenge to our listeners is what next step can you take in this area of communicating betters with insiders or outsiders? And I just challenge you take a few minutes as this ends to contemplate that or maybe put it on an upcoming leadership team agenda. Take some time and ask yourself, where can we get better? You know, maybe it’s through the job description of your various platforms to get clear on that. Maybe it’s intentionally getting some fresh eyes on your property and looking for those barriers that you can remove. Maybe it’s doing the audit of your website, or maybe you’re ready to find a technology solution so you can communicate in a more personalized way to your insiders, whatever it is, name it, and take steps forward. You know, we get this, we all know the whirlwind of ministry, so name it and do something. It really takes so little to be above average in this area of communication. And you guys, you know, you’ve got the best message in the world to share. So don’t let easy, fixable solutions be a barrier to sharing that message.
Sean:
Yeah. Very good. Well, thanks for joining us today for this episode of The Unstuck Church Podcast. And don’t forget, you can find the show notes and additional resources for today’s conversation at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. You can subscribe via email so that you never miss an episode and have access to our full resource archive from our past episodes as well. So if you listen to past episodes and you wish you had one of the downloads that went with it, you can get it there if you sign up.
We’re back next week with one of our favorite topics that we cover every quarter, fresh benchmarks and trends from the latest edition of The Unstuck Church Report for the third quarter in 2025. We hope you’ll tune in, and we’ll see you next week.
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