7 Project Management Tips for Church Communicators

7 Project Management Tips for Church Communicators

October 10, 2016 by

How do you manage work that matters? Coming up with a solid system for project management is vital for church communicators. A recent #cmschat on Twitter covered project management, and we pulled out some of the best ideas.

In general, effective project management should help us work smarter, not harder.

If projects are always needed last-minute, that’s a good sign you need to set up a process.

Project Management Tips:

  1. Use online forms for communication requests. Don’t let people stop you in the hallway—that’s a good way for things to get lost. Point them to an online communication request form. Here are a few examples:
  2. How soon can I get this? If projects are always needed last-minute or with a very short lead time, that’s a good sign you need to set up a process. It might be a good idea to share your standard delivery times so ministries can plan accordingly.
  3. Ask standard questions: What’s the goal? Who’s the audience? What’s the deadline? What absolutely must be communicated? What value does this program/event/project/whatever offer?
  4. Staff buy-in: Get your team on board with a process by explaining why it will help them, not just you.
  5. Tools: Find the right tool to track and manage all your projects and deadlines. Asana, Teamwork, Basecamp, Trello, TeamGantt, Slack and Adobe art boards are just a few of the tools that can help.
  6. The juggling act: How do you decide what takes priority? For some churches it’s reach and impact, for others it’s timing and capacity. Sometimes it comes down to budget or what the senior pastor wants.
  7. Quality control: Ask ministries for a written sign-off on completed projects—this encourages them to take responsibility and look at it closely. Use Frame.io for video and image approvals. Always proofread.

Thanks to everyone who joined the #cmschat and shared their ideas. You can join the #cmschat every week on Twitter.

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Kevin D. Hendricks


When Kevin isn't busy as the editor of Church Marketing Sucks, he runs his own writing and editing company, Monkey Outta Nowhere. Kevin has been blogging since 1998, runs the hyperlocal site West St. Paul Reader, and has published several books, including 137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading, The Stephanies and all of our church communication books.
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One Response to “7 Project Management Tips for Church Communicators”

  • Joe Chiappetta
    November 2, 2016

    This is a great starter list for managing church projects using mostly volunteer workers. In fact, it is really thorough. We are doing a training for our leaders on project management in our group and the only thing I might add to your list is to “Confirm alignment with organizational mission.” I realize that this in implied in a number of your points, but with volunteers, I believe the topic needs to be covered head-on.


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