How To Avoid A PR Disaster At Your Church: Part 1

Steve Fogg 12th May 2010 Public Relations

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What comes to your mind when you think of the car manufacturer Volvo?

I would bet words like safety, realiability, Swedish would come to mind, right? Everyone I've spoken to has said that the No.1 word they associate Volvo with is safety.

Volvo know this of course, they leverage their whole brand off it. So it was no surprise when the it was reported that they had developed a brilliant new safety feature called 'Collision Avoidance with Full Auto Brake technology'. Basically, the car senses if you are about to crash and applies the brakes before you can respond. Smart huh?

To demonstrate this new feature Volvo invited the world's media (who came armed with cameras) to show it off. You can check out the video here.

I'm sure no one expected what happened next. The demonstration didn't work. The car crashed.

It takes years to build a reputation and a moment to lose it all.

I bet you are a bit more interested in checking out the video now eh?

Everyone who saw that video or heard the news report – their perception of Volvo will of changed in that moment. It is going to take time for Volvo to rebuild their reputation, in the meantime they will lose sales, customers and good will.

Its the same for churches. Every church has hundreds of opportunities to lose its reputation. Every. Single. Day.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What can possibly go wrong? What is the worst thing that could happen in my ministry/church?
Who is responsible for fixing it, or making the event/story work?
What 'plan B' do we have in place if something goes wrong?
Who is responsible for actioning that plan if its needed, and do they have every resource on standby ready to go?
What policies do we have in place that would prevent this from happening. If it happens, what policies and procedures do we have in place to help bring healing/reconciliation/legal restitution or closure.

Here are some areas you definately should be asking those questions in:

Childrens Ministry
Counselling
Senior Pastor/church staff
Church Board

It's not just in the big ticket 'positional' items you can lose your reputation.

You can lose your reputation every time you:

Don't fulfill a brand promise to someone who checked you out on your 'our church is friendly' website and no one spoke to them when they turned up.
Your staff hear about staffing issues for the first time on a Sunday or at a church business meeting.
Don't make a deadline for a ministry partner.
Promise that you'll contact a volunteer and don't.

What do you think?

Have you been on the wrong end of losing reputation in a church?

What other areas that are vulnerable to reputation damage?

Tune in tomorrow where I'll be sharing on what you can do to turn around a disaster.

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3 Comments

Philip Brookes - May 13th, 2010 at 10:15 am
Interesting thoughts – however, I have to say that if I were walking in the front door of a church I would be disappointed, nay, horrified, if the people I met were working to satisfy a marketing team’s ‘brand promise’. You can be assured I’d turn around and walk straight back out (in fact, I have – from Crossway).
If an article that really is about church integrity and reputation never once mentions God, the indwelling of the Spirit, character, and indeed integrity, I wish you all the best but I can guarantee you’re doomed already, because your focus in on the wrong things.
Like any concert or event organiser, a church can attract people if they throw enough resources into their marketing and put on a good show. Just because the numbers are there doesn’t mean there’s life in the church. I think maybe it’s time to come back to (in marketing speak) the “Unique Selling Proposition”, and is that in fact inextricably linked to the real purpose of a church?
Your purpose is not to bring people to church.
Your purpose is to win hearts to Christ. The Biblical approach to this is through the personal testimony and witness of changed lives, and the supernatural working of the Holy Spirit. Reputation is not the issue. Reputation flows automatically from these things. And if your reputation takes a battering, a policy to minimise the damage to your reputation should be the least of your concerns – instead, you need to go to the cause of the rot and deal with that.
Steve Fogg - May 13th, 2010 at 11:05 am
Thanks for you comment Phillip.
As I serve in a church I don’t always feel the need to have to overtly state that we are all about Jesus, God and the Holy Spirit.
Again, I don’t feel the need to overtly state this in every post, but I can if you want me to. Our focus and mission as a church is definately to introduce people to Jesus. Some people will encounter Jesus for the first time at church, some through conversations with friends who attend our church.
I think I’d disagree with you that reputation would just come out of personal testimony of God and changed lives. We don’t live in a world where people will look at churches without prejudice. People throw mud at mission minded churches all the time, sometimes without cause, sometimes with cause. Churches do need to be prepared how to respond and prevent something bad from happening through good policy.
Policies are very good things that are put in place to protect and serve people and the church (Policies aren’t created to minimise damage to reputation – but it can certainly protect reputation) It’s not about covering stuff up, or focusing on minimising damage to a churches brand. It’s about protect and serving people well.
Good policies actually help prevent horrible things from happening. For example a good policy is that everyone who works with children has a working with children police check before they start. Another good policy is that there are guidelines in place on how volunteers interact with children while serving in ministry.
Good policy is in fact good ministry praxis. A natural by-product of good policy is the enhancement of a church’s reputation because people will rightfully trust that church as being competent to look after their children.
Neil Nuttall - May 13th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Let me preface what I’m going to say by saying that I’m neither a marketing nor missions genius.
At a small church that I used to attend, I was a member of the diaconate. Naturally we were concerned that people who came through our doors for the first time would have a sufficiently positive experience so as to come back time and again. This wasn’t a numbers game to simple get more people warming pews (and dropping coins in the offering plate), but to ensure that there was sufficient opportunity for them to become connected to a community, be ministered to and be discipled.
There was just one problem. We weren’t particularly welcoming. As much as they should have, our people weren’t reaching out to visitors and newcomers and striking up conversations so as to begin connecting with people. A welcoming policy was the answer. As a diaconate we put in place and enacted a policy whereby we (the deacons) would identify any visitors/newcomers and go say good-morning to them (and strike up a conversation).
Cold and clinical? Maybe. But what it was, was a policy that kept us accountable to a Gospel mandate that we should be welcoming.
Doing this was the difference in having a reputation of being warm and welcoming verses being cold and rude. I think I can hazard a guess as to which reputation Christ would like His church to have, and by having the correctly policies in place we can manage (or steward, if you prefer) it, so as to honor Him and the mission of the church.