Church Communications Needs a Calmer Center
Not another frantic system. A more faithful way to help people know what matters next.
For more than 25 years, I’ve watched churches try to communicate important things with limited time, limited staff, and a whole lot of heart.
A Sunday message. A ministry opportunity. A sign-up deadline. A funeral meal. A youth event. A mission trip. A story worth celebrating. A next step someone really needs to hear.
Most churches are not suffering from a lack of activity.
But many churches are suffering from a lack of clarity.
And that is understandable.
There have never been more tools available to churches. Websites, email platforms, giving systems, calendars, livestreaming tools, design apps, social media, church management systems, forms, automations, and now AI layered on top of all of it.
Some of those tools are genuinely helpful.
But for a pastor, ministry assistant, volunteer, or church communicator trying to keep up with everything, it can feel like every important piece of information lives in a different room.
The announcement is in a text thread.
The graphic request is in someone’s inbox.
The event details are in Planning Center.
The website update is waiting on somebody else.
The social post is half-written.
The registration link is somewhere, probably.
Meanwhile, real people are trying to figure out what is happening, where to show up, and how to take the next faithful step.
I keep coming back to this conviction:
Church communication is not a distraction from ministry. Done well, it is part of how people are reached, welcomed, cared for, and invited into the life of the church.
That does not mean every church needs to become slick, corporate, or obsessed with platforms. And even when I was actively planting a church, we refused to use the word “excellence” in our core values because the endless pursuit of it is often a barrier to authentic human connection.
That said, church communications leaders need help. Keeping up is hard work, and the work church communications leaders are doing matters. Eternally.
That is the heart behind the Church Comms Dashboard.
I started building websites for churches around the year 2000. I did the hardest way possible until 2005, when I figured out how to use Wordpress as a content management system (CMS) to power our church’s website (before Wordpress was even considered a true CMS and not just a “blogging platform”).
Today, Wordpress powers about 42% of all websites.
Yes. All.
Church Comms Dashboard is a WordPress plugin for churches that need a clearer place to manage communication requests, planning, approvals, brand resources, sermon and message workflows, and the practical details that help church communication move from scattered to sane.
But the software is not really the main point.
The deeper question is this:
What would it look like for church communication to feel less frantic and more faithful?
What would it look like to build systems that serve people instead of exhausting them?
What would it look like for the website, the announcements, the calendar, the emails, and the stories to work together toward one simple goal: helping people know what matters and what to do next?
I wrote a fuller version of this reflection, including more about what I’m building and why, over at BrandonAcox.com:
And if you are part of a church, nonprofit, or ministry team trying to bring more clarity to your communication, I’d love for you to follow along. This is the kind of work I’ll be writing more about there.
Church communications does not need more chaos.
It needs a calmer center.
PS - If you read all of that and you happen to be a fellow WordPress nerd or a church communications specialist in any capacity, and you would be interested in becoming a beta tester of the Church Comms Dashboard plugin, I would really appreciate the help. and the first 25 beta testers will be given lifetime access to all premium plug-in features for life for one organization.