Media Outreach

I was talking to a friend recently about websites; he is a new client to faithHighway and reminded me of an interesting fact. He said, “Craig, when things slow down, most people tend to pull back the reigns on advertising/marketing first.” He continued, “That’s such a mistake; when things slow down, that is the most important time to tell people about what you offer.” I know, typically, summertime for churches is not the easiest of times. People go on vacation, which means attendance drops which means giving drops which means things can get tight. Being in, around and helping full time ministers over the past 15 years, I have seen my share of the best of times and the harder times. One thing that needs to remain constant is this: Communication is a key to growth.

According to a recent Barna update, more and more churches are investing in communicating through websites. In just the past 8 years, the number of protestant churches that are on the web has almost doubled: From 34% in 2000 to 62% today. What is of most interest to me is that the number of small churches (less than 100 members) that have websites is 48%, but the number of large churches (250 members or more) that have websites is 91%. You might look at those numbers and think, well of course more large churches have websites; they have a more money. And to that I would say this, if communication is a key to growing – could it be that larger churches have figured this out and thus invested into one of the best communication tools available: A website. Another interesting fact is that while only 16% of churches are utilizing pod casting, 47% of those churches are larger the 250 members. Once again, I think this points to the fact that we need to communicate and communicate well.

Now, I am well aware that I am preaching to the choir with this posting, most of the people that read this blog are already faithHighway clients. This should encourage you – you have put the horse in front of the cart. Right where it belongs! Communication is a major key to church growth, and those that don’t communicate, don’t grow. With that in mind, make sure to keep your websites updated, fire up those pod casts (if you don’t have sermons online already make sure to call your CRM and add it) and know that you are reaching people that might not ever hear, if you didn’t invest in communicating through a website!