2018-2020 Communications Plan
Announcement Part 1
From October 2018's Issue of the Journey
I have been working hard the last few months with Dr. Bill Miller, our Church Council Chair, Rev. Mike, and with some of the members of the Communications Committee to create a new in-depth communications plan.
We have the communications plan broken up into two phases. Phase one is starting now in October and will go from now until January 1st of 2019. Phase two will start January 1st 2019 and will last until January 1st 2020.
In my article this month I want to talk about what Communications has done since 2016 and I will also talk about what phase one of the plan will entail, then next month I will explain phase two.
Over the last 2 years Communications with the help of the Trustees and Church Council, have reimagined this newsletter and named it “The Journey”, we began Live Streaming our Sanctuary Service weekly, we created a new website, we updated the church logo to show that we are United Methodist, and we created the template for Rev. Mike’s weekly email “The Weekly Journey”. We upgraded our video and audio equipment, built a TV Studio on the third floor, created new brochures, and we created our new Bi-Weekly webseries “The Elm Park Journey” with Diana Howe. We have been focused on explaining Elm Park UMC’s story and mission to not only the people inside our church but to the people outside of the church as well and that focus is expressed even more in our new Communications plan.
During phase one of the plan which again will be from October 2018 until January 2019, we will be unveiling our new Online Giving so even if you miss church one week you can still give, we will be making visual changes to “The Journey” to make it so the newsletter looks more professional and we will be intentionally making the newsletter look ahead rather then looking at things that have already happened. We will be adding hymns and a new intro to the weekly Live Stream, we will be updating the website to have a new “Welcome” page so new visitors to the website see what the inside of the church looks like and so they see what the mission of the church is.
We will also be condensing our Facebook pages from four down to one so that you will only have to check one page instead of multiple. We will be creating new Instagram and Twitter pages so that we get news out on any and all platforms that you or someone new might use. Another exciting thing that is going to happen over the next few weeks and months is that we are going to start Live Streaming on Facebook as well as YouTube so that anyone on either platform will be able to watch our services.
Lastly, during phase one of the plan we will be recruiting and training new members for our Media Team so that we have more then enough people working and making sure everything runs smoothly for Rev. Mike during all three services.
All of this is just the start of our Communications plan and we will be announcing each new thing when they are released. The Communications Committee, Dr. Miller, Rev. Mike, and myself are extremely excited for this plan and our hope is that with this plan, we can be better at getting news, announcements, and who we are out not only to all of you in the church but to people who haven’t come to church before or may not know what we do here. So I hope you look forward to next month when I will explain what phase two of the Communications Plan will entail.
- Wesley Bealla
Communications Chair
Announcement Part 2
From November 2018's Issue of the Journey
In last month’s issue of “The Journey” I talked about and announced phase one of the Communications Plan that we will be following from now until the year 2020. Phase one is already started and will carry us until January of 2019. If you missed last month's article about the phase one we will be posting it on the communications page on the church website very shortly.
Like I said in the last issue phase two of the plan will carry us from January of 2019 until January of 2020. In phase two we will be realigning our Communications and Media teams. The reason for this is to align the members of the teams to better fulfill the positions we have and need on the teams. Another part of phase two is to purchase and install atleast two 70—80 inch tv’s for the sanctuary. These tv’s would be on carts so we could wheel them anywhere in the church for meetings and events and they would be used during the 10:00 service for PowerPoints with the hymns and scriptures on them, for announcements before the services, and finally to also show some of the camera shots we use on the weekly live stream in house.
Another exciting part of phase two is that we will be creating an church app where you will be able to find a copy of this newsletter, a copy of Rev. Mike’s weekly email, the church calendar, news, contact information, and a place where you will be able to link to our website and social media pages.
We will also begin to work with Rev. Mike, Diana Howe, and the church’s Education Committee to create new online bible studies, and trainings not only for our church but for some of the other churches in our conference as well. This will make it easier for more people to be able to be apart for our learning offerings here at Elm Park.
Come early next year we will also be expanding the availability of “The Journey” meaning that we will return to mailing this newsletter to all of the church shut-ins, committee chairs and members, and anyone else who would like to “opt in” to get it printed and mailed. That being said we will continue to email it monthly on the first of the month, so if you are on our email list for the Journey you will receive it before the mailed version is out, and the online version will also have extra information in most issues to add to the information each month. This will make it so that more of our members will know what is going on in the church and so more people feel involved in the church.
Lastly phase two will see us update some of our Live Stream equipment so we can continue to evolve our weekly Sunday live stream to be better and easier for you. I hope you are at least half as excited as I am for both phases of the communications plan. There will be a lot happening over the course of this plan and we are hoping it is for the better. Like I said in the last issue of “The Journey” we will explain a little more about each part of phase one and two in later issues when we get each of the parts started and working.
- Wesley Bealla
Communications Chair
