Church communicators are world changers—or at least they should aspire to be, because that’s the heart of the Great Commission. World changers do three things with regularity. Effective church communicators need to do them too:

1) Build. World changers build things. They build programs, business solutions, and church and nonprofit structures. They build themselves professionally and personally. They’ve learned the difference between building and tweaking. At the heart of building, they’re bringing a new (or borrowed) idea into an existence that can live and breathe in their unique organizational model. Tweaking fixes things. Building creates them. Yes, we need communicators who can tweak and maintain what already exists. But whoever is leading your communications needs to be building.

2) Love. Though building comes naturally to many leaders, loving does not. Yet the cream-of-the-crop world-changing leaders have mastered the ability to communicate love not only for what their team members bring to the organization, but for who they are as humans. Loving the people around them comes in the form of encouraging words (email, text, phone calls, hand-written notes), gifts (a gift card to an employee’s favorite restaurant, iTunes downloads, an unexpected financial bonus, a day off) or quality time (taking an employee out to lunch, a 5-minute pop-in to employees’ offices to check how they’re doing).

3) Communicate. Almost everyone I know thinks they’re a clear and accurate communicator.  But just because it makes sense in their mind doesn’t mean it makes sense to everyone else. World changers have learned to clearly express the day-to-day expectations of the people around them.

There are three questions world changers are trying to answer every day in their communications with their people:

• Do the people around me know what’s expected of them?
• Do the people around me know (as much as I know) where we’re going?
• Do the people around me know milestones and deadlines on the calendar?

Not all church communicators can actually communicate well. We know everything there is to know about marketing, but that doesn’t mean it translates to how we work with our team. If you want to be effective, if you want make a lasting impact, you need to communicate properly with your team.

All three of these tasks do not come naturally for anyone. But the implementation of all three is extremely important for everyone. If you don’t build, they won’t feel inspired. If you don’t love, they won’t feel valued. If you don’t communicate, they won’t feel anchored.

World changers are doing all three, increasing in all three and forcing all three. Not just once in a while, but every week. It’s part of their job. It’s part of their routine. As church communicators, you’re working to change the world. If you want to be effective, you need to intentionally build, love and communicate every week.

Article excerpted and adapted with permission from ChurchMarketingSucks.com.

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