Thursday, December 5, 2013

Communication Is Key

I had a woman call me wondering if I had seen what so and so had posted on facebook.  She didn't know how someone who called themselves a christian could post something like that. So of course she posted back and tried to change the other person's mind.  It didn't work of course, as no ones mind has ever been changed by a facebook argument.  I relayed this to a pastor colleague who told me that's why he's careful about who he friends on facebook. Teenagers are prone to drama, you know.  The problem, I informed him, was that this was a 85 yr old woman talking about a 75 year old woman.

There are many challenges in church revitalization.  There can be budget issues, a reputation to overcome in the community, or motivating people to do outreach.  But a great challenge can be communication, especially when communicating among multiple generations.  By communication I mean anything from casting vision, to prayer requests, discipleship, and more.  

We like to say that our world is more connected than ever, and indeed it is.  With facebook, twitter, email, and more, it is so easy to get word out to people.  Gone are the days of complicated phone trees where every church member can be notified.  It's tempting to try and pigeon hole people by generation, but that is just not the case anymore.  As the story above shows, older people can be heavy users of social media.  But people next to them in their Sunday School class might not tweet, text, facebook, or anything else!  While more uniform adopters of technology, young people cannot be pigeon holed either.

As a pastor, I know it is important to communicate with people. But how do I do that?  Should I write a blog about it?  Send out a text?  Send postcards in the mail?  Many leadership blogs and journals write with waxing prose about the need for pastors to be on twitter, facebook, etc. And I am!  But I believe pastors at churches striving to revitalize face a challenge in that they must be versed in and use many forms of communication.  Information can be spread through snail mail, twitter, facebook, phone calls, and more.  Not to mention Sunday morning, Sunday Night, Wednesday Nights, and more.  All of these are necessary and helpful tools to a pastor of a revitalizing church.

I sat and listened to a pastor of one of the larger churches in my state share with other pastors he had gathered for a conference out of state.  The wives went one way, the men another, and informal talk followed.  He spoke to us of the necessity of using time wisely, and how to delegate.  He explained that his deacons have a team for hospital visits, a team for outreach, etc.  And when someone in his church goes in the hospital, an email gets sent to his secretary, who then notifies the hospital team leader of the deacons.  A visit is made, a report sent via email, and the pastor is copied on all these.  He can then know the visit was made and can be notified when he needs to go himself.

A good plan for sure.  It's a great method.  But I sat next to a pastor at a rural church who had one deacon.  I might have six, but not all of them use email or even text!  So this plan won't work for me.  The small church, revitalizing pastor must work at using all means of communication to carry out all the regular duties of a pastor. This is a challenge in an intergenerational church, and particular one in which the majority of people are older.

Maybe I write a great blog post sharing the vision for the church, or link to an article I read on twitter about living missionally in my community. It does no good for anyone besides me if no one reads it.  So I have to use the coffee shop, the barber, the potluck lunches, the lines at the grocery store, the blog, facebook, texts, phone calls, and good old fashioned face to face time to get the message across.

Communication in an intergenerational church can be a challenge, as it may be like some people are living in a different world than us.  But if we work hard to use all forms of communication to our advantage, the Kingdom of God will be strengthened for it.

What's the primary means of communication in your church?  Does it work?  Could it be more effective if you added strategies to what you are already doing?

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