On Communication

Let’s talk about communication! Good communication matters. The goal here is to help create a happier, healthier, better organized, more well-oiled framework for how we conduct our life together as a community of faith.

Over the course of the 2008-2009 program year, a variety of minor issues arose that all had something to do with matters of internal communication within the church. It became clear to me and to some other people who are familiar with the day-to-day operations of the church that we lacked clarity about how we were going to handle certain kinds of situations. We were being inconsistent about some things – sometimes saying “yes” to certain requests and “no” to other similar requests – without having a clear set of principles upon which we were making those decisions. It increasingly became apparent that we needed to bring a greater degree of order to what sometimes felt like chaos. That led to the creation of a “Communications Task Force” – a sub-set of Session members – charged with the task of considering our overall communications strategy, and making some recommendations back to Session. The Task Force met several times over the course of the summer and presented its recommendations to Session at its September meeting. Bruce Archer, in his Clerk’s report last month, briefly summarized the actions that Session took last month in response to those recommendations from the Task Force. In what follows, I am going to comment a bit further.

I should say, before proceeding, that there were some questions paramount in our minds that had to do with matters of purpose. Why does this church exist? What are we here for? What is our mission? What are we trying to accomplish? Those are great questions – well worth asking in any age – and I’ll have some things to say about those questions in the months to come. But suffice it to say, for now, that the decisions that we made regarding these matters of internal communication were decisions that were made after giving some careful consideration to our overall sense of purpose. Here is where we are now:

There will be no commercial advertising within the church. Periodically, we have found business cards, posters, advertising calendars, flyers, or brochures on bulletin boards or in various racks on tables. Effective immediately, we are no longer going to permit commercial advertising in our building. Why not? Because we’re not here to provide free advertising space for area businesses; we’re here to promote our own mission – Christ’s mission. Besides, any advertising that is visible here implicitly suggests that we, as a faith community, might be endorsing or supporting those businesses.

Advertisements or other communications from non-profit organizations will be permitted, but only for such organizations that have received support or endorsement from the Session, the Board of Deacons, or one of the Session committees. We all have our favorite “pet projects,” our favorite non-profit agencies. (I certainly have mine!) There are loads of organizations that do lots of good work. Every week, I get mail from still more organizations (usually wanting money); most of those requests make their way to the Mission Committee for their consideration. But, over the years, there are certain organizations with whom we have developed strong partnerships – Capital Area Community Services, to give one obvious example – and it’s important that we give special effort to promoting those organizations that we actively support, as a community of faith. Every now and then, we decide to give our support to an organization that is brand new or that we simply haven’t supported before, in which case we can begin promoting that organization’s work within our church. We need to make sure that we are promoting the organizations that have the support and backing of one of the existing boards or committees within the church – not individual people’s “pet projects” – and that means we need to make distinctions between those that do have support from existing church boards or committees, and those that do not.

Information of events or activities that are taking place in or are sponsored by other churches will not have priority in our communication to the congregation. We routinely receive a multitude of requests to advertise events or programs that are sponsored by other churches. The simple truth is that if we published information about every such event or program that we receive word about, you would be bombarded with way more information than you want. We already have a large smorgasbord of events, programs and initiatives going on here (and we keep adding more!) that we want to be advertising and promoting and encouraging you to be aware of or to participate in. Those events, programs, and initiatives that we are putting on will necessarily have priority in our communications over events, programs, and initiatives that other churches ask us to promote. This does not mean that we will never tell you about events happening at other churches – we have strong connections, for example, with the dozen other Presbyterian churches in the greater Lansing area – but it does mean that, ordinarily, when we receive requests to provide you with information about goings-on at other churches, the answer will typically be “no.” That’s not because we’re trying to be insensitive; it’s because we’re trying to preserve and promote our own mission, programs, and initiatives. Churches that want to “get the word out” about their programs and initiatives can always send information about their events and programs to the Community News.

We will not send out mass e-mails to the entire congregation except in the case of church-wide emergency notifications. By “church-wide emergency notifications,” what we mean are things like “Worship services are cancelled tomorrow because there is six feet of snow blocking our doors” or “Part of the ceiling in the sanctuary fell in this week, so we’ve made arrangements for Sunday’s worship service to be held at [fill in the blank] instead of here.” We’re talking about major acts of nature here! We will not send out mass emails from the church office about births, deaths, illnesses, or any regularly scheduled events or programs. The prayer chain typically communicates information about major life transitions in people’s lives, and each committee and organization within the church is responsible for publishing information about its own upcoming events and programs (including schedule changes). Committees and organizations within the church may certainly maintain their own email lists and send out email messages to parties they believe will be interested in their activities. Which brings me to:

The Cornerstone and the Sunday bulletin are the primary methods of communication within the church for promoting upcoming events and activities. Both publications have submission deadlines that need to be respected and honored (for the Cornerstone: noon on the 15th day of every month; for the bulletin: 9:00 a.m. every Thursday). Time and again, the office has received requests to put information in the upcoming bulletin or newsletter well after the deadline has passed. Sometimes we have been able to accommodate those requests; sometimes we haven’t. Lately, there have been so many announcements that committees and organizations within the church have been wanting to make that we’ve been having trouble figuring out how to fit them all in. (That’s a good problem to have – it means there’s a lot of really great stuff going on around here!) Those requests that have been received by the publication deadline will necessarily be given priority. That means that committees and organizations within the church need to be disciplined enough to make sure that they are submitting materials in a timely fashion. There’s a wonderful saying: “Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part!” Committees and organizations within the church may find it beneficial to designate one person within the committee or organization as the primary person responsible for submitting materials to the church office (and that person does not have to be the chair or moderator). That will facilitate a greater ease of communication between the committee or organization and the church office, and will help guarantee that each committee or organization’s publications and events are getting appropriate publicity.

Information on the bulletin boards about upcoming events should be posted only one month in advance of the event but no more than two months in advance, and shall be removed immediately after the event. The Task Force had some extensive conversations about bulletin board space within the church, and there may be more issues here that will need to be revisited at another time down the road. But for now, we want to make sure that we don’t have old information lingering around for too long. It doesn’t do the church any good when people look at a bulletin board and see information posted there about “upcoming events” that have long since passed! We also believe it will be best if we don’t advertise about upcoming events when they are still a long way off in the distance – because that just adds more papers to our already-crowded boards.

I realize that these new communications policies may seem a bit pedantic. They may even sound a bit tedious. Believe me, we wouldn’t be talking about these things if the Session didn’t feel that we needed to. Aren’t there more exciting things we could be talking about? Yes, of course! But the reason we’re talking about these issues right now is because it became clear last year that a lack of clarity about these matters was getting in the way of us being able to effectively promote those more exciting things that we want to be talking about. We’ve taken some time to come to some greater clarity about how we’re going to do things around here, so that we’ll be able to do those things better and run into fewer difficulties along the way. We want this year – and all future years – to “flow” more smoothly!

Thank you very much for all your efforts – past, present, and future – to help create a happy, healthy, well organized, well-oiled framework for how we conduct our lives together as a community of faith. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

Peace and blessings,

Rev. Bill Pinches
Pastor