The point of sending a regular email newsletter, whether for support raising or communication with your launch team/congregation, is to communicate important information and get people to do something about it. What good is sending the newsletters if no one reads them?
Let’s face it – we’re all busy, and in a crunch it’s easy to ‘file’ a newsletter and ‘get back to it later’. Here are some tips to help keep your newsletter from getting filed:
Don’t self-promote; cast vision – involvement and support follow vision
Watch your “voice” – it’s easy to slip into a formal, sterile writing voice
Tell stories – let people know about exciting things happening at your plant, especially stories of changed lives
Have a strong call to action – tell them what you want them to do as a result of reading your newsletter
Set a strict publication schedule – inconsistency can negate all of the above. Never start your newsletter with, “I’m sorry it’s been so long since the last newsletter.”
Thanks again to our friends at Hubspot for a simple, straightforward tutorial on setting up a vanity URL for your church’s FaceBook page:
If you don’t already have a Facebook page or your business, go create one. With over 500 million active users, Facebook is a powerful network to tap into to expand the online footprint of your business.
The next step in personalizing your business page is to get a username to create a vanity URL (customized web address). By default, your Facebook page will get a randomly assigned number and URL (facebook.com/pages/yourbusiness/123456789), but last summer, Facebook made it possible to customize your Facebook page URL (facebook.com/yourbusiness).
Here are their easy instructions on how to create a FaceBook page vanity URL. Remember, though, that you need at least 25 fans of your page before you can claim your name.
If you have a FaceBook or Google ad campaign running to create some extra visibility, make sure that when users click on your ad, they are not being taken to your church website’s homepage. Are you advertising a summer outreach event? Then take them to the event page; or better yet, design a special page just for people who click your ads.
This technique is called creating a ‘landing page’. Here are 7 things your landing page should do/have, from HubSpot’s blog post 7 Habits of a Highly Effective Landing Page Note – this list presumes you have some kind of sign up form or download on the page that people clicked through for:
Pass the Blink Test - can readers figure out what you want them to do quickly?
Keep it Simple
Keep it Short
Graphics and Endorsements Matter
Go Naked – do not provide navigation to elsewhere on the website, except through submitting the form
Restate Value – they just clicked through to your site based on your ad. Tell them again why it’s a good idea to sign up for your newsletter (or whatever your call to action is)
Eat Your Own Dogfood – would you fill out this form?
Having some kind of form or call to action really is important. The last thing you want is to pay $.50 or more for them to click through to your website and then bounce away without connecting with your church.
I spent a year in Northern Virginia at New Life Christian Church. The church planter, Brett Andrews, told me something that has always stuck in my memory. He said, “I don’t like my church plant.” This of course let to a befuddled reply of, “What do you mean, you don’t like your church plant.” Brett replied, “If I had planted this church for me we would all where formal attire on Sunday and sing hymns. I just don’t like the loud music, video clips and dress down attire. But, I didn’t plant this church for myself. I planted it for the people of Northern Virginia and after learning about them we determined that this style was the best way to communicate the gospel.”
Wow! I love that story. How many church planters can say that? That is the story of a missionary. Contextualization is important work for a church planter. One of the unique facets of the gospel is that it is not contained within a particular culture. If a person is a Gentile, they don’t need to first become a Jew to access God. Remember that story? The first thing a church planter needs to do once they are on the ground is what Alan Hirsch calls missional listening. Church planters are typically highly driven individuals who want to hit the ground running. Too often they assume they understand the culture and begin planning for church services. When this happens, I guarantee you are planting a church for yourself and not the culture you are in.
Going to make a pitch for financial support, or perhaps making a presentation to community leaders? Don’t take it personally, but it may be that Your PowerPoint Sucks.
Is your church less than 12 months old?
Do you have less than 300 regular attenders?
If you answered yes to both of these questions you could qualify for a website free for 12 months! SiteOrganic is offering this great deal to church plants meeting the criteria. For more information on this offer, click HERE.
Acts 29 by JR Vassar
Church planters are notorious for ignoring the Sabbath. JR provides solid biblical grounding for practicing the discipline of Sabbath as well as the practical benefits.
Creating a Facebook Page for Your Ministry Part 1 and Part 2.
Church Crunch by Nick Shoemaker
This is a easy to follow set of instructions for setting up a facebook page for the church. It includes several screenshots to make it dummy church planter proof
By Seth Godin
Seth voices a question many of us have asked. When giving generously, how much is enough? There are some great insights here for those raising money.
Wondering how you can use your blog? Make it useful… If it’s only an online brochure people might read it once but then never come back. But if it’s a source of information they need and desire, they’ll come back again and again.
This morning I came across a video by Jason Fried of 37signals (Thanks to our voip provider, OnSip).
It doesn’t take much to qualify Jason Fried’s knowledge. Fried and his colleagues at 37signals have created web apps now used by over 3 million people. Yet, 37signals does not have a PR Team. They do not have traditional marketing campaigns. They do not spend money on advertising. Instead, they simply share information about their expertise, including their product features and business efficiency, in their blog.
Share in the comments how you do (or can or should) do this in your church.
Launch team meetings are DNA setting experiences. What you do and communicate at these meetings matter. This is where the vision and values of the church begin to be lived out. First and foremost, launch team meetings are vision casting experiences. The church planter should be planning out what will be communicated at new member or 101 level classes. This is your playbook. If you are on this team, these are the plays we run and how we run them. It is crucial that the church planter communicate the playbook to the launch team and ensure that the entire team play according to it. Remember that you are setting the DNA. It doesn’t matter what is in the playbook, if no one plays by it.
It’s also important to remember that what you are launching is public services. From the beginning your launch team is the church. Therefore, the church planter should balance business meetings with time together to worship. In fact, launch team meetings may be a terrible thing to call your gatherings. The word meetings communicates business and for many church meeting communicates pointless and boring.
Alan Hirsh in his book, The Forgotten Ways, says there are three key elements to church: worship, discipleship and mission. Launch team meetings should include aspects of all these. If launch Sunday is the first time your launch team has done these three things together, chances are you have missed the chance to ingrain these habits in the church DNA.
On Sep 9 you can watch my video and ridicule it via Twitter at the Nines Online Conference. I chose just a single "game changer" in my ministry to focus on . . which one I will not reveal just yet. But there were many other game changers, strategic moves, decisions, mid-way corrections, that didn't make the cut. Here are some of them:1. In 199 […]
By Brent Rood The emerging church movement is not as new as it used to be. As with every movement, it has reached a point in its trajectory where as it matures, the ideals of the movement have given way to the reality of the movement. Theory birthed practice. The ideal was that good substance should replace good management. Gospel-centered preaching, authent […]
Thanks to Dan Cruver for his post last week on Small Churches and Adoption. Next week, Artie Davis from Cornerstone Community Church (Orangeburg, SC) and the Comb Network. Today's post comes from Jack Lumanog, as a part of our series focusing on Transformational Small Churches. Jack is pastor of Christ the King Anglican Church in Lansing, MI. He serves […]
There has been some exciting news and discussion in my denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. It was released yesterday that Kevin Ezell has been nominated as the next president of the North American Mission Board for the SBC. I usually post my SBC commentary at our SEBTS blog, Between the Times since I know that many of my readers are not SBC. But, […]
Here's a stat to choke down: There have been thousands of new churches started in the last 20 years, and a decent amount are growing rapidly. And yet ... the number of people going to church in America has decreased by about 8 million in that time.Riddle me this: How can that be?Answer: New churches tend (almost exclusively) to reach people who are alre […]
We’re 11 days away from launching our second campus of West Ridge Church. Our desire to is start four more campuses over the next four years. With that in mind, we wanted to develop a framework to define the constants all of these campuses would share. Indirectly, that also helps clarify where each of the campuses also has freedom. That led our leadership te […]
Just spent two days in Baltimore with Tally Wilgis and some incredible leaders planning a citywide initiative. Unprecedented collaboration among churches. If you didn't catch the Emmy Awards opener with Jimmy Fallon and the cast of Glee, it's worth a Google. He proved pretty much anyone can write a Glee episode. "Professional wrestling is the […]
Big news! Our family is returning to USA for a coast to coast tour, starting late September in New York and going down, then westward through Texas, up to Oregon and down the West Coast.Why now? Well, it is kinda sudden, isn't it? One of the biggest reasons is because we were denied a visa extension in UK and our time on the European mainland is limited […]
Matt Adair is replanter of Christ Community Church in Athens, Georgia. He wrote earlier this month on Embracing Your Unique Gifting and Leveraging it for Jesus’ Mission. Here he looks at the power source for the church’s employment of their gifts. Entrepreneurial Aptitude - A Sacred Trust Church planters are gluttons for punishment. The spiritual soil of the […]
During the month of October we are going to be focusing on the theme of generosity. In preparation I would like to share my thoughts on one of the nine prayers of missional leaders that will enlarge your heart for God's mission. "Father, pour out a generous spirit in my life and church." You'll notice that the prayer was not, "Fath […]
