Pastor Appreciation: How Your School Can Improve Your Church Relations

Pastor Appreciation: How Your School Can Improve Your Church Relations

The vast majority of my consulting work is with PK12 Christian schools. While there are things that any private school can garner from this post, I do admit the target audience for this article is a Christian school.

Whether you are reading this during “Pastor Appreciation Month” (traditionally in October in the U.S.) or any time dduring the year, I share these ideas so that your school can improve its relationships with local pastors and ministers.

REALITY (as I have heard it expressed to me repeatedly by Christian schools around the country for the past 5 years): while Christian schools were once the education “darling” of the church, in recent years, independent Christian schools (ones that are separate from any church or denomination) have seen less support coming from pastors, minister, and youth staff. Even some have said to me that the relationships have gone “cold” or “antagonistic”.

Why?

From what I can tell, this stems from the classic categorization of the Christian school as a “bubble” – isolated from the rest of the community. For evangelical churches, isolationism is the enemy of evangelism and I believe too many Christian schools have not done enough to recharacterize their school image so that pastors see them as reinforcement institutions rather than as institutions that perpetuate a disconnect between the Christian community and the people they want to reach.

I do not have time in this article to prescribe exact solutions to specific situations that some of you are facing. However, it would serve you well to reinforce your relations with the pastoral community. I once worked with a Christian school who had not had a sit-down conversation with any local pastor in over 5 years. I am not advocating some sort of manipulation game or relationship schmoozing. Schools that are intentional at cultivating strong relationships with the pastoral community seek to do so to improve church relations, establish camaraderie between the pastoral staff and the members of said church who send their kids to your school, and see themselves within a fellowship of impact players in the community.

  • USE OUR SPACE – other than liability constraints that might exist, consider opening your campus facilities to the various churches in your community. They may not have a gymasium where they can play their organized basketball league (they might even have the opportunity to create one if they had the space). Invite churches to use your performance hall for interdenominational youth gatherings. Even better, have your school host a monthly or quarterly gathering of area pastors for a time of prayer for ALL area schools and a meal. Consider inviting an inspirational speaker that will feed the minds of these ministers who need a neutral place to receive encouraged.
  • SOLICIT THEIR ADVICE – I never have met a pastor or youth minister who wasn’t looking for additional audiences with which to share their wisdom and biblical counsel (I know from experience that preaching and teaching lessons leave a lot of material on the cutting room floor simply because the clock says there’s no time to share it all). Invite pastors to speak to your student assemblies or chapel programs. Bring them in to inspire your staff (when your own words seem to fall on deaf ears). Utilize youth pastors as character coaches on your football teams. Host events for parents who need wisdom on “empathaizing with teens” (believe me, this is not natural as a parent – youth staff have a special place in heaven because they know how to do this). Extend an invitation to a local minister to write on such topics on your school blog or rotate interviews with area youth pastors who could deliver some relevant content to parents via a Head of School podcast (here’s why your Head of School should have podcast in Part 1 and Part 2 of the School Marketing Podcast).
  • TREAT THEM SPECIAL – especially during the month of October (again, “Pastor Appreciation Month” in the U.S.), consider hosting a luncheon for area pastors and youth ministers. If some of their congregation’s youth attend your school, invite the students to attend the luncheon and speak on “Why My Minister Is Amazing” (cheesy title, but you get the point). Take pictures with the students and their pastor(s) at the luncheon and post them on Facebook and Instagram (if your school prides itself on being multidenominational, this is a great way to demonstrate that evidence). Send customized appreciation notes from your Head of School to every pastor and/or youth minister of every church represented at your school. Have your Student Council visit area restaurants or coffee shops and ask them to donate a free meal or latte (especially the local, non-franchise spots will be eager to do this to advertise their business to new customers). Customize a T-shirt for the youth pastors that say “_________ Christian School Students Like the Free Food I Bring Them When I Speak At Their Chapel” (or something witty that compels the youth pastor to where it for fun).

Especially for Christian schools, pastors and youth ministers need to be a part of your word-of-mouth marketing network. Perhaps they are, but are they saying good things about you?

If you need help figuring out how to improve your community relationships and implement a customized enrollment marketing system, click here and I want to give you a free 45-minute phone consultation to give you some ideas.

NOTE: Here’s a tongue-in-cheek article written by a pastor himself on “What NOT to Get Your Pastor for Pastor Appreciation Month“. (smile)

Randy 

Get started! Randy Vaughn

 

Enlarge your school’s marketing army with this little secret

While Twitter and especially Instagram occupy the mobile devices of most of your young students and young families, most Christian school marketers still need to reach their audience through the most common network: Facebook.

Of course if you are at all familiar with Facebook, you know their algorithm changes often and lately, your posts are definitely not reaching 100% of the people who have liked your page. If you’re an admin of your Facebook Page, you probably see your actual reach significantly lower than the number of likes on your page. Discouraging, but reality. (On a side note, consider increasing high quality, shareable, remarkable content that your audience will like, comment and share. If you are not getting this “triple play” on your posts, then consider changing up your content. In addition, boosting your posts will help also help extend the reach of your posts. You can set a budget and this can work well – not for every post, but on some important ones.)

Enlarge your Christian school's marketing army with this little secret

One trick I suggest is to form a secret Facebook group (that’s Facebook’s language, not mine…click here to learn about the different types of groups  you can set up). When you set your group as “secret”:

  • Anyone can be added but they have to be added or invited by a member
  • Only current members can see who is in the group
  • Only current members can see what is posted in the group
  • Current members can get notifications when something is posted in group

Using a secret Facebook group for marketing your school

  • As the admissions/marketing/communication director, you (and you alone) should invite specific staff members or parent ambassadors to join this secret Facebook group. Invite a small group at first, so you can see how it works. Start small with trusted parents and staff who can be trusted.
  • Now, whenever your school’s Facebook page posts something, you should go to the group and make a posting about the new content. Encourage the group members to like, comment and share the new post that your school’s page just posted (if necessary, include the link to the post). Since the Facebook algorithm limits your reach, this ensures that your best ambassadors see the content.
  • Group members receive notifications for every group post (and these notifications serve as reminders, even a day or two later, to take action).
  • Not just on Facebook, but when there is a new review on GreatSchools.org, something new on Twitter or Instagram, you can alert your members to share the content. You can also send urgent notifications when there is a negative review on your Google page, hopefully spurring members to write a review themselves or call out to their cavalry of friends to post positive reviews (on GreatSchools.org, they are currently listing the latest 10 reviews, so you want to be diligent to get that negative review pushed to page 2 as quickly as possible; or at least pushed way down the page where it gets “lost” among so many positive reviews).
  • You can also use your Facebook group to alert members of other marketing-related activities….for example, signups for video testimony day (which I suggest you do).
  • As well, members of the group can post content or ask questions of the group (and while the discussion shows up in your news feed, it is not visible on anyone else’s feed). Perhaps an ambassador parent hears another mom at Starbucks talking about a great success story, then the members can alert the professional staff to contact that family to share their story on a video or in a new blog post. Or a parent sees a good article elsewhere on the web that would help your school marketing. If members wanted to collectively brainstorm about a new marketing campaign, this secret group would provide an easy forum for sharing without having to assemble the group in person (who’s got time for another meeting?)

Setting up a secret Facebook group of your school’s marketing professionals and parent ambassadors can give you a marketing army who can help you market your school even better!

-Randy

If you want to discuss this idea further with me, please sign up for a free 30-minute phone consultation and let’s talk about how this can help you!

BONUS: Here’s a more lengthy article on how to set up the secret group (with step-by-step instructions and screenshots…although they may be outdated since FB changes so often): http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-use-secret-facebook-groups-to-enhance-your-business/

Having a strong crisis response #schoolpr #crisispr

The recent evil in Newtown, CT, shocked our nation.  Stunned by the tragedy that took so many innocent lives, our nation will grieve this for a while.  Why?  Because it is centered around the place our children are at almost 8 hours a day….school.

In the wake of this recent events, but also triggered by a few regional and local school communications situations, I thought I would carefully offer a few suggestions on ensuring a sound crisis response from your school: (more…)