The Best Communication Method for Your Church

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DESCRIPTION
Struggling to figure out the best way to communicate with your church? In this episode of The Hybrid Ministry Show, Nick Clason breaks down the most effective communication methods for parents, teens, and volunteers—backed by real stats and practical strategies. From email to social media to podcasts, find out how to make sure your church announcements actually reach the right people!

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⌚TIMECODES
00:00 The Best Church Communications Channels
02:14 Adult or Parent Communication Strategy
06:19 Student Communication Strategy
11:48 Volunteer Communication Strategy

TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00:05 - 00:00:28:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Give me a like if your church still produces a bulletin and give me a subscribe if it's completely quit producing a bulletin. You know, it's interesting. In my 14 years of youth ministry experience, the first two churches I worked at, they were all about those bulletins. Man, we printed those suckers. Every single week. Interestingly, though, the last two churches I worked at both also post Covid, which I'm wondering if that has something to do with it.

00:00:28:05 - 00:00:51:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Chose not to produce a weekly bulletin. You know, in one of the earlier on churches, there was a week where, like, the secretary was out and somehow I ended up not only producing the bulletin for me, like a graphic like design document standpoint, but then I was also in the office cutting them. And my wife, she called me, said, what are you doing at work still?

00:00:51:16 - 00:01:15:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And I was like, I have to cut the bulletin. And as I was doing that, I gave myself this thought. I was like, do teenagers even read this? And now, you know, I was producing this for the rest of the church. But in my mind, and as I was having this conversation with myself, I thought, I don't think that teenagers actually read this, but they're parents, right?

00:01:15:05 - 00:01:36:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so that's why we produce these things. And so we've been in this series called communication and the Noisy World. Slinked right up here at the top of the screen. And in this video we want to talk about is the particular channels that your churches should be leaning into. We're going to explore three different audiences. We're going to explore the adults in your church.

00:01:36:21 - 00:02:09:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We're going to explore the students in your church. And then we're also going to explore the volunteers in your church and or in your ministry. And what I want to do is in each of those, I'm going to give you my favorite communication method and some statistics that back the reasons up for why you should be leaning into those channels and as always, I want to remind you that there are chapters down below or in your podcast catcher, wherever you're listening to this, so that you can hop ahead to the section of this episode that makes the most sense to you in your ministry and the context in which you're serving.

00:02:09:23 - 00:02:34:26
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Welcome, everybody, to the Hybrid Ministry show. So I've been in youth ministry for 14 years, and so and in all of my experience of being in youth ministry, when I think about adults that I'm trying to minister to, those adults in particular are either parents or volunteers. And so in this particular section, let's chat about parents. And so these are parents of youth ministry students.

00:02:34:26 - 00:03:07:08
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
However, if you're a church communications person or a senior pastor watching this like these, what I'm about to share, I believe, also relates to just adults attending your church in general. Okay. Because what I'm going to say, we're going to talk about the adults in your church, the strategy that I believe that you should employ first and foremost and make your number one like major thing that you double down on, that you pour gas on, that you make work is an email strategy.

00:03:07:10 - 00:03:35:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
All right. Here's a couple of reasons why over 4.3 billion people globally use email. Furthermore, 99% of consumers check their email on a daily basis. This is according to HubSpot, and 73% of millennials and Gen Z, which if you're in youth ministry, those are your parents. And if you're not in youth ministry, those are the future adults of your church.

00:03:35:10 - 00:04:06:14
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
The largest based millennials are the largest in the workforce and the largest opportunity for your your givers. Okay. They prefer email communication from brands at a rate of 73%. This is according to Adobe, so email isn't going anywhere. Now. I also, if you have been watching in the last couple of videos in this playlist, like we link just a second ago, I have been and I've always been my strategy, my hybrid strategy, whether it's for students, parents, whatever.

00:04:06:16 - 00:04:27:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
First and foremost, make sure your website is good and remains up to date. So you want your email to be how you communicate and how you maybe market certain, like classes or events or whatever. But then you want to be able to take them to your website and or you want to send an email because think about user habits.

00:04:27:23 - 00:04:48:06
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
You're you're checking your email at lunch or on your work break, okay, on your lunch break at work and you see something from your church. You don't have time right then and there to stop and go sign up, but it jog your memory and you're there. So then you want when someone later just goes to your website because they're thinking, oh yeah, I need to go sign up for that thing after dinner.

00:04:48:06 - 00:05:19:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
When they get home from work, they need to be able to discover that relatively quickly on your church website, even if the email had a link to it, even if they don't follow that link directly. You want your website to be clear and easy to navigate, which is why I continue to recommend nucleus. And also I just want to let you know, like if your website is not exactly up to it, I can create a couple of automated things for you, like updating your church Google calendar which will also naturally update on your website.

00:05:19:24 - 00:05:36:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so if you're interested in something like that, I offer a service called Church Communications done for you. I would love to explore what that looks like to either a build a one time website or be step into some sort of partnership sort of thing. But email is the way to get Ahold of the adults in your church.

00:05:36:07 - 00:06:13:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If if billions of users are using it and 99% of people are checking their email on a daily basis, then you as a church, you have the opportunity to get in front of all of your people, which diminishes the need for those church stage based announcements and diminishes the needs for those church bulletins. Okay, and I'm not necessarily saying that you should toss those things out and not even worry about them anymore, but what I am saying is that your primary strategy should be email and then those other pieces, stage announcements, bulletins, whatever you want to say, even social media.

00:06:14:01 - 00:06:36:19
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
They should all supplement what's going on on email. The second category of people that we're going to talk about here are teenagers, students. Okay. So this is particularly aimed for youth pastors. Once again, if you're not in that then hop down to the chapters below and jump ahead to the next one you need. As a youth pastor, you want to try to get to teenagers phones.

00:06:36:25 - 00:06:55:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Now you got to think about this. All teenagers are in a little bit of a different season of life, of adopting usage on their phones. So some of them aren't yet using, like text messaging yet. Right? So that's why I say a little bit more generically. You want to get to their phones because some parents let them have Instagram and some don't.

00:06:55:05 - 00:07:16:11
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Some parents let them have YouTube and some don't. Some parents let them text certain people and some don't. And so in some ways, somehow we need to get on their cell phones, which is what I'm promoting trying to do by using and utilizing, our hybrid strategy in our in the current student ministry that I serve in, this is our attempt and this is our, our play to get on to students cell phones.

00:07:16:11 - 00:07:31:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so my hybrid strategy is actually linked right down below in the description or on your podcast catcher. I would love to have you check that out. It's completely free, but it helps. It helps give you my strategy and also helps you implement some pieces and parts of that so that you can start trying to get onto their phones.

00:07:32:00 - 00:07:54:13
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But here's some reasons why it's valuable and important for us to get to their phones. Because 69% of students of teenagers own a smartphone by the age of 12, according to Common Sense Media, and also 90% according to Pew Research. 90% of teenagers use YouTube, so there's a couple of different ways to get to their phones. Number one, social, okay.

00:07:54:13 - 00:08:26:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And short form vertical based video is still king. Going to vertical in 2024, 90% of the internet's traffic was short form, vertical based video. And so you can employ that short form, vertical based video strategy on Facebook. So I wouldn't recommend that platform necessarily for students or these other through TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. And if TikTok goes ahead and gets banned, you can still employ that that video based strategy by leaning into reels and TikToks and YouTube shorts by cross posting to places like YouTube and Instagram.

00:08:26:15 - 00:08:51:20
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And there are, you know, there are some TikTok like alternative apps being produced, like a lemonade app. And I don't know if that's going to take or pop, but but maybe go secure your church's handle on it. And then if it does, boom, you're there. And you can continue to employ that strategy. If it takes TikTok's spot, you know, once, like certain things get shook out here with the Congress ban or, you know, whatever is going on with that.

00:08:51:20 - 00:09:10:29
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so the point is that short form, vertical based video while TikTok may not last forever, that strategy right now, that strategy is so, so clutch. And I actually I noticed it last night because here's the thing about that strategy. I was on Instagram and I was scrolling through stories, which are things posted by people that I follow my friends.

00:09:11:05 - 00:09:31:15
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
That's a nod back to the social Graph era of friendship based social media. And I was scrolling through and I know friends, whoever I was, I was looking at your stories. I got bored, close it out, hopped into reels which then started showing me popular and like, entertainment based and reels that are actually getting a lot of views.

00:09:31:17 - 00:09:55:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And now all of a sudden I was, I was hooked. I was there for a while and that's going from that social graph era over into that discovery based era. And that's where we want to find ourselves in student ministry like we want we can. Here's the thing, though. You can post like a discovery based thing, and you can share that link to your audience so you can post that real on to your story so that all the students who follow you, they still see it.

00:09:55:19 - 00:10:11:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Or you can even like yesterday I posted, a YouTube short, also an Instagram reel and a TikTok, and I sent the YouTube short link in our text group and I said, have you answered this crazy? Would you rather question yet? And I sent it to all the kids are sign up in our text group, which is the second.

00:10:11:10 - 00:10:32:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So socials one one way to get to their phones. The second is to get to text messages. All right. And so if you want like blasts I would recommend a service like remind. It's completely free for schools. Or if you want a group chat feature I would recommend a group me both of them listen to me. Both of them have their shortcomings I get it, okay?

00:10:32:11 - 00:10:59:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
But it's a great, like, neutralizer. Okay. If you if you have Apple phones and Android phones, GroupMe can put everyone in a group, chat app without, like, the fuss of the blue bubbles and all the things, the compressed pictures that Apple won't allow to come through. Because RCS messaging, even though it's been around since 2007, like it'll do these things where it it will it will create like a level playing field.

00:10:59:01 - 00:11:18:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Right. And you know, if you if your church communications database has some sort of texting service, that you already pay for, then by all means use that. Don't I don't necessarily recommend remind over something like that. Or if you've already dug deep to pay for some sort of texting service and continue to use that, probably better. But that that also goes for when kids are serving.

00:11:18:01 - 00:11:34:25
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Like if you can send them text notifications instead of just email notifications. The goal again is to get to their phones, especially if almost 70% of 12 year olds in on up have smartphones. All right. And so I know you're going to run into because I run into this too. You're going to run into kids who don't have it.

00:11:35:02 - 00:11:59:00
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So you always do have to have a small alternative for a more analog approach. But that's that's widely okay. Right. As we're trying to communicate with teenagers. And then the last area, the last area of ministry is what about your volunteers? What about your leaders? Okay. Now, this may not be, the highest or, like, email is still going to probably be what you're going to use.

00:11:59:02 - 00:12:20:10
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Just like going back to the, you know, parent adult section of this video, all the stats, all the reasons that's why email still is worthwhile for you volunteers. However, I will say in the last, six months or so, me and my team, me and my boss has started recording a weekly leader podcast. Yes, you heard that right.

00:12:20:10 - 00:12:44:27
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
Weekly. Now we batch record, so we record four at a time. It's about an hour worth of our time. And then it takes me just a minute. Like, really not very long to just edit those suckers into, a YouTube video as well as an audio only podcast. And then we post those every single Monday morning. And so we encourage our leaders to, subscribe to that and listen to it.

00:12:44:27 - 00:13:25:07
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We try to make it like 15, no more maximum than 15 minutes. Usually they're closer to ten minutes each. And just, we've asked them to adopt that as their normal rhythm on their way to work, on their way on Monday morning to work, habit. And so what what this does is this reduces the pressure around a once a year or a biannual or even a monthly leader meeting to communicate all the big things that we need to communicate, because you know, that you need to, hook them with inspiration, but you also need to tell them, like, boring details like, hey, when you guys are like, checking in, you need to click this

00:13:25:07 - 00:13:43:02
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
little button here, and you make sure you check in to both of these groups so that our metrics above all, they don't care about that stuff. But the Leader podcast gives you an avenue to share those little snippets of things. It also gives you an avenue to drip culture slowly. And so that's one of the things we've been doing.

00:13:43:02 - 00:14:04:01
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
We've been attempting to make our culture a little more conversational and a little less teaching, and we've just been dripping that slowly on the podcast. And what's so fun is last week I sat down with some of my leaders, we do a yearly leader debrief, and I heard them starting to use some of the language that we've been putting on our leader podcast.

00:14:04:04 - 00:14:26:23
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
In addition to gripping the information and sharing more announcements, we'll do like giveaways, we'll do leader shout outs, we'll share funny stories. And so then every week that that, posts on Monday, there's always the off chance that our leader group chat gets a little flurry of activity around whatever topic happened on the on the podcast or people are, you know, laughing about some of the things that are going on there.

00:14:26:23 - 00:14:49:24
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
So according to Nielsen, the average podcast listener consumed up to seven a week. And so if you have people on your leader teams that are already podcast listeners, that's a super easy one. If not, you can help them adopt it. Or also, again, you can post those, video form to YouTube. YouTube also has a podcast RSS kind of section built into it that you can also use and utilize.

00:14:49:24 - 00:15:21:03
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so even if they're not podcast adopters, they can still access it via the video. And so with your email strategy for adults, with your get to their phones strategy for students and with your podcast strategy for leaders, then use your stage and your bulletin announcements to really hit hard and to just simply reinforce and point people back not only into those channels, but then also off to your website where they're ultimately going to take their next step, call to action sort of things.

00:15:21:07 - 00:15:42:05
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
And so in this next video, what I'm going to do is I'm going to help break down why you on social media should be focusing now more because our, our, our, information and our announcements have been taken care of how you should start focusing on engagement as opposed to simply broadcasting information. That video is going to be linked right here on screen.

00:15:42:05 - 00:15:49:16
Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry
If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and tap that. We'd love to see you over there. But until next time. And as always, my friends, don't forget to stay hybrid.