Communication from a church admin perspective — This is how you do it via GoDoChurch.
Church communication can be functional or topic-related:
- Functional communication refers to the messages we send to our ministry teams, the arrangements we make while organising ministry and the communication we do to ‘make things happen’. We want people to respond and take action after they received the message.
- Topic-related communication is the messages we send to our community of believers to encourage, share, inform and build faith.
Both of these types of messages need to happen, and both of them need to reach the right group of people to have the effect we want them to have.
With GoDoChurch database and church admin software, communication with the right group of people in your church is easy once you have set up your database.
The Messaging function is set up so you can select one or more functional group/team or list of people that you have set up previously and easily communicate with them with any one of the messaging mediums (SMS, Email or Notification on the GDC mobile app) available.
The News function was created with topic-based communication in mind, where people can subscribe and unsubscribe to a communication topic as is relevant to them. Examples of typical news channels are:
- A General announcement channel that goes out to your whole church community
- A Weekly Devotion or additional message to those what want a second message the week.
- An Urgent Prayer Update channel that only goes out to those who opted in because they are willing and able to pray immediately when those updates come in.
- A Kids Church channel for those parents who have kids in kids church.
Beyond that, you can use that Advanced Search functionality to target communication, functional or topic-related, to a very specific group of people. You can search for all the single men in your church and invite them to a men's evening. Similarly, you can search for everyone in your church database who are not in a small group and do a targeted drive to slot people in relational small groups.
You can search for everyone who attended a certain event, or everyone who did not attend a certain event. The possibilities for targeted communication are endless.
Targeted communication means that you intentionally speak to a very specific group of people in your church, addressing their specific needs and guiding them to the next opportunity for growth and relationship in your church.
Communication can furthermore be rich or simple, long or short. And the effectiveness of each combination is determined by the context that you are communicating in. In a very busy environment or communication channel like on social media, a simple, authentic message can go a long way. A long email can also be effective in communicating certain messages that need more context to be created than for instance an SMS can manage.
Finally, communication helps us steward the people in our flock, and communication can help you navigate a crisis in your church or community. It is up to us as church leaders and administrators to make sure we communicate the right message to the right people in a way that will reach them and make a difference in our churches and communities.