How to Create Consistent Church Communications

Before someone visits your campus, they visit your church online. Here’s how to make that first digital impression clear, warm, and consistent.

Putting care and intention into how a first-time visitor experiences your church matters. However, most first-time guests meet your church online first, often after a personal invite. They check your website or Instagram, then decide whether to visit. Does your online presence reflect who you really are? Would a guest feel more likely to attend after scrolling your feed? Do members recognize a consistent message?

If you answered no to those questions, your communication could use some clarity. Finding that for your church starts with finding your vision, defining some key aspects of your messaging, and then building a plan to execute.

Start with Vision

In order to have a clear, consistent message, everything you communicate needs to flow from the heartbeat of your church. You need to understand your church’s people, motivators, and vision before you can communicate a Kids curriculum change or parking instructions for Easter in the same voice.

Define Your Audience

After nailing down your vision, identify your audience. This isn’t something you have to make up; it’s right in front of you every Sunday and around you as you go through your daily life. Identify, specifically, the kinds of people already involved at your church, the people in your city and communities, and those you know God is calling you to reach.

Define Your Voice

Next, you’ll define your voice, the key piece that makes all your messaging feel unified. Your tone may change based on what you’re communicating, but your voice will remain consistent. A great place to start is writing out some key words that describe your current voice, and then writing down ones that should describe your voice instead.

EXAMPLE
Current voice: warm, a bit inconsistent. Target voice: warm, intentional, direct.

Build Rhythms and Create a Plan

Finally, after you’ve determined your vision, identified your audience, and set your voice, you need to build systems to determine what, when, and why you’re communicating something, and create regular plans for your communication channels so you show up consistently online. Remember, consistency doesn’t mean you need to post 3 times on social media and send out an email newsletter every week. Consistency should look individual to your church's needs and you and your staff's capacity. If you have the time to share one social post on Sundays and send an email out once a quarter, that’s great! Just commit to showing up consistently. You don’t have to do this perfectly to make progress. Small, consistent steps create big clarity over time.

Following these steps will take time to flesh out. Simple systems often take more time to build than easy ones, but they last longer and work better. Remember, you’re not alone in this process. We created a workbook to walk you through the whole process outlined above, with specific questions to get you thinking, examples, and exercises to put your work into practice. Download it and get started creating a clear, consistent message for your church!