“I didn’t know that was happening!”
“What do you mean I missed the deadline?”
“There was a retreat? When?”
“The lock-in ended four hours ago!?”
Let’s face it, there have been times when you wished someone had heard the communication you had sent out. And let’s be MORE real. There were times when you didn’t communicate as well as you could have.
So how can you communicate in a way that MOST of your parents, students, staff, and church know what’s going on?
Let’s make a plan!
Consistent Communication
It can be really confusing for people if you have different dates and times posted in different places. Is it Wednesday at 7 pm or Tuesday at 6 pm? You can help make this streamlined by typing out the info and making sure it’s right, then send that to every channel you communicate to!
Wednesday, November 8th @ 7 pm
Our Dodgeball Tournament is going to be a blast! Meet us in the small gym with your team color. Snacks and drinks for sale for a $1! Here’s the form you need to fill out to play!
See how that works? Day, Date, Time, Place, What and Where. Get a volunteer or an admin to make sure your info is right and THEN put it everywhere!
Same Graphic Everywhere
You can see other people doing this with branding and signs for businesses. It’s REALLY helpful to make the same type of visuals for your ministry. Canva is GREAT for this. The resize tool is a gamechanger. Make a slide for the announcement for your group and then change it to a square social media post, a story post, and a banner on the top of your newsletter.
Check these out:
See? Same graphic, words, and vibe. But you can post this everywhere! And people (read: students, parents, senior pastor, etc) will see what you’re doing and get the information quickly!
Channels of Communication
Ok. You’ve got the info, the graphics, now what? Hopefully you’ve reserved the space, gotten volunteers, and done all of that behind the scenes work.
Now let’s tell people!
Think of all the places you can communicate this: youth group meeting, leader meeting, student ministry email, student ministry social media, website, church bulletin, group texting app, Sunday morning slide roll, posters…
You’ve probably got all of those and more! Get the information out there on all the channels you have to make sure the most amount of people hear about the event.
When do you communicate?
This one is HUGE! I loved being able to to let parents and students know the big events as far out as possible. Think summer camp, retreats, small group kick offs and other REALLY important dates. Usually a year out if you can make that happen. Sending out save the dates is a GREAT help.
Smaller events? I like to communicate those on a semester basis. What events are happening in the fall? The spring? The summer? I love to let people know about them right at the beginning of the season or semester so that they can plan and prepare as far out as possible.
But people still don’t know what’s going on!!
Hey. I get it. Sometimes people are just going to be OUT of the loop. But if you’ve emailed, text, posted, personally asked, and communicated to the leaders and students and parents, there’s not much more you can do!
Ask them where they normally look for information on what’s going on in the youth group and see if you can direct them there. And maybe subtly point out that it was posted four weeks ago and three times since then and they really should have known better…
…graciously.
Communicate Outside the Box
You can also think of different ways to communicate with your church. Maybe you release a five minute podcast each week summarizing your message and reminding them of upcoming events. Maybe you create a YouTube channel where you upload your talks and have students read off the big event details. Maybe you hand students bright colored pieces of paper to give to their friends to invite them Or business cards! Those are making a comeback I hear.
Whatever you do, make you communicate clearly, often, and ahead of time.
Then you can know you did the best you could!
Anything I missed out on? I’d love to hear down below.