As a Creative Design Team, we’ve been on a journey of learning how to effectively communicate to this ever-changing culture in a way that connects and leads to change. Here are 9 Principles that we have found effective.
1. Create a conversation.
Give your audience opportunities to react and respond internally to what your are saying. Kem Meyer in her book, “Less Clutter. Less Noise”, encourages us a communicators to become Conversation Architects, which is the ability to build and sustain authentic conversation around what speaks to the heart of your audience.
2. Tell stories.
The current generation isn’t moved through facts, figures and messages that have an introduction, 3 points and a conclusion, they are moved through stories that engage their hearts and show ones humanity. Allow your audience to feel what you are saying through the honesty of your story.
3. Simplify your message.
Josh Catone, a blogger and communications developer says, “Twitter reduces our thoughts to just 140 characters…The average length of the 12 billion online videos consumed by North American users in one month was 2.7 minutes…Television, the internet and other external stimuli has rewired our brains to make it harder to absorb information that doesn’t come in bite-sized chucks”.
4. Introduce visuals when possible.
I’m reminded about Louis Giglio’s video, “How Great is Our God,” have you seen it? Where Louis stands on a huge stage, holding in his hand a small white golf ball, and every point he made about how big and how great God is, he brought it back to the golf ball. As communicators, think about how to make complex topics easy to understand and relate to.
5. Create an experience.
When planing your weekend experience, fight the urge to think that one element is more important the other. Each piece strategically and thoughtfully placed in your service builds on one another, creating the final ‘take home’. When planning your weekend experience, think of a funnel – start wide and bring it to a point.
6. Throw a curve ball.
One thing we have noticed over the years is that anytime we break out of our mold and try something new, whatever that may look like, people respond. The hard truth is that most people find church to be predictable and boring, and though we don’t cater to entertain our audience, we desperately want our audience to hear and respond to our message. And sometimes, that means trying something new, something they don’t even see coming.
7. Empower creative people.
There are people sitting in your auditorium week after week who have the abilities do create, build, conceptualize and execute your ideas – empower them! We have found that creativity is fertilized through team and conversation; ideas compounds ideas; creativity, creativity and as a team you break out of the box and present something new and unique to your environment.
8. Utilize online resources.
Never before as the church been able to access amazing, inexpensive and effective resources like today. Our creative team depends on these resources and utilizes them almost every week. A great starting place to find them is WorshipHouseMedia.
9. Ask for help.
I think it was John Maxwell who said that “leaders are learners”, but whoever it was, they’re right! As leaders we need to be able to ask for help and allow people to teach us and show us new ways of doing things. What worked 10 years ago, doesn’t necessarily work today. But in order to learn, we first need to learn how to ask for help and then allows to show us new ways
