Christ Church

Announcements

Communication Strategy

Dear Congregation,

As we grow in size as a congregation, communication challenges also increase. Our church community is about the size of the city of Troy, so we need to be aware of this as we send and receive communication. In Jim Wilson’s Principles of War, one of the key components of an effective battle strategy is communication. The elders, staff, and deacons of Christ Church recognize that as our church grows (alongside the growing sister ministries of Christ Church), not only the difficulty, but also the need for effective communication grows. We do want to strive to be efficient and effective our communication to you.

There are a couple challenges to be aware of as we work on building better communication in our community. First, with technology comes multiple channels for communication. These channels include cell phones (text/calls), Facebook messenger, email, and of course other various forms of social media. If we really aren’t careful, we could have channel overload, which adds to the challenge of how to maximize our communication and what channels to use to make sure everyone receives adequate church communication. Secondly, when there is a serious matter to be communicated to the church, we do not want to put this out over email. Obviously, some communication is for our church body only, and would be inappropriate to be publicly distributed. So, in the cases of sensitive information, we try to use head of household meetings for this type of communication. Lastly, communication is a two-way street. This means the church needs to be communicating to the best of our abilities, and active engagement from the congregation with the proper channels of communication is also necessary.

In our personal relationships, we all know that when friction builds up in a relationship, one of the most important things to do is to “hit the reset button” and make sure that each party is investing in healthy communication. Listening carefully, providing necessary information, asking honest questions, and providing clear answers are all vital.

On one hand, Christ Church is communicating like never before. We have more channels of “information flow,” and we encourage you to make sure to pay attention to those channels. It is important to note that our main communication channels are: Lumen emails, Facebook (and other social media), our website, Sunday bulletin, announcements before church, and Head of Household meetings.  But all of these are “no good” if no one pays attention to them or they end up in the spam folder. We commit to doing our best to communicate with you all, and we hope the congregation reciprocates by faithfully reading church emails, checking social media/web pages, and listening to Sunday morning announcements. Thus, we’d like to overview the best “channels” for where to get info about Christ Church events, info, etc.

Our elders, deacons and church staff want to make sure that necessary information is readily available, so please never hesitate to ask. Of course, in certain pastoral situations there is likely a need for privacy, and we may not be able to publicly comment on certain matters. Pastoral care frequently requires a slower timeline. In dealing with sinful situations gauging repentance (or lack thereof), simply requires raw time to prove whether repentance is genuine or not. Further, in such delicate snarls as the session often faces, gathering information and getting all sides of the story necessitates cautious deliberation, and again this can often take an extended period of time. Rushing to judgement as to who is at fault in a pastoral situation is something the session endeavors to avoid. Thus, sorting through these matters and determining whether the entire congregation needs to know–and when–is something the elders take seriously, and of course your prayers for them in that respect would be greatly appreciated.

The Christ Church Session of Elders

About Christ Church