A-Zs of Church Communications.

Credits go to the Communications team of Hillsong Church who very graciously shared this with us during the Hillsong Conference. I’ve added in some bits of elaboration.

Everything we do communicates something about who/what our church is about.

Aim – Think about who you want to reach. The church? The community (here mainly referring to the people in the surroundings of our church)?

Brainstorm – About the media to use/how to reach those you want to read. Via emails, texts, letters, newspaper ads, radio ads or outdoor media?

Communication – Important to indicate on the selected media what it is we want them to do, who we want them to talk to/contact. Think about the media and the people, whether it is “fleeting” e.g. videos, person in a congregation can’t rewind a church announcements video if they miss a certain detail.

Design – There is no point in design if a message is lost. Push yourself. Design is a chance for you to grab attention and give the ‘wow’ factor. We may use inhouse designers or sometimes even the congregation has some pretty skilled designers!

Experience – You want receivers of the message to buy into it. Focus on creating the experience. Think outside of the box. E.g. product packaging can be specially designed such that the unpacking of the item is an experience in itself.

Fundamentals – The church LOGO. It has to be on everything.

GOD factor – The one thing the church has: The God factor. Use the right language, even scripture.

Highlight – Give an edge. Using foil and fancy stuff is perfectly fine.

Intricate – It’s the small things that make things great. About excellence, details details details!

Judge – Judge your work from the target group’s perspective. Is the message effective?

Kids – Church is about people, and people have families and kids. Be sure to use language that can also communicate to them.

Language – Clear and concise. If you want people to do something just say what you want to say. People need to be able to relate to it.

Mistakes – learn from them. Mistakes cost money, money that could be put to use in a much better place.

Normal – Don’t make things too complicated or theological. At the end of the day the gospel is simple. Think through the eyes of your unsaved friends.

Outside of the box – Don’t think of the box and then go out of it. How do we do something that we haven’t done before?

Proofread – Don’t proofread yourself. Sometimes the mind plays tricks on you. Read it backwards.

Q – I didn’t get this! But it was about saving money, with paper sizes, etc. Always ask printers how you can save money.

Relationship – Build a good rapport with your printers, it will really help!

Style – (he came up with this on the fly) Have a good style.

Take criticism – Take it as it is and move on. Learn from it. The final design used in the “A Beautiful Exchange” CD was the 47th iteration!

Unified voice – An approach is more effective if website looks like a video. Clear message.

Victories – Celebrate/enjoy, and use for the future. What was it that worked? But still remain fresh.

Worship – At the end of the day, hard work is for worshipping God and this can be your worship. Ecc 9:10

Xcellence – Strive for excellence, work hard. At the end it comes down to a choice.

You – Don’t let yourself get in the way. Take out the ‘you’ and let God use you. It’s better than ‘you’.

Zeal – Passion. Get passionate about it. You get to be the visual person to communicate the message. Ask God for the zeal.

creativity

the brain is like a muscle. you need to work it for it to be stronger. i’ve been thinking about that since we had a guest speaker who’s the creative director of the largest creative agency in Singapore.

i would say i’m a creative person, but how much exactly do i create? not a lot actually. which really makes me feel bad cause if God’s put something in me, i’ve got to use it!

the guest speakers tips are as follows:

1. keep a notebook
2. the ’60 boxes’ rule
3. have a life (e.g. do fun projects)
4. imitate greatness
5. question everything

i do keep a notebook. but i hardly use it… he’s point of keeping a notebook is so that he can jot down whatever ideas come to him. but how often do ideas jump into my head. i don’t know. maybe cause i’m always preoccupied with other stuff like work and plain rushing from place to place.

the 60 boxes rule is scary. he said that when his team receives a brief, he’ll make them come up with 60 ideas. one per box. and out of the 60 there’s bound to be 1 or 2 good ones. honestly? i really don’t know if my brain can churn out 5, let alone 60!

have a life. here’s what really hit me. wow. i don’t have a life.
hahaha i know it’s painfully obvious right, but i guess i always knew i’m super busy with work i don’t have time to do fun stuff. but for it to affect creativity like that? i don’t know man. i’m feel like a dead boring person. man. this stinks. haha

imitate greatness. this is rather comforting though, cause who else greater to imitate than God right? we should all be imitating Him, growing in Christ-likeness.

question everything. there’s another thing that hit home. i don’t. i don’t ask questions. i just take things given to me and run with them. i’m a product of the system, if you will. i don’t know man. i guess it could be a good thing, look where it got me thus far. but again. i’m a square, la. haha. i sometimes get really stressed in bizlaw tutorial cause we HAVE to ask questions. it’s almost compulsory!

here’s one of the projects the speaker is working on. pretty cool right? i reckon i wanna do something like that. but see, then it’s a lack of creativity.

so here’s something i thought i’d do for starters.

i’ll tweet/blog a reflection from devotions each day. i’ll try to make it sound as cool, interesting and poetic as possible. i don’t think i’ll draw something on a post-it like he does. but it sure is cool to do something like that, or fun-ner.

in the meanwhile, i gotta figure out what to do to get a work-life balance.