Marketing and Communication

This Signpost’s activities build a community of faith’s confidence that its story is worth telling. Communities of faith learn to focus first on their offering, and then grow into the ‘how’ and ‘what’ they are telling. They’ll understand the importance of recognizing that we are story people and see how communities of faith that practice storytelling use qualitative and quantitative pieces of their stories to add credibility to their work.

Use this Signpost to learn about how your community of faith can:

• Acknowledge its critical role and relevance in the neighbourhood, confident that the world has a hopeful future - Communities of faith always have and always will have something to offer to that hopeful future.
• Understand the importance of its story - Communities of faith everywhere can gain a sense of the work God is doing in and through their presence in the world and share that story with others.
• Develop a communication plan that lets it communicate effectively with diverse stakeholders - As your community of faith learns to effectively communicate with people seeing the world through different lenses, it will reposition and reprioritize how it looks at communications.
• Plan and host a Community of Faith Story Café - The Story Café helps communities of faith to practice storytelling and deep listening, and to gain clarity around the story that God tells in and through your ministry.
• Develop a Theory of Change - Understanding the Theory of Change and its importance helps a community of faith with storytelling. When a community of faith can name the components of its theory of change (problem, vision, etc.) and create a joint vision of the community of faith, it can tell its story more effectively.

"Marketing and Communications" is #5 of EDGE's "Signposts", but can be taken at any point in the series or as a stand-alone course. If you require a group license for this Signpost, please contact Sarah at slevis@united-church.ca.