Having a clear, common language to use when communicating to your church makes your job easier and more effective. This week we talk about one-liners (4:09) and how you can use them to have a common language amongst your church (14:44). We also talk about how most announcements are unnecessary hype (5:16), why speaking into problems is important (11:22), and how a common language equips people to invite others to your church (15:45). Lastly, we get practice by BrandScripting VBS (7:26) and turning that Brandscript into a one-line you can use to motivate people to show up (9:31).

We could have the greatest message in the world – and we do – but if we can’t lead well, people still won’t follow us. This week, we talk about how we can use StoryBrand to be better leaders (3:12). We’ll dive into how people don’t know what we’re thinking (4:30) and how to determine what events/ministries we should be doing (6:12). We’ll also look at how we can use the BrandScript to have better meetings (12:33) and will do a sample BrandScript for a hard conversation (14:18). Lastly, we’ll look into how we can lead up and lead our supervisors (20:47) and how the StoryBrand Framework gives you a unifying language (26:05).

It’s one thing to give people information. It’s a totally different animal to then ask them to do something with that information. But if we want people’s lives to me changed, we have to call them to action. This week we talk about why it’s important to ask people to respond (3:53), how pushy we should be in our ask (10:39), and how we balance getting the message across without being annoying (12:25). We also talk about how Cross Point Church uses their branding to help them move people to action (15:04). Lastly, we look at how we can give people half-steps for when they’re not ready to commit (19:01) and ask if the first time guest form is too pushy (23:18).

Talking about giving is awkward. This week, we talk with Stu Baker from NewFire Giving about the biggest mistake churches make when talking about giving (2:49), why talking about money is weird (6:56), and how our biggest problem with the money conversation is our messaging (8:37). We also look at why giving to nonprofits is up while giving to the church is down (12:58), the #1 reason a person gives to an organization (13:55), and how Charity:Water used success to motivate people to give (16:50). To close the episode, we dive into how more options to give isn’t always better (19:39), when to use text giving (22:34), and the importance of celebrating giving (25:24).

In the past, churches have use failure as a weapon and it’s burned people. This week we talk to Drew Powell from Cross Point Church about why churches are afraid to mention failure (5:15), how failure can actually help people (12:02), and how pressing on pain points can motivate people to respond (21:01). We also get in the weeds of how to use failure in our teaching (7:56) and in our promotions (15:55). Oh! And Jonathan introduces the idea of making a failure sandwich (11:30).

Finding the voice of your church is one of the hardest things in church communications. This week we talk with Kelley Hartnett about why the words we use matter (4:16), how our words can make people more at ease (11:02), and what to do if you’re hitting a wall in developing your church’s voice (21:11). We also discuss how the voice of our church has to reflect the vision of our church (20:07) and how finding our voice takes a frustrating amount of time (30:28).

This week we start a two part episode on The Curse of Knowledge. We discuss pet peeve curse of knowledge examples (4:01), some of the things we assume everyone knows (5:46), and how some confusion is unavoidable (7:31). Jonathan talks about how an assumption almost made him leave the church (8:56) and how we can avoid turning people away (14:11). To round out the show, we hit on how assuming people don’t know this isn’t dumbing down our theology (18:32), Jonathan uses another bad dating metaphor (21:29), and how we can never explain things too often (23:30).

In the season 2 kick-off, we talk with Tiny Horse GM and former Elevation Church Creative Pastor Larry Hubatka to try to solve problems like isn’t Jesus the hero of the story? (6:17), how does marketing factor into the church? (7:11), what does the word hero even mean? (10:13), what are some ways we make people the hero? (11:58), and how do we make people feel like they belong? (17:33) He also shares how Elevation Church tracks their discipleship process (22:40) and gives us a grid for how making people the hero changes how we do ministry (27:51).