Overview

Whether you are communicating on a congregational or denominational level, there are important points to remember—about communications generally and websites in particular. Commuications expert Heidi Shott discusses these points, as well as current trends in communication. A set of social networking resources concludes the interview.

About Heidi Shott

Canon for Communications and Social Justice Heidi Shott has served the Episcopal Diocese of Maine since 1998. She was Communications Officer from 1998 to 2006 and press officer on a consulting basis from 2006 to 2008 while she worked for the Genesis Community Loan Fund, which provides financing and assistance to affordable housing and community groups across Maine.

In the national Episcopal Church Heidi has been a member and chair of the Board of Governors for Episcopal Life newspaper. She has also served a term on the Episcopal Communicators Board of Directors and was part of the Nightly News team covering the Church's General Convention in Columbus, Ohio.

Heidi has written numerous articles for Episcopal Life and The Living Church as well as her own website, www.heidoville.blogspot.com. She is a graduate of Sweet Briar College and Tufts University. Heidi, her husband, and their twin sons live in Maine where they are members of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Newcastle.

Interview

A Macro View of the Church Communications Landscape

CRG: From your perspective as a diocesan communicator, on what key goals do we need to stay focused? Approaching communications as a ministry, what do we need to be thinking about?

Heidi: My role for the diocese of Maine is to provide communications support for all the activities of the diocese and serve as the church's representative to the media. That shorthand description encompasses a lot. How we communicate as organizations has changed enormously in the last decade or two. But there are still some important communications values that remain true. Whether you're on the parish or regional (diocesan) level the following are important:

1. Tell Stories. People receive a story in a visceral way that facts and figures can't convey. There's nothing like a human story to capture what you want to get across. Today there are more ways to share stories than ever as the accessibility of technology expands. A very small, inexpensive video camera like the Flip (www.flipvideo.com) with its built-in software, no cord/no tape approach can allow you to transform the smallest church's website into a place to share faith stories with a worldwide audience.



2. Remember Your Audience. Aim your communications at the person seated tenuously on the last seat of the last pew. One of the common flaws in church communications—newsletters, websites, bulletins—is that they are often written for insiders, the people who already know most of the information and the context. Communications is about expanding the number of people engaged in the faith community. Write for the person who doesn't know all the "inside" information or context. Avoid the acronyms and the argot of churchspeak. I'll probably say this again before we're done—it's so important.



3. Openness. Being open and transparent goes along with being able to communicate to that person in the back pew. Naturally there will be fiduciary, pastoral, or personnel issues that need to be kept confidential, but churches really need to open up and include everyone. Information is critical if we want people to be engaged and see themselves as stakeholders in their local church. Too many congregations give you the impression that you have to know the secret handshake before you can be included. That's wrong.

From my vantage point in the diocese, I see my role as providing professional support not only for events throughout the calendar year but also in times of crisis.

Professional language and articulation are really important when problems come up—and they will. Churches are not immune to problems. My office can assist in gate-keeping with the media when negative events happen. Our diocese in Maine is largely rural with mostly small parishes—news gets around pretty quickly in small towns. A hypothetical example could be the tragic, violent death of a prominent church member. That congregation could use support in communicating not only to the surrounding community but for the members as well. I think congregations should demand that support from their regional [diocesan] offices.

Picking up on the issue of "openness"—a number of years ago our bishop in Maine at the time had to resign. The diocesan search committee charged with calling a new bishop put out a regular newsletter to the people of the diocese during this process. It was called Purple Chase—a slightly tongue-in-cheek title (Episcopal bishops wear purple). We wanted people to be informed about what was going on and how the process was going. After the negativity around the previous bishop's resignation, it was a way to help people stay connected to this important process during a challenging time for the church. Even when the newsletter reported that there was little to report due to the confidentiality for the candidates, people appreciated the transparency behind the newsletter.

More on Communications at the Congregational Level

CRG: Beyond the values you highlight above, what other goals should communicators focus on at the congregational level?

Heidi: I'd say number one—be welcoming! Like many people who visit churches, I'm very aware of how I'm welcomed and made to feel at home. Do people smile and say "hello" to the stranger? Is there a sense that they're glad you've chosen to visit their church? Churches need to model how to "say hello," and this sense of welcoming and hospitality should also come across in the church's communications—in the newsletter, the website, and the worship leaflet.

As I've said, the church's communications shouldn't just be for the insiders. One of the best church newsletters I've seen is one that has a short article or story highlighting a new member or new family in the congregation. Insiders' names always appear in print, but it's really nice to include new people. It helps them become known and recognized by other parishioners. It's a great way to help smooth that newcomer's entrée into a new community.

Another example is to include some helpful context in the worship leaflet or newsletter about a particular custom or liturgical event. Not all denominations have this challenge—but the Episcopal Church can seem a bit mysterious and puzzling to the newcomer. Some explanation about what's going on, without making a big thing out of it, not only is a teaching moment but also is welcoming and inclusive. It says, "You're not the only one here who might be adjusting to a different form of worship." That's reassuring.

Websites. The Internet has been with us for two decades now, and websites have been an increasingly dominant means of communicating for well over ten years. In Maine, with its mostly rural and small town congregations, websites have become very important tools for churches. Members go online to get the latest news and information about what's going on at church. Potential visitors or newcomers go online to scope out congregations before visiting, trying to get a sense of what kind of faith community a church might be.

Good and useful websites include:

• Material that is current. They are well maintained with up-to-date information. Nothing is worse than visiting a website with last season's schedule and two month-old stories. That's a bad sign for a visitor.



• Easy-to-find useful information. Post your church's worship service schedule, classes, and event schedules up front. You'd think it would be a no-brainer, but I've seen websites that left off the address and phone number of the church or offered no clue about the town in which the church was located. Always put the church's address and contact information up front.



• Newsletters. Post your church's newsletter. That way the visitor to the site gets a more comprehensive feel for what's going on and what the congregation and church are like.



• Sermons. Putting up the sermons preached by your clergy serves multiple purposes. Besides being a devotional resource, it is one more way to reach out to visiting users.



• Photos of people. The church is a community of people, not just the building—no matter how lovely and historic—they worship in. The ease of using photos on websites has made it simple to use photos. Google's photo program, Picasa, has a wonderful feature that allows you to choose a photo gallery and then click a button to generate web code to embed it into your website. You don't have to understand how it works to use it.



• And do not include things like… Posting a long article on the history of the parish at the very opening of the site. History is interesting and there's a place for it, but the website, like everything we do in the church, should be designed to draw in and welcome new people. It should be about what the church is now.

Churches often struggle with websites. For small congregations with limited resources or infrastructure there is the challenge of maintenance. Larger congregations still have to work out a system for gathering, sorting through, and prioritizing information. Beyond simple maintenance there are some basic do's and don'ts that should be followed if you want a website that serves your constituencies well.

Trends and Options in a Rapidly Changing Information Age

Communications is changing so fast now. Many of us who do this professionally started out as writers, reporters, or public relations people. We wrote our stories or press releases and then sent them off to a press somewhere that would print out publications. Pagemaker came along in the early '90s and then Photoshop and we learned how to compose our publications on our own computers. Suddenly we were expected to become graphic designers. And, of course, once web-based communications picked up steam things began to move really fast and we were expected to become webmasters.

The electronic media is no longer an exotic, new-fangled thing like color TV in 1955. It's the way a vast portion of people communicate and get the information they use to live by. And the technology continues to evolve almost daily. The world is online now, and that's where the church should be if we want to reach new people.

A small congregation with minimal resources of time and talent still has some options. There is software available today that enables a person with very little technical know-how to have and maintain a website. Good examples of free and easy-to-use sites to set up your own website are www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.com.

Blogs have become a big deal in recent years. It's very easy to set up a church blog. Clergy (or a designated lay person) can post regular entries on a blog—everything from devotional reflections for the day or week to upcoming events.

But print is not dead. Print publications are still important—and churches still have to provide information in print. Churches need to find a good balance between targeting audiences that use the Internet and targeting those who respond more to print media.

CRG: What's your take on newspapers and other forms of advertising for worship services or getting articles in the local newspapers?

Heidi: Newspaper notices and advertisements of worship schedules in large metro papers aren't as important as they used to be. Out-of-town travelers, tourists, and business people might look at the newspaper for a church to attend nearby. But those ads really don't impact or draw town or city residents much.

What I do think is very helpful is for a church's pastor or communications person to develop a good relationship with their local community or neighborhood newspaper. If you are a congregation in a small town—again, drawing on our experience in rural Maine—you know that folks really read their small local weeklies religiously. Those newspapers are wonderful places to run human interest stories that can tell readers about your church. Using stories that feature a parishioner or perhaps the church fair, a concert, mission trip or the rededication of the church organ—these events are great stories for small town newspapers.

The same is true for churches in larger cities. Chances are, there are small neighborhood or community weeklies in the city that cover your area. This is just another way to get your congregation's story out there in the public square.

Every congregation has its own culture. Some churches have a lot of "family" news to tell. Some have lots of programs and activities. Some without a lot of activities going on might feature their pastor's sermons regularly. Communications should be true to the culture of the parish.

Resources

Click on "Communications" to visit the resource category devoted to this topic in the Congregational Resource Guide. Here you will find resources listed, along with descriptive annotations and links to resource providers.

In addition, consider these resources recommended by Heidi Shott:

Want a church website but stalled by limited resources? Try one of the following sites that enable a user to set up a free and simple website or a blog that can be used as a congregational site.

www.blogger.com
www.wordpress.com

Besides allowing for on-going discussion groups with new ways to connect and share online, these sites make it possible to set up customized pages that you can post information on and allow for instant access.

E-mail group messaging. It's free and easy to use.

http://groups.google.com
http://groups.yahoo.com

Social Networking on Facebook

In a very short period of time, the social networking site, Facebook (www.facebook.com), has changed the landscape of many people's (especially young people's) on-line life. It's changed the way we interact with people from many different parts of our lives. A church can create a group or a page which allows for discussion of topics, announcements and tracking attendance for events, photo galleries, and lots of personal interaction.

It's hard to imagine how our on-line lives will be ordered five years from now. But the trend is certainly toward programs and features that allow for increased connection between people in fun and meaningful ways.

For example, it's a lot more engaging to view and comment (along with many others) on a video my friend has posted on his or her Facebook page than to view it "alone" at youtube.com. In that way the web has course-corrected the trend it was on as a solitary one person/one screen venue. Suddenly with Facebook and other social networking sites, we're still one person/one screen but we're not alone anymore. If the world is yearning for connection, and the church—which has the capacity to offer connection and community—isn't providing ways to find it, then we're dropping the ball.

Electronic newsletters. Not quite free but affordable, easy-to-use web-based small newsletters are great, especially for small organizations. Allows you to create, send, and track electronic newsletters.

www.constantcontact.com
www.myemma.com

Episocoal Cafe (www.episcopalcafe.com): There are many wonderful sites online affiliated with different denominations. The Episcopal Cafe is a very well-done website put together by a number of writers and editors with the goal of "providing spiritually enriching, intellectually stimulating and occasionally amusing" up-to-the-minute articles as well as essays, visual art, and videos from around the national church.