I recently had the pleasure of conducting a virtual interview with Steve Fogg. A great resource for many church communicators, Steve serves as the “big cheese” of communications at his church, Crossway, located in Melbourne, Australia. Connect with Steve on his blog or on other social networks.
Tell me about Crossway; what makes your church unique?
For starters, we are a large church in a country (Australia) whose culture looks unfavorably at the Christian Church in general. What makes us unique in this setting is that we have large diverse congregations across multiple Asian and Caucasian cultures and languages.
With three campuses, Crossway serves a congregation with diverse backgrounds and who speak a number of different languages. How does this diversity shape your role as communicator?
We are moving away from the satellite/multi-site ministry model, so our current satellite congregations now have a high level of independence and will eventually become their own brand name. Our Asian congregations, at our central location, are independent in their communications structure. This is because the communication needs for these cultures are so different to the English speaking congregation. If I led their communication efforts it would be a disaster because my team would miss so much of the nuance that shapes who they are as a cultural group.
How do church staff and lay leaders help support communications?
Release them into their calling, because it is a calling! Pray for them.
Get them involved at the start of the project, rather than when you think ‘we need some marketing/communications support’.
Take your communication leader’s advice. You may get your way if you only ever direct the person on what you want done. A communications person will submit to you, but you might not get the right communication outcome you were looking for. You are the expert at what you do; they are the expert at what they do.
Support them with gifted volunteers and staff. Give them a training budget as it is a highly specialized area.
In your recent blog post, 6 Simple Ways to Build Your Volunteer Communications Team, you highlight the importance of including people who are the right fit. Can you detail what qualities you look for in a volunteer and how you identify their gifts.
Briefly here is what I look for:
- Are they 100% into what we are doing as a church? I only want people to serve out of their passion to serve the church. If they serve through their passion, it will come out in the quality of work they create. If they are only serving because it suits them, then they are already on the conveyer belt to leaving the volunteer position before they have started. This is based on hard learnt experience.
- Are they gifted? Usually most of the people I meet have a folio or show reel of work so it’s pretty easy to work out if they are the right fit or not. I more often say ‘no’ than say ‘yes’ because the person doesn’t have the right talent.
- What time do they have available? I try to match the opportunities with the time the volunteer has available. If a volunteer only has one hour a week to spare then they will be given a task that fits that criteria. I want to respect people’s time and get the right outcome for us as a church.
What are three ideas that you can share with church leaders seeking new ways to broaden communications in their church.
- Look outside the church at what others are doing. Don’t just follow what the ‘big’ churches are doing
- Hire a Communication Director with industry experience.
- Be prepared to invest money into this area.
- Just because you are the religious expert, doesn’t make you a communications or marketing expert; take their advice at the start of any project.
- Buy Macs. You need to know that you are developing a studio environment for your communications team, not an office environment.
- Keep good quality lattes flowing.
- Repeat all of the above.
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