No matter how great an activity is or how spiritual your upcoming retreat will be, if no one knows about it you’re in trouble. Promoting events is not something that is usually listed on the job description. But its one of those vital “shadow duties” that often can make or break a ministry. If people don’t know what is going on, they are less likely to buy into your ministry. On the other hand, if your activities are well promoted and people see what is going on, it can build excitement and move things in the right direction.

When promoting stuff in your ministry, the first thing you need to consider is the message. If you’ve ever watched a TV commercial, its all about getting people interested. Marketing is about getting people interested. If someone doesn’t see the value in coming to your retreat, then they won’t care how much it costs. So, in how you communicate something, be sure to first and foremost tell WHY a student should want to come. Once you’ve established the WHY, you should let the students know the other relevant details (When, where, who, how much).

The next thing you need to consider is how you’re going to promote in. In this modern era of communication, we have literally hundreds of ways to get our message out. You can try to cover them all, from email to Morse code, but you’ll then be spending all your time communicating and nothing else. Pick a handful of effective methods, and stick with them. Also, you need to consider parents in the communication equation. Just because you’ve told your students 100 times doesn’t mean their parents have ever heard whats going on. So be sure to devote some time to broadcasting your info to your parents. I recommend gearing promotion towards each group INDIVIDUALLY, and not try to hit both with the same methods.

So with that in mind, here are some of the ways I’ve used to communicate with both teens and parents.

I know there are many other ways to communicate, but these are the ones that seem to get the most traction. Like I said earlier, pick a handful that you feel would work best and go with them. Once you figure that out, you need to train your students and parents to look in those spots. I don’t know how many times i have promoted an event in the newsletter, announcements, bulletin, emails, phone calls, take home sheets, post cards, and smoke signals and the day after an event a parent or student comes up and says, “You never told us about this!” Its in those times that I wish I had invested in the “Tattoo on the forehead” communication method. Just have a consistent approach and communicate in those ways, and when invariably someone comes up to you sayings “I didn’t know…” you can firmly but gracefully point towards what you’ve done and tell them thats how they can hear about it next time.

In what ways do you communicate with students and parents in your ministry?