Often my pastor encourages us in the fact that “people are down on what they aren’t up on.” With that encouragement comes the reminder to be redundant in communication. For larger events like camps, VBS, or church wide festivals, you’ll want to hit all 10 of these. For smaller events, I would suggest tapping into the 5 that will most likely bring you the most fruit for that particular event.

  1. Email: Email is still wildly popular, but is slowly being supplanted by other forms of social media as the communication method of choice. The effectiveness of this is very dependent upon the culture of communication of your people.
  2. Newsletters: Church wide, volunteer, or parent. Get the word out in all of them.
  3. Worship Guide/Bulletin: Make sure the average church attender who is prone to not be in the know has an avenue to see your events.
  4. Facebook: Invite people to events, swamp them with info about your event through your feed, or write a post about it to share with your friends.
  5. Posters: Put 11×17 or larger posters up on visible areas. Doors to kids ministry space, bathroom entrances, stairwells, prominent bulletin boards, plaster them with posters!
  6. Word of Mouth: Call people. Ask them if they’ve heard about the event or are coming to it as you see them on Sunday mornings when you chat in the hallway. Recruit several noteworthy volunteers to personally invite 5 children or families to your event.
  7. Blog: Does your church have a blog? Put it on there. Do you have your own Children’s Ministry blog? Put it on there!
  8. Twitter: There aren’t many of my families plugged in to this yet, but if your church is in a more metropolitan area, this avenue will prove useful for you. Create a hashtag for your event or ask people to retweet your announcement.
  9. Handouts: I’ve found that giving a postcard out to parents as they pick up can be a very effective “kick off” announcement leading up to an event.
  10. Phone Tree: Yes, people still use phone trees. They are still useful b/c it puts a verbal message into the ears of most people in your ministry.

Related posts:

  1. Online Registration for the Small Church
  2. Scriblinke–Online Collaborative Whiteboard
  3. CareCalendar – Meeting Needs of Your People