The congregations' communication expectations are growing. Delivery should be at agreed intervals, via various platforms, email, text and of course social media. The church is not immune to these expectations and this provides both new opportunities and new challenges. These new opportunities and challenges place huge demands on a church that does not have the tools to cope. This is why we are proud to be launching our new tool for church communication.
From newsletter to messages
We have always had a newsletter publisher within the ChurchDesk platform, which is the ideal complement to the printed church newsletter. It allows you to send emails out to lists of recipients and many churches have begun to create multiple lists, for example worship, lectures and concerts. Many churches have utilised being able to communicate in a more focused way and monthly deliver thousands of e-mails with invitations, reminders, and articles.
However, a major limitation in the newsletter is the chance to make communication personal and relevant. Many churches use a newsletter, but how could you send a message out to only some of the congregation - by gender for example? Or what if you wanted to contact all the parents with children about to be confirmed?
Many churches are also looking to have more information on their contacts - beyond e-mail and SMS. It may be important to know the date of birth, so we can send a message out to a certain age group. Things like this continue to reinforce that the newsletter alone is not enough. As a result we are happy to introduce the ability to send messages via e-mail and via SMS to a flexible group of people, not locked into to the traditional newsletter.
The church needs to know their congregation
One of the churches greatest admin difficulties is being able to actually use their contact information. There are many examples of excel sheets and word documents being scattered around various people's computers and let us not mention a paper version! With this information spread out across various mediums, how can a priest or admin official use this information effectively? There is so much relevant information that the church can share with its congregation. We believe that there is a great interest in hearing from the church - it requires, simply, to be relevant. We can now offer a system to the church that makes the storage and usage of this information simpler and faster.
Introducing "People" for ChurchDesk
In recent months, working in close collaboration with Haderslev Cathedral, Advent Parish and James Church we have developed a new tool for the church's communication. We have chosen to call it "People", as our wish is that the church's congregation structure must be bigger and better.
It gives you easy and fast access to:- Send messages out to individuals or segments (gender, age, city, interests and more)
- See history of each contact so that you can keep an overview of communication
- Plan announcements such as an event reminder
- Copy and reuse old messages
- Insert events directly from the calendar
We look forward to welcoming you and your church to "People" and all its many added functions. Enjoy making your communications more personal and effective - to engage and entertain your users!
