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Bringing Joy to the World

A communications strategy to reach more people at Christmas—and beyond.

Throughout the past 18 years, the Madison Park Church of God's annual production of "A Christmas Carol" has become a tradition in Anderson, Indiana. The musical anchors a set of holiday activities that continues to grow and introduce more people to the church and to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"This has been one of the most successful front door opportunities for us," says Kevin Majeski, Madison Park's director of communications. "Many folks, even years later, will say to us, 'The first time I came to the church was at the Christmas Carol event.'"

Many of the people who walk through that front door are unfamiliar, perhaps even ambivalent, about the real story of Jesus. Yet they still are attracted to the traditional sights and sounds of the season.

That's why the fast-approaching holiday season represents one of the single-best outreach opportunities for churches to communicate the Good News.

"The general non-church public is probably most open to attending church at Christmas because of the general cultural romance about the holiday," says Evan McBroom, creative director of Fishhook, an Indianapolis-based church communications consulting firm. "There is a general understanding of the nativity story and the Christmas story. There's a kind of nostalgic romance for it, even if you're not churched."

The challenge is to craft messages in a variety of ways that promote these events and activities—and make certain they're heard and seen by those inside and outside of your church walls.

Persuading people to experience your church, whether to participate in special holiday programming or to join community service projects, requires a strategic plan that involves communication to the congregation and the community, well in advance of the event. And it requires a harmonious use of both new technologies and traditional mass marketing techniques.

An Army of Inviters

Every Christmas event publicity plan requires one essential step: mobilizing the congregation to invite their friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

"Make it the job of your foot soldiers to create the moment of invitation and follow through, all in the context of relationship," McBroom says. "If you do all the marketing stuff and don't support it with the personal commitment of people to connect with others, your chance of success is much less."

It's important to remember to match the invitational technique to the community's environment.

Put something in each person's hands that they can pass along. Such a piece is a key to the communication outreach used by Calvary Church of Naperville, Illinois. The church focuses on printing and distributing invitation pieces that resemble event tickets. One side of the ticket highlights a single event, while the other side lists the rest of the holiday activities.

"It really looks like a ticket. It has a professional look. We outsource the printing of these so it's high quality," says media pastor Christian Axelsen. "We try to use this to enable our congregation to evangelize and invite friends."

Scott Vaughn, a church communications consultant from Lexington, South Carolina, advocates distributing attractive, consistently branded 3 x 5 cards to the congregation. The idea is to make personal deliveries, not to simply pin them on bulletin boards.

"You don't want to just leave them inconspicuously on the counter at Walmart. That actually works against you. Take five or six cards and put them in the hands of five or six people you know who may or may not be in a church," he says.

Church members can distribute more than cards.

Michael Buckingham, creative director of Holy Cow Creative, suggests handing out inexpensive gifts or Christmas cards to friends and co-workers. Combine service and outreach by clearing snow and ice off of car windshields in parking lots and leaving invitation cards behind, he adds.

It's important to remember to match the invitational technique to the community's environment. Tim Schraeder, communications director of Park Community Church in Chicago, knows that flyers and other mass marketing tools will get lost in an urban environment saturated with similar marketing pieces. Instead, his congregation, made up primarily of younger, technology-savvy urban professionals, uses websites, e-mail invitations, and text messaging.

"We will ask everyone to text the word 'Christmas' to us and then we'll let them know about all the different opportunities to get involved," he says.

Rolling Out the Message

Timing is crucial. That's true for when you roll out the message inside the church and for when it is released to the wider community.

Vaughn says the process should begin as the summer winds down, just before school starts.

"Anyone who has moved to the community is now starting to get back into the swing of things. They are looking for churches and schools. You want to start communicating in mid-August and then let it snowball toward Christmas. It's like a wave, and at some point during the fall, churches need to grab that wave," Vaughn says. "If you wait until after Thanksgiving, you'll just draw your own church."

Madison Park begins its campaign at a Halloween event called Trunk-N-Treat, which is hosted in the church parking lot. Along with Halloween goodies, visitors receive the first printed piece publicizing Christmas events. Members then are directed to the church's website, Facebook page, and information center inside the sanctuary.

"In all those places, they receive notification of the event and are encouraged to spread the word," Majeski says. "That's our typical path, which for the most part works well for us."

Real-Estate Reach

An attractively decorated building, including signs, marquees, and banners, can issue a silent summons to people who drive or walk by. A busy location can be used to a church's advantage. Because Madison Park is located adjacent to Interstate 69, the church erected a large LED sign that flashes the time, temperature, and a series of rolling announcements.

"For us, that's very valuable real estate," Majeski says. "Before we moved out here, we purchased billboards around town. Now we don't need to invest in that way anymore. The sign is our principal way to advertise to passersby."

Churches can gain attention with either electronic signs or manually operated marquees. Gary Dinsdale, chief executive officer of Sarasota, Florida-based sign manufacturer Robson Corp., says signs must be attractive and carry a concise message to grab attention and stand out among competing visual messages. Provide clear information on the time of holiday events, what kinds of events are featured (such as concerts or Christmas Eve candlelight services), and event countdowns.

Change signs often to gather more attention, Dinsdale says.

"You may need to change the sign three to five times a week to be most effective. It's a lot of work, but it's more effective. You will get more people than if you only put up a sign that says there's a Christmas Eve service a week from now," he says.

A digital sign can serve as an electronic portal into a church. Digital signs with full color capability can display video clips from last year's Christmas pageant, or can capture a variety of traditional images, such as the baby Jesus in the manger.

"These are the types of images that we have from our youth that will bring us in and make us feel comfortable when we walk into the building," Dinsdale says. "Signs have to get a stranger to feel comfortable enough to pull into the parking lot, get out, and walk inside. Effective use of signs can and will do that."

Calvary Church uses roadside banners to help carry its Christmas message. Ten banners are strategically placed year-round, following city zoning ordinances, along busy Illinois Route 59 so that they are visible to people driving in both directions.

"We always try to work with one kind of branding," Axelsen says. "For instance, for our MEville children's program, people who come in will recognize the same branding on the banner by the street, the poster inside the church, the handouts, and all the print material."

Web and Email Basics

The internet offers a dynamic, and rapidly changing, avenue for churches to spread the word about holiday events. The three primary channels are the use of the church's main website, the use of email invitations, and the use of social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

The website, whether the main site or a dedicated site, should do more than just announce the upcoming events. Include clips or sound from last year's programs.

An internet presence requires a strong website that provides visitors with information about the Christmas events, Vaughn says. But it also may involve creating special webpages specifically dedicated to the events. Calvary Church created a special website in 2008 called "Christmas at Calvary." It featured four tabs that visitors clicked on to receive additional information about four separate events.

"If your adult choir is having a big musical, you can't bury that on your church website anymore. You must have a separate website for that event," Vaughn says.

The website, whether the main site or a dedicated site, should do more than just announce the upcoming events. Include clips or sound from last year's programs to give site visitors a taste of what they can expect if they come.

"Give them a glimpse," Buckingham says. "Whenever we put marketing pieces together, … (we) ask, 'So what? Why should I care? Why should I pay any attention?' It's not about us, but it has to be about them. So on the websites, show them. Tell them. Explain to them what it is and why they should come."

Email invitations, also known as "e-vites," are becoming increasingly popular with churches that use an email marketing service, such as Constant Contact. These are not mass marketing "blast" campaigns, but instead work from lists of church members, who then forward the emails to friends and family and avoid the taint of a spam label.

"We send one-out emails to promote really special events. We try to make them slick and make them look nice with images that are very visual," says Park Community Church's Schraeder. "It's very easy to forward these to your friends. If their friends are interested, they can subscribe to our email list."

Vaughn uses a simpler technique, creating a jpeg file from an already existing poster or 3 x 5 card design, then and cutting and pasting that image into an Outlook message window, rather than using an attachment.

"That becomes viral in a hurry and it's not costing you anything," Vaughn says. "You have a group of people who are email-forward junkies. You have to figure out who those people are. They like to forward stuff they think is creative."

Social Graces

In a time when "Facebooking" is a new verb and people "tweet" as well as birds, churches are exploring the best ways to use social networking sites for holiday communication. Churches can communicate to friends (Facebook) and followers (Twitter) through congregation-wide accounts, or they can create special pages about the Christmas happenings.

Newspapers, radio, and snail mail are still valuable ways for a church to communicate information about holiday events.

"I didn't see much of that last year, but I'll bet we'll see a lot of churches involved this year, especially as more Baby Boomers get in Facebook," McBroom says. "Let's say someone in their 60s is on Facebook. They have a couple hundred people on their friend list. If a church were to start helping their members see this as an easy and non-threatening way to get the buzz going, they would naturally do it. You can create Facebook groups, which have RSVPs for specific events."

Remember Traditional Approaches

Newspapers, radio, and snail mail are still valuable ways for a church to communicate information about holiday events.

For print media, think beyond paid advertising and prepare a press release about events, which costs only the labor to write and send the release. If an event is an ongoing tradition, such as Madison Park's "Christmas Carol," the local newspapers know readers will be hungry for the information.

Print ads can work, but buy a space large enough to effectively communicate information, using simple artwork and a simple message, Vaughn says. Advertising is particularly important if the event or church is new and there is no solid brand recognition, he adds.

If a church wants to send out one direct-mail piece, send it between the week prior to Thanksgiving and the week after Thanksgiving, Vaughn says. That particular timing is best, because "people are planning the complete Christmas calendar while hovering around the remains of the Thanksgiving turkey," he says. "The mailing will be most effective if it is all-inclusive of Christmas activities, and if it is professionally produced."

Madison Park decided to spend extra money to professionally produce a radio ad for its Christmas production. However, the church added in a step that saved money as well.

"We just dubbed in future years so we leveraged the cost of recording those over three years," Majeski says.

Open Beyond Christmas

To find and connect outsiders with your church's Christmas story, use the apostle Paul's strategy of being all things to all people. Start early, and use a variety of methods and media, all with the same message and the same branding. Then, think of the event as the beginning of something, and not the end. The last Christmas worship event, for example, could be a great time to start a sermon series, announce a new service project, or launch any new initiative that proclaims that the church's doors are open not just on Christmas, but every day.

"It's important that we don't look at it as a one-day event," Buckingham says. "We want to look at it as a day of opportunity to reconnect or reintroduce people to church so that they'll come the next Sunday and the next Sunday after that. Let's make sure that we don't just tell them the story, but why the story matters."

Lee Dean is a freelancer writer living in Michigan and a contributing editor to Your Church.

March
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