Communication

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Timely, relevant and reliable communication will be critical to the success of your asset-based initiative. It’s been said that it takes seven impressions for an actual message to be fully heard and understood. That means everything you are trying to communicate must be published, spoken, printed, and promoted at least seven times and in as many different ways as possible – even if it’s just between members of your leadership team.

You will have the most success if you set the expectations and norms for communication from the outset, beginning with your invitation to team members and lasting throughout each cycle of your initiative.

Patterns of communication are unique to each faith community. As you begin your work, notice how individuals are already connecting with each other and where messages seem make the most impact. Is it face-to-face? Email? Facebook Page? Text? In your asset-based initiative you are going to utilize and truly maximize the potential for these existing tools and possibly augment with a few additional that enhance what is already occurring.

“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw

Team Communication

As soon as you are ready to make team invitations, extend them in a way that exemplifies your underlying communications goals. Make your invitations personal and complete, including your job description and any calendar details you have. Follow-up with a hand-written letter or personalized email. When team members accept your invitation, send a printed letter welcoming the individual to the team including an outline of any upcoming meetings, workshops, or events you have on the schedule.

You will also want to establish your manner of regular team communications. This should include consistent email updates and meetings. There are several online project management and database tools that might be useful, including:

• Basecamp (www.basecamp.com)
• Samepage (https://samepage.io/)
• Google services like Google Drive and Google Calendar (accessible with a gmail account)
• Dropbox (www.Dropbox.com)

Consider using a Facebook or Google group for discussions and updates between meetings. A group will allow your team to talk to each other directly without mediation from you or other team members. You can make the group closed so that outside individuals cannot find or view your conversations.

If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. – Albert Einstein

Communicating with your Faith Community

Regular and meaningful communication with your faith community must be incorporated into every cycle of your asset-based initiative. Quite simply, your ability to engage and energize members will largely determine the impact of the initiative.

Start by identifying the one place where all of your information will be accessible by the wider community. As a general rule, this should be your faith community website. If that’s not possible, you could also build a quick website or blog using a simple online platform like WordPress.com or Squarespace.com and then link the website for the initiative to the faith community website.

Once you have your information hub identified, you can incorporate the communications tools and resources that make sense for your community. These may include:

• Articles in the newsletter or e-newsletter
• Emails focused solely on the asset-based initiative
• Articles in the Sunday bulletin
• Announcements during worship services
• Sermons focused on gifts and assets or references to the asset-based work during the sermon
• Posts on community social media sites like Facebook
• Banners, posters, tabletop displays or other visual reminders

“Be sincere; be brief; be seated” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Communicating with the Wider Community

If you are going to be working with your neighborhood or city, you will want to create communications vehicles that allow access for a wide variety of people. These can include:

• Website
• Blog
• Facebook page

Communications tips:

• Make your communications personal and friendly. Pictures of people, tangible examples of successes, or even inspiring quotes all encourage a quick and positive impression.
• Do not rely solely on social media for your communications strategy. Social media is always refreshing and important information can easily be lost in news feeds.
• Make sure newsletter articles are short, timely, easy to read and to the point. Use bullets and short sentences. You teach people not to read your publications if your writing is too loose or if the information is not important now.

As you read through this Toolkit/website, you will see that each cycle incorporates a communications component with ideas and suggestions. As you develop your plan you will be asked to consider your communications strategy and do some planning. Take this seriously and have fun with it. Engaging your community gives you the opportunity to share your passion and develop deeper relationships among members.