/Paul-Henderson-PowerPoint

“What challenges currently face the church in the area of effective Communication – Solutions to Consider?”

The view from the USCCB and national perspective.

• Leading through a vision of mission.

• Creating content and message that impact people.

• Engaging people.

• Knowing what we want to achieve?

• Our role as leaders is changing ?

• Tendency to focus on outputs rather than outcomes.

• Our own understanding of technology • Social media tools are just that – tools to do something.

• Be disciplined and focused on long term.

• Messages and content need to connect people’s lives with Jesus Christ and the Church. Why Be Catholic?

• Clear sense of what we want to say to people about Jesus and Church.

• Messages tend to become unnecessarily complicated.

• Competition for people’s attention requires unified, clear, and simple communications.

• Changing roles and responsibilities driven by technology and learning models .

• Role change from gate-keeping to facilitating/mentoring.

• Respectful dialogue - Two way: interactive and participative.

• Competition for time and attention.

• Vision drives action – this is all about bringing people into a relationship with Jesus Christ!

• Communicating as essential element in building community of believers.

• Get the right people involved.

• Training-formation.

• Create a culture that includes assessment of outcomes.

• Focus on need to develop right content expressed with right messages.

• Be willing to take a risk – a measured risk.

• Identify what it is that you want to share with people – content?

• Create messages that engage and impact people.

• We are not just creating content and messages for ourselves - I am not the audience!

• Focus on desired outcomes, not just outputs.

• Value of “branding” as tool for evangelization.

• Create strategies and communication vehicles to get messages to right people at the right time.

• Create strategies to move people from passive “receivers” to active “participants.”

• Using social media – know what you want to achieve (desired outcome) and understand how social media works best.

• Respectful dialogue.

• Transparency.

• People are choosing methods and formats that they are most comfortable.

• A unified approach for parish as a whole.

1. Build a culture and organizational structure for effective communication within the parish.

2. Develop relationships and work collaboratively with key stakeholders, ministries and the community.

3. Create a unified strategy for Catholic Communications in the parish both internally and externally.

4. Create clear and consistent messages