Communication Revolution, Part 1:: Text Updates

So, it's been awhile since I've written about communications on my blog... mainly because I've been rethinking and restructuring the way we do communication at Park.

Here's some vitals on us... Park is made up of about 60% singles and our average age is 31; our largest ministry is our young adult ministry (ministry to 22-34 year olds); and pretty much everyone who attends our church works in the Loop and lives in the city of Chicago. Most of the people who attend our church come for about 2 years on average. They come to the city to go to school, start their jobs and before you know it they are transferring jobs or schools, or they are getting married and moving the suburbs. Our people are high-energy, motivated, educated, and urbanites to the core.

The last year that I've been here, I've been watching, learning, and figuring out different ways we can better communicate to our people in a way they can connect with.

So, just a week or so away from my one year anniversary of coming on staff at Park, the Communication Revolution is beginning. Over the next month or so, I'll be sharing some of the things we are doing differently here including a new logo, new website, new print philosophy and more!

But for today here's Part 1 :: Text Message Updates

I text more than I call people on the phone on any given day. I've actually lowered my cell phone plan to the lowest amount of talk time and the maximum number of texts I can send. That's just how I communicate.

Gone are the days of a phone tree or calling service... yes, people still use it.   

We've been using email to communicate to people at Park and it's worked well for us, but the problem with it was that we started to send too many. Way too many. And even though we've cut down the number of emails we send, watching the stats, we're seeing a lot of them go unread.

The solution? Well, we're continuing to streamline the emails we send out, but needed another way to get news out to our people, and this Sunday we are introducing text updates to our church.

We found a great texting service that costs next to nothing and enables people to text the word "PARK" to a number and be added to our list (we can also manually add people or they can sign up on the web). At any point, we can shoot a text to anyone who signs up to remind them about major things that impact the entire church like church service time/location changes (which for us is a normal occurrence), major events, emergencies, and reminders (Daylight Savings Time, etc.).

To promote it to our church this weekend, me and Park's new media director, Jason Widney, put together this small 'commercial', following Apple's lead. Check it out:

FYI for non-Park people, Jackson Crum is our lead pastor.

It will be interesting to see how it's received this weekend, I'll let you know. But, we are pretty excited about it and the potential it has to help us better communicate to our church in a way they connect with.

Comments

[Chris from Canada]

What service are you using to send these?

[Kristian]

What text service are you guys using?

[bob robbins]

do you mind sharing the texting service? That's a great idea.

[Terry]

Was going to ask what service you were using...but it looks like the question has been asked. I would love to know as well though. Sounds like our churches have similar demographics and we are exploring on how to integrate txt messaging in our services through polls, etc.

[Tim]

I don't reveal my secrets!

Just kidding. The service is actually pretty basic, and nothing fancy... it's www.eztexting.com... cost is about .01 per message sent (or received) and it costs $25/month to rent keywords.

[Ryan]

I love this idea. The video is great. Added bonus: text messages never go to anyone's "junk" folder.