It wasn’t too long ago that opening a bulletin on Sunday morning at Cornerstone unleashed a flood of colorful sheets of paper. Each sheet had a different announcement on it, and the worshipers were expected to consume each one.

Since those days, we have narrowed our focus on Sunday morning and throughout our communication strategy. Our goal is to make what we produce uncluttered, accurate and consistent. These are three qualities that our communication team knows are important to communicate effectively.

• Uncluttered- Every day we are bombarded with hundreds of messages; email, text messages, phone calls, junk in our mailbox, TV commercials… you know what I’m talking about. We don’t need to bombard our church family with more stuff. As a communication team we try to measure how much we say, how we say it and how often it is said in an effort to keep it uncluttered.
• Accurate- Accuracy in communication is about credibility. If the information we provide is not accurate, eventually our audience will lose trust in what we are saying and ignore us. Our goal is to have the basic information available and accurate for each event or program so our audience can easily take a next step to get involved.
• Consistent- We have only a few ways we communicate so people looking for information know where it can be found. Our website is our main focus of communication. To reinforce the information on the website, we have an electronic newsletter, banners in our building, an Information Desk, Cornerstone Community Buzz, Sunday morning bulletin, social networking and the occasional mail piece or bulk email. These are all secondary venues used to recycle and strengthen the information on our website.

Our ultimate message of hope and love in Christ is the most important message ever. It is very important for us to do what we do well. If we overload our audience with stuff, eventually we will be ignored. Doing it well for Cornerstone means effectively keeping it uncluttered, accurate and consistent.