First Church Communications Team

Meeting Minutes

Tuesday, Oct 10, 2006

 

Members Present: Bill Bartscher, Bennett Griffin (Chair), Harold Jones, Margaret Jones, Jerry Niebaum, Michelle Parmley, Patti Winn.

FUMC will have a permanent communications group next year as part of the new administrative structure. Our group will offer to meet with the new group in January to share what we have learned and developed.

 

Needs for now: (1) Outline a process design (2) Develop church identity guidelines (i.e. use of logo & slogans) (3) Tabulation of the survey forms collected

 

Review of progress towards goals set at our first meeting:

-Create a Marketing & Communications Strategic Plan

            Done. Final report is available on our Web site.

-Create the Process Foundation (master calendar, etc.)

-Create a Common Lexicon for Communications

            Done. This goal was revised to mean create a mindset for communications.

-Create a Library of Reusable Communications Building Blocks

            Partly done. Focus was on branding. A new logo, created with Candice Ranney,

resulted.

-Create Action Plans for event publicity, marketing (evangelical outreach), etc.

            Partly done. Some items to be considered:

                        Infrastructure: event on the calendar, doors unlocked, child care planned, etc.

                        Framework for marketing the events, action plans, empowering the committee

                        Mailing list: how to put one together

                        Notice: advanced notice requirements

                        Templates: publishing templates for brochures, etc.

                        Advertising: costs for newspaper advertising

                        Publishing: electronic minutes, Web site for committee activities for 2007

                                    Need multiple Webmasters, consider BLOGS to post minutes

                                    Consider an additional Web hosting service for multiple sites e.g. youth

                        Church requirements: clearance through Finance, Trustees, or other committees

                        Worship awareness: promotion of variety of Sunday service types with good descriptions

 

What are the processes in place for making sure that communications tasks happen?

(1)   process for getting events put on the calendar

(2)   process for putting articles in the newsletter, bulletin, etc.

(3)   process for multi-campus sharing of communications (e.g. bulletin board items)

(4)   process for helping to insure that future committees know and use the processes

 

Do we need a media committee for accomplishing tasks of recording/distributing copies of Sunday or special services? It was noted that recorded sermons are not currently kept in archives.

 

Next Meetings:

Tuesday, Nov 7th, 7:30pm. Review survey results and begin planning Advent communication.

Tuesday, Nov 28th, 7:30pm. Final Advent planning and discuss framework for the future communications group.

Tuesday, Dec 12th, 7:30pm. Wrap-up meeting for this team. Review materials we are passing on to the new group.

 

Minutes by Jerry Niebaum from notes by Michelle Parmley