Good communication builds trust amongst those who share in its contents, but it also takes time and energy to do well. Most of us in church ministry are juggling limited time resources and good communication can be a casualty of our stretched diaries.

Initially our teams will overlook poor comms, believe the best in us, understand our busyness and move on, but make it a regular practise and trust will begin to evaporate which is likely to cause problems in the future.

I work with multiple teams but I’m going to use an example of how we have developed communication among our various leadership teams (each containing a mix of volunteer and staff positions). I’m going to be particularly focusing on the use of two technologies, namely Slack and Zoom.

Slack – a sort of WhatsApp messenger system that allows conversations to be organised into threads. Messages are usually much shorter than an email. We use the free version which has been more than adequate for our needs but a premium upgrade is available which unlocks extra features.

Zoom – a powerful video conferencing tool which we have found to be more stable than other low cost video conferencing options. There are free versions available but we pay a relatively small subscription which allows us unrestricted length of calls and the ability to host a call with up to 250 people at one time.

Other Technologies – we utilise many other interesting technologies at Rediscover Church which I won’t reference here, but I believe the two I am concentrating on (Slack & Zoom) will be a great help to all church teams if embraced. This is how they have helped us:

Some ways we use SLACK

We have created multiple ‘Workspaces’ (accounts) with each one having a range of ‘Channels’ (threads of conversation). Each workspace is accessible to the invited members and each of the channels are then accessible to every member of that workspace or can be made private to a subset of the members. Some people just create one workspace with a vast number of channels (a mix of open and private) – the advantage of this is that users don’t have to keep going in and out of various workspaces, but we’ve created a number of separate workspaces in order to ensure that confidential information is not accidentally put in a wrong channel – also the free account stores a maximum of 10,000 messages per workspace (when you exceed this it just begins to delete the oldest) so more workspaces means more message storage .

Channels – you can create an unlimited number of channels in a workspace and choose to ‘lock it’ (so it is only available to a designated subset of the workspace members) or leave it open so that it can be accessible to all workspace members.

Pre-programme Bots – we also make use of some automated messaging features. For example, we have a channel called ‘Check In’. Each Friday an automated message is sent to all our staff team asking them to outline their diary for the next week. Each person then adds a summary of their movements for the week so our staff can be aware. We also have another automated message that goes out to our ‘Sunday’ channel on Monday morning. It asks each member of this channel to provide any observations, comments or matters to pick up on from the previous days services.

I could give you example after example of how Slack has significantly helped our communication and I think we would now find it really difficult to lose it.

Some ways we use ZOOM

Weekly Elders Meetings

Most of our elders lead busy work lives and often travel, so we’ve created a weekly rhythm of 45 min video calls (7am on Thursdays). No matter where we are in the country (or world), we all usually stick to these meetings and it allows us to regularly address the issues of leading the church. The agenda is added to by any of the elders on a slack channel named ‘Agenda’ (supporting documents can also easily be added on slack) and then the minutes are added to another channel called ‘Minutes’.

We also use these video calls to review the various ministries and departments, and at times invite ministry team leaders to join us on the call. Before doing so they will have completed a questionnaire giving us insight into the areas of blessing and challenge in the ministry which allows us to both affirm and address areas we need to support further.

Planning Meetings

There are times when people spend almost as long travelling to and from a meeting as they do in the meeting itself. We find Zoom really helps us solve this. Sometimes meetings are held in peoples lunch breaks or straight after work thanks to video calls. We find these highly effective and focussed ways of maximising peoples time.

Teaching Forums

Whether it’s one on one mentoring or a large group of students, we find Zoom is a brilliant tool. Additional features such as ‘screen sharing’ can be helpful for everyone to follow notes or powerpoint displays and the ability to record the whole call can be helpful for the purpose of catching up if someone can’t make the session.

Other Uses in the Church

We’ve also used zoom to allow people to join in prayer gatherings from our 24/7 prayer room – it has a nice feature that allows you to put people in smaller groups, so if 40 people zoom into the prayer gathering and the leader wants to get those in the room itself into small groups, then this can also be done online. We’ve also run online life groups using zoom.

Anti-technology?

I admit that I like experimenting with ways that technology can enhance the purpose and mission of the church, but not everyone on our teams had such a natural inclination – some were even slightly tech adverse. But after using these tools on a regular basis, I don’t think anyone on our teams would dispute their value. We started small – trying them out in with one small team. When they fell in love with it, their story helped others give it a go.

If you have found non technological ways of creating brilliant communications among your teams then don’t stop, but if there are gaps or shortcomings, then I encourage you to find a better way forward and maybe these tools can help.