Communicating Faith

“What challenges currently face the

church in the area of effective Communication

–

Solutions to Consider?”

The view from the USCCB and

national perspective.

Challenges & Solutions

• Leading through a vision of mission.

• Creating content and message that impact people.

• Engaging people.

Leadership & Direction

• 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.

Content & Messages

• 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.

Engagement

• 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.

Solutions-Leading

• 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.

Solutions-Messaging

• 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.

Solutions-Engaging

• 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.

Moving Forward

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