Three Areas where AI will Benefit Your Church Teams
AI can feel like the Wild West, where it’s constantly advancing and changing. What can you do to use it to help your teams? Where do you turn for advice? How can this benefit your […]
AI can feel like the Wild West, where it’s constantly advancing and changing. What can you do to use it to help your teams? Where do you turn for advice? How can this benefit your […]
Hey Fletch—We have a lot of people who visit our church but they don’t come back. We send out letters and emails to newcomers. Apparently these are not working. Any thoughts?
Fletch—I stumbled on an interesting […]
If you’re a church that embraces the mission Jesus sent us on to “go and make all disciples,” then you are likely laser-focused in your approach and mindset around growth. But many churches are not […]
Gone are the days of thinking attendance leads to engagement. In a digital-first era, churches are re-thinking how to approach community engagement and may not have the right people, technology, and processes working together to […]
How do you maximize the strength of your church? All of our churches have wonderful strengths, but they are not always fully utilized or appreciated. Gloo connects the faith ecosystem and enables it to release […]
Your church website is important to your ministry—of course, we all know that! It is one of the key ways to get information out to members and visitors. In this sense, it is vital to […]
Creative types are leaving the church. Many feel overworked, burned out or had unrealistic demands. The creative person is essential for your church and has a huge role to play in Christ’s kingdom. Some of […]
Would you like your congregational engagement to explode during your weekend service? What if your attendees could actually engage with your sermon in real time and tell you how it is affecting their lives?
It’s 2022 and […]
Join us live! We may choose your church website—if you dare submit it. Mark MacDonald, church branding strategist with BeKnownForSomething.com and church communication sage with 35 yrs experience, and Fletch, will select church websites […]
Articulating your Church’s Member Lifecycle or member engagement strategy will help you know your people, define the next steps for growing their faith and result in growing your church. Let technology help you take the […]
Social Media isn’t evil. It can be very powerful when you start to think about ways to keep your church community engaged when they aren’t in the four walls of your church. In this webinar, […]
Fletch and Mike Gould talk with veteran XP, Keith Duff of Village Bible Church and Christopher Nelson, Director of Business Development at Gloo. Keith used a free congregational survey from Gloo to discern what their […]
Leadership Live is a concept that Village Bible Church developed to connect with its congregation. Village Bible is a church of 1,500 people, spread […]
Churches should always over-communicate with the congregation. This is especially so during a crisis, such as the pandemic. Here is a superb video from Lighthouse Community Church. It is a message from their elders to the […]
The coronavirus (Covid-19) has many staff working from home, and there are a number of things worth considering as you manage the ‘brand’ of your church in a distributed work environment.
It’s important […]
XPastor uses Hub365 for secure and private communications in its classes. The President of the firm, Philip Paul, has created a PDF that discusses many ways for “Connecting with the congregation during the Corona Virus […]
Coronavirus data is readily available in the news. For example, Italy has more than 5,800 cases and 233 were fatal. That’s an increase of 800 cases and 49 deaths over the day before. In response, […]
Depending on the nature of the crisis, there are various levels of communication necessary.
Today’s public safety personnel are busy. Given the workload placed on public safety, anything you can do to make their job easier is greatly appreciated.
Collect the 5 W’s and […]
At Vanderbloemen, we spend a lot of time on church websites. Probably more time than anyone you know.
In our time, we’ve seen a lot of good websites…and some that, well, leave a lot to be […]
The folks at Gloo have released an excellent free resource entitled, Boosting Easter Attendance—A Guide on Facebook Ad Campaigns. They say, “With Easter only a few months away, we wanted to get this free gift into […]
Monday, February 4, 2019
Hey Fletch … We are wanting to come up with a new url for our church. What are your thoughts on what would be effective?
DRF—Many churches go with the name of their […]
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Announcements for Benevolence Offerings
Hey Fletch … I read the recent “Hey Fletch” column about the benevolence offering for the woman with cancer. I get that donations cannot be earmarked for a specific […]
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Hey Fletch … I have a grid of how staff can send me emails to get my attention. I created a four-part numbering system. This lets me immediately know how important their […]
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
Hey Fletch … We are a church of 1,400. We do not currently have a dedicated communications person. If we explore going to a new hire, who do they typically report to? […]
February 9, 2018
Hey Fletch … Some of our junior staff are terrible at responding to emails. They say, “our generation likes texts.” One staff member took a month to get me his annual review.
DRF—Well, you […]
In my day job, I have the opportunity to look at a lot of church websites. The thing is, I keep seeing the same three mistakes made on the majority of the sites I visit. […]
I came across Kem Meyer a few years ago when I spent the day in my office listening to The Nines Webinar […]
The XPastor Online Course on Operations 102–Communications encourages students to develop a communications strategy for their church. Below is the Communications Strategy of one of our students, the Executive Pastor for Seven Mile Road Church […]
There’s been a shift in the world. Is your church adapting? The shift is in how people use media and their expectation of what our churches offer. It all started when people could easily record […]
Good communication is key to any relationship. As church leaders, you understand this better than most. It’s no easy task making sure your congregation is getting the information they need to be prepared for upcoming […]
Consider if your church or business had 29,151,900 pages of documents. For ease of discussion, let’s round that down to a 29 million. According to some folks in New Zealand who had plenty of time […]
XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church—items like job descriptions, employment applications, review forms and policies. Below is the Facebook and Blogging Policy of Northshore Christian Church […]
As I was looking closely at the websites of six local churches, one question I considered was this: “What does this website convey about the culture of the church?” That’s a great question. Websites are […]
One of the most challenging things in service planning for pastors and communication leaders can be managing stage announcements. Without a system and strategy in place, you can quickly find yourself stuck in a rhythm […]
Throughout the XPastor Online Course, I’ve learned one thing about communication in organizations—it takes a lot of work! Whether it’s a small team of staff members or a large group of assembled leaders, communication is […]
Do you want to be more effective as a church? Few things will give you a better return on your investment than improving communications. Communications isn’t about spending a lot of money. Rather it’s about […]
Summers are pretty busy for XPs. Beyond the normal budget preparation that keeps me busy, we also launched a major publicity venture for our 9/11 sermon series. This was a three-week series talking about the implications […]
All websites need an occasional dusting off … or even rebranded and restyled. How is your church’s website? Does it look like it did ten years ago? Perhaps it’s time to improve your online image. A […]
XPastor tries to help churches by providing some of the essentials for running a church—items like job descriptions, employment applications, review forms and policies. Below is the Communications System of Hope Community Church in Raleigh, […]
Churches re-brand to emphasize their vibrant and living spiritual DNA. Let’s look at two churches to discover some principles that can help your church re-brand. Scofield Church in Texas and Oak Hill Church in Georgia […]
Traveling down the highway at sixty miles per hour, you see a church sign and think “That looks great.” A minute later, another church sign comes into view and you confess, “What a garbled mess! […]
These days it seems everyone is pushing you towards blogging, Facebook and Twitter. Whether for professional or personal reasons, it can be wise to take advantage of these emerging social networking opportunities. However, there can […]