Assignment Title: Common Church Communication Problems
Course: CHMN 699 - Internship
Student: Kristine Sage
Date: January 29, 2022
Professor: Dr. Mary Smith
Liberty University
Common Church Communication Problems
Keep a watchful eye on your communications to ensure you avoid the following.
Ambiguity in the Message
Clarity and specificity are important when crafting your messages this helps to ensure your
messages are clear, well understood, and received by the target audience. Creating a church
communications plan or communication strategy can help you ensure your messaging is clear and
consistent, to drive effective church communication.
Here’s an example:
An ambiguous message or announcement might simply state: the senior pastor is meeting with
church leadership next Sunday after service.
A clear and specific version of the same message might read: the senior pastor is meeting with
elders and associate pastors next Sunday after service to discuss plans for the annual summer picnic
event.
Too Many Events
If you schedule too many back-to-back events, you might wear out your congregation, and you
shouldn’t be surprised at a poor turnout at your church events. Your congregation is just tired and needs
to recuperate from last week’s event that required all hands on deck and 2 months of planning.
Timing
Does the day and time of the event work for the majority of the intended audience? Not many
people will show up if you set a meeting for 6 pm and the majority of those that are expected at the
meeting do not finish work until 5.30 pm or 6 pm.
Lack of Post-Event Meeting
Holding a post-event meeting can help you and your staff analyzes how the event went, what could
be done better, and what went well, so that you can improve future events. Let’s say you are planning a
repeat of an event that was held before, but the previous event did not meet expectations. If you don’t
hold a post-event meeting, solicit feedback, or create a survey to help with improvements at the next
event, you can expect a similar disappointing result at the second event.
Go, Implement, & Excel
Implementing all of the aforementioned will not only help to improve the communication practices
at your church, it will also lead to better turnout at your events. I hope these strategies will also enable
you to identify other areas for improvement in your church communication practices.
