|
Church Directories...your thoughts
 |
Tossing around ideas of doing one at our church. Wanted to know what my peers consensus is on this undertaking...worth it or not?
our church is two campuses-about 900 members. Have not had a directory in about six years and several smaller members ago.
Eddie
Posted at 10:23AM, 2 April 2008 PDT
(
permalink
)
|
 |
if your church is growing, it seems like it would become outdated very quickly.
maybe just a simple text based one would suffice?
Originally posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
russhutto edited this topic 4 months ago.
|
 |
I'm not to fond of them. THe company that we went through to have it "designed" we had to do 100% of the design work because their stuff was an eyesore.
They can be kinda fun to look back and see everyone but really by the time we had everything done most stuff was outdated.
And plus, we had some members who were in MLM's and sales who would call everyone using that directory for sales calls. Ticked some people off.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
Not worth the time, in my opinion. The last one we did was entirely done in-house. We didn't want our people to feel pressured by the Olan Mills guy. Scheduling sittings was a nightmare, it took about 3 months start to finish to get it finished. By the time we published, we had people who left the church, moved, or got married. Complete goat rodeo, and not worth the effort.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
Church directories are evil.
Though it is ideal to do the whole thing in-house using the Lifetouch or Olan Mills people to manage the nightmare is the best use of staff time. Some vendors will offer to do it online which the MLM people would adore.
With that said... You run into very severe security problems. You have to be extremely careful when publishing peoples personal contact information. Frankly, the whole project is not worth the effort and they get dated immediately once published.
At least these are the reasons I give when the subject is brought up by on of our pastors. Thankfully, our senior pastor agrees with me.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
|
Thanks for the input guys! I appreciate your insight and will use this information in the decision.
Eddie
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
Yeah it ain't worth all that money and time.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
I can't even keep up with our Staff Directory.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
I wouldn't say that it is worthwhile, at all. There are only a few benefits i can see to having one:
1. Contact information/networking among members
2. Showing off a congregation to those who aren't congregants
#2 doesn't seem like a noble thing to be doing. General feeling: who cares? And there seems to be a better way of accomplishing #1. Real, effective networking methods are no longer done that way. Strikes me as waaay old fashioned.
I would take the energy that you would take creating a maintaining a church directory (which is, based on my experience and those here, probably a long time) and devote it to teaching your people how to be social using new means. They want to network with others? There are already things like Facebook for that. Do they want to keep in touch and communicate? Blogs are even better. Honestly, the church directory accomplishes a social network in a bubble, behind walls. And what it seems we need more of is plugging our churches back into the ways the world communicates. They are forgetting, slowly but surely, how everyone else does things. And how many places would a printed network like this fly? Yeah.
My $0.02
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
if I get one more mailer from a Realtor in our congregation, I'm going to burn it onstage
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
Wow. Could I be the lone voice of dissent here? We just did one, and we did it because the last one was done 9 years ago. We've been way overdue. Olan Mills set it up, we had sign ups in the Atrium over a number of Sundays, and classrooms were used over a number of evenings. One staff person, who loves logistics and taking on projects that require great organization, was our point person.
Our church is quite large. I've been on the staff for 8 years and there are lay leaders whose names I may know, but, because we offer a number of styles of worship, I never see them, and couldn't begin to tell you what they look like. I really really like having our pictorial guide. I get emails from people and like to look up their pictures before calling them back, because there's a decent chance I didn't recognize their name. But because I'm up front as a worship leader I may well recognize their face. The pictorial directory really helps me match them.
My wife just poked her head in the room. I asked her the question posed above. She said, with a smile, "I really like ours. I look at it a lot more than I thought I would."
And we're a generationally divided - and did I mention huge? - church. Facebook and blogs aren't really the answer for us. Plug our church back into the ways the world communicates, you say? Well, most important is for us, the church leaders, to know how the church communicates, not the world. (Such blasphemy on a church marketing site!) At least for an "in-house" piece like this. These folks don't read their news online. They get it thrown on their doorstep every morning. It all comes down to a matter of demographics. And in our very divided demographic, a directory is a great, and worthwhile, solution.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
|
@Robert the Red: I'll concede that the generational divide does cause a dilemma when it comes to using new/better forms of communication. So in those instances, I guess older, more traditional means need to be used.
Now, re: my so-called blasphemy. My point was (and maybe I didn't make this clear enough) that many of us already know how the church communicates: badly. Heck, that's why we're here. The world, on the other hand, is very very good at it. Some parts better than others, but I hope you see the point. There is a difference between being in the world and appreciating what the world does well. We in the church marketing world have a lot to learn from the way the world communicates. There are lots of problems with how it communicates, sure (greed, manipulation, and misrepresentation for example) but it is also our job to filter out those things which aren't good, discern them from the good things, and learn from what we can.
Hopefully you don't still consider what I said to be "blasphemy" on this site :).
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
I'm not crazy about them. Kind of seems like a "Church Yearbook".
They get outdated very quickly. My story is that between the time of them taking my picture and the publication I was married, moved three times and had left the church.
On the other hand, they're useful to someone who is relatively new and knows very few people outside their "small group". Being new to a church myself I'm looking forward to seeing who people are and who fits in what family.
Of course this is due to laziness on my behalf :)
Ryan has some interesting points about church communication. Although I would say that the world communicates poorly ...but the intentions are far clearer. When the directory is used for sales calls it's hardly edifying to the church family. Church is not a reciprocity club and some people don't get that.
This is similar to the discussion about bringing in non-Christian professional musicians or marketing firms to help you perform functions. It can definitely increase the quality of what is being presented, yet it can also muddy the water of intent.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
|
Interesting ideas, and avenues I hadn't thought of...again thanks for your time to respond and assist in this thought process.
E
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
It may be due to my inner-cityness or maybe because I come from a small church, but what's the big deal with doing a directory with just name, address,telephone number and e-mail address?
Why the pictures and all the hassles that come with it? Stop making mountains out of molehills.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
We still do a church directory. We just have lifetouch or one of those other cheesy outfits with annoying salesmen come in and do it. The only thing I do is design the cover and layout a couple introduction/ministry pages at the front. We have a lot of older people in our church who don't know what "online" is. We're a small town and everyone is in the phone book anyhow, so we've never had any security issues there.
The big advantage to us is that new members can get a directory to help them learn/remember who everyone is. As a growing church, we do one about every two years.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
We print a basic directory (names, addresses, phone #'s) every year in January, and do a pictorial directory every 3-4 years. Pictorial directories really don't cost much to do so we still do them.
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
 |
We do a non-photo phone/address directory at my church. I'm not on staff, and I probably use it at least once a week. Now that we've grown to more than 400 a week in average attendance and I know a lot of people just by their first name it would be helpful to be able to put a face with each name, but I think for my church a photo directory would take more time, effort, and money than it would be worth.
Doing an onine directory has a lot of appeal because of the cost savings and because (IMO) you don't need a professional photographer to do web-quality photos.
Doing it in an existing social network like Facebook would be cool - a lot of my friends from church are Facebook friends and we have a Facebook group for our church. However, it really only serves to help us communicate with people who are already friends.
I think there could be a better option available using a content management system (CMS) for the church's website. Our church uses Joomla for its website. Joomla has a component called Community Builder which allows users to create their own profiles. I think you could get a critical mass of church members to create profiles to make it useful.
It only takes about 2 minutes to create a simple profile and upload a picture to it, so it would even be possible to create profiles for people who can't/don't do it on their own after services.
- Paul
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
|
Ryan - I was suggesting that my words were blasphemy, not yours :)
Posted 4 months ago.
(
permalink
)
|
Would you like to comment?
Sign up for a free account, or sign in (if you're already a member).
|
|
Church Marketing Lab (beta) /
Discuss
Feed – Subscribe to Church Marketing Lab (beta) discussion threads
Flickr Blog |
About Flickr |
Terms of Use |
Your Privacy |
Copyright/IP Policy | Report Abuse
|
Deutsch
|
English
|
Español
|
Français
|
|
Italiano
|
Português
Copyright © 2008 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Save to del.icio.us