Attractional Versus Missional Online Communication Strategies

In the church world, two outreach models have sometimes warred against each other.

The Attractional model says “Come and see.” It advocates for a well designed church building, top-notch Connect/Guest Services ministry, good signage, an excellently executed worship service and other well run programs and events. The point is to draw people in.

The Missional model says “Go and tell.” Instead of primarily drawing people to a specific location, the emphasis is on going into the community, living out the gospel in your everyday interactions, participating in the life of your city, using whatever gifts and interests God has given you: visual arts, sports, community planning, music. You’re a missionary, taking the gospel to your neighborhood, your favorite coffee shop, your circle of Little League parents, your local Farmer’s market.

In recent years many church leaders have said, “It’s not either/or; it’s both/and,” while others remain in one camp or another. But even a missional community may succumb to an “attractional only” online presence, and vice versa. Meanwhile, the “both/and” churches may invest more on one side or the other online, without knowing it. Lets look at how popular online tools fit within the missional/attractional models. These apply not only to churches but to businesses, bands, authors, and any other type of brand.

Attractional Online Strategy

Your website is the cornerstone of an attractional web strategy. An attractional-heavy strategy places all or most of your eggs in this basket. Your site looks attractive, it loads quickly, it provides incentives for people to visit and to linger. It contains all the info anyone would want to know about you (see my The Biggest Mistake On Your Church Website Homepage here).

Let’s look at some of the attractional elements we’ve built into My SongIn The Night. Obviously, our blog is front-and-center because we post new content at least twice a week. We’ve also embedded a free offer for Kristen’s worship EP The Whole Big Story in the right-hand column. And by clicking the Streampad “Click To Play All Posts” bar at the bottom of this site, you can freely listen to all our worship songs, including the ones recorded by Sojourn Music.

Podcasts are attractional as well. Many people love to subscribe to fun or thought-provoking podcasts. And of course don’t forget videos.

Missional Online Strategy

Social media networking is the ultimate missional strategy. Instead of pulling people to a website, you go where they are: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn and whatever social network contains an audience with whom you’d like to connect. See my E.E.R.I.E. system of social media networking here, Social Media For Churches here and my Social Media Marketing for bands here.

But not so fast! Even if you want to be missional, you can fall into an attractional mindset on social media. Lots of brands spend much time and money customizing their Facebook page to the fullest extent Facebook allows. They treat their Facebook page like a website. And that’s fine if you’ve got the resources for it.

But Facebook users are far more likely to engage you when they see your updates and photos on their Timelines, not on your brand page. Many of those who like your page only go there one time (when they initially click “Like”). Remember, you have to create compelling content and engage with people. The same goes with Twitter — most of your Twitter followers will not visit your Twitter.com home page — they’ll only see your tweets. The coolest looking Twitter profile in the world won’t do you any good if you’re not engaging and reciprocating with your followers.

 

The Biggest Mistake On Your Church Website Homepage

Churches, unfortunately, make a lot of mistakes on their websites — particularly the home page: For instance:

• Cheesy clip art
• Photos of smiling faces … who have never actually been to your church
• Sensory overload – every bell and whistle that every staff member could dream of

But one issue flabbergasts me. I can’t tell you how many church websites I’ve visited that had one certain problem. And this isn’t a matter of including the wrong thing on your home page. It’s about what some of you are leaving out:

Your Location And Service Time(s)

Your church website is like your billboard, and like the old Yellow Pages listing. People may be checking out your website for lots of things, but for sure you need them to know where and when you meet. Don’t make them hunt all over your website to find this information.

Include contact information too — email, office phone number and your major social media accounts.

The Multi-Campus Conundrum

What if you’re a multi-site church? What if it’s not feasible to include the street address and service times for every campus on your home page?

We had this problem at Sojourn Community Church, where I am Director of Communications. Our solution was to create a major tab header called Locations And Service Times. This is one of several main headers that appears on every page of our site, not just the home page. Clicking on our Locations And Service Times tab takes you to a page with complete listings for each of our four campuses, as well as a customized Google map of the entire Louisville/Southern Indiana area, with markers showing each of our campuses.When users click on a marker, they can get directions to that campus from their own address.

If you’re a multi-site church, have you chosen another way to communicate your individual campus service times and locations?

Include Your City

Some church websites list their street address but not their city or even state. The reasoning might be, “People in our town already know what town they’re in. They just need our street address.”

The first problem with this is you’re shooting yourself in the foot with Google and other search engines. For instance, if you’re a church in Boston, you want people to be able to type “Boston churches” into a search engine and find you. Make sure you mention Boston on your website.

The second problem is that we live in a mobile society, where people move often and where they have friends and family in many locations. So let’s say I am looking at a church website — maybe I arrived there from a link on Twitter (a friend posted the link to the most recent sermon by this church’s pastor). The sermon is great and the website leads me to believe this is a good, gospel-centered church.

Then I notice the church is located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. No way! I was just talking to my cousin on Facebook, who is moving to Cedar Rapids next month and will be looking for a home church. Now I can send her the link to this church website.

But what if “Cedar Rapids” wasn’t listed on the site, or at least wasn’t listed on any main page? What if the only address listing was “123 Main Street”? There is a 123 Main Street everywhere. Now my cousin still doesn’t have a head start on finding a good church in Cedar Rapids.

Not good.

3 Church Website Mistakes That Make You Look Like A Pawn Shop

It’s no secret that church websites are among the most derided and lampooned in the web design community. Churches make many mistakes, including even simple ones like failing to list location and service times in a prominent place.

Here are three big mistakes that make church websites look like an unkempt pawn shop, a junkyard, or just a dirty, messy house:

1. Including Everything But The Kitchen Sink On The Home Page

And I mean everything. I’ve seen church websites that include a widget weather report on the home page.

Don’t be that church. Christians have a tendency to circle the wagons and create subcultures that eliminate the need for us to ever leave the circle.

It isn’t just Christians, of course. At Babel, God had to mix up everyone’s languages to get them to spread out. But Christians especially should not do this, because it goes against our gospel mandate from Christ (Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). Yet even the early Church clung to Jerusalem until forced by persecution to scatter (Acts 8:1).

Let your people find the weather report on the Weather Channel or their local news websites. Don’t try to be their “one home for everything” on the web.

And you should even keep minor church announcements and event promotion off your home page. Communicating too many messages is like communicating no message. Focus.

Imagine your church is like a house. You may like to shop. Perhaps you find item after item that would look great in your house. So you keep buying furniture, paintings, knick knacks and other house hold items. Maybe each of those items, on its own, looks beautiful or provides a good function. But all together, they make your house look like a bloated monster that needs to belch out all of that stuff in a good yard sale.

#2

Does Your Church Need To Rebrand? Need To Know How?

Oh, it's difficult. You'll probably cry a few times

Several people have asked my opinion on how difficult it would be to “rebrand” a church — change the name and/or the logo and relaunch as if you were launching a new church.

Very difficult.

But this depends on many factors, including the length of time you’ve been in existence, the degree of opposition within your church membership, and other variables (not the least of which would involve finding out how poorly your current brand is perceived and how skillfully you can create a new brand identity and new branding deliverables).

Before I offer up anything new, check out these three things:

• Our article “What’s In A Name? Southern Baptists, Southern Gospel, Pandas Versus Wrestlers”
• Our article “How To Design A Church Logo That Tells Your Story”
• Most importantly, Dr. Russell Moore’s sermon “Repentance, Not Rebranding: The Horrible Mercy of Owning Your Shame.” Stream or download the audio here, or watch it below:

1 Samuel 4:1-22 from Southern Seminary on Vimeo.

Still with me? Okay, then lets talk about Coherence. 

Dr. Moore mentioned the rebranding of Sugar Pops in his sermon. Mothers are more comfortable buying Corn Pops for their children because it sounds healthier. But Sugar Pops is Corn Pops. It’s the same thing.

Don’t do this as a church. Don’t use branding signals to tell your community that you’re something you’re not. It won’t work, and people will call you a liar.

The marketing business has a saying: “Good marketing will kill a bad product faster.”