I speak across the country to many church communicators and ministry leaders. In fact, I just finished talking to 100 churches in Atlanta. I'm passionate about what I do — I want our world to hear about Jesus Christ.

And the crazy thing? God wants to use us to share His message. He uses us personally, as well as the local church, corporately. Through good communications.

If we're not doing a good job at communicating — truly reconnecting to our unchurched communities — we're failing at the Great Commission. This failure is one of the reasons our church attendance is on the downswing. We must do better.

So when I "preach to the choir" at these conferences, I often see a raised hand and they ask "the" question. It almost always happens. Or at a break, someone bolts to me to ask it.

"What if we know our church can do better, but no one listens to me as a communicator?"

It breaks my heart for so many reasons. The communication team is one of the few ministries in the church that interacts and promotes every other ministry of the church. If it's broken, often the entire church's message is kept from being heard. The communicator must be allowed to fix the problems with their expertise.

Here are seven steps to solving this very frequent issue:

  1. Understand that communications is a valid ministry equal to all other ministries of your church.
  2. It needs to be funded adequately if you truly want to communicate effectively.
  3. Church communicators must have a voice at the leadership table. They need to know what's going on and encourage/caution other leaders in ministry.
  4. Like every other ministry, their leader needs to guide the vision of their department under the oversight, vision and direction of the senior pastor.
  5. Therefore, the senior pastor must have a close relationship with the communicator — and listen to (respect) their expertise. You need to be on the same page.
  6. Concerned that your communicator is not equipped? Encourage and fund the communicator to learn and empower them to use what they learn. There are many conferences (including the The Church Network conference) where they can receive expert education.
  7. Final option: Allow your communicator to bring in an outside consultant and listen to them. Hear how you can improve, then put it to practice. Because we all need to improve the skills God's given us.