Why Does Communication Matter?

If you use words, you communicate for Cross Roads Church. Emails, social media, conversations… they’re all opportunities for you to represent our church, our leaders, and ultimately, Jesus. Let’s do it well! It’s worth our time and effort to communicate with excellence.

Good Communication Removes Roadblocks

Whether it's getting people to take part in an event or just try Cross Roads Church for the very first time, communication can help you reach your goals. These values, best practices, and guidelines are here to help you remove obstacles that might get in the way of people taking their next steps toward Jesus.

Our Communication Values

• We’re advocates for our audience: Our communication makes people’s lives easier, not more difficult. We’re on their side and put their interests before our own.

• We’re not sucky: If it’s worth putting into words, it’s worth getting right. We communicate with excellence.

• We’re user-friendly: We answer: who, what, when, where, why, and how? We include easy-to-find information for any next steps. Clear beats clever.

• We avoid insider lingo: We won’t use words that are hard to understand. We avoid or explain Cross Roads terms and any phrases that may be confusing to someone who has never stepped inside a church.

• We say less to communicate more: We keep it brief, knowing people are much more likely to engage with concise content.

• We don’t sell: We understand people tune out advertising and manipulation. We inform, cast vision, and share experience. We describe real outcomes that can benefit our audience.

• We’re dependable: We reinforce excellence by being consistent in our messages, in our style, and across channels.

• We’ve got personality: We let it shine through in our communication by being timely, passionate, genuine, and intentional.

Best Practices

1. Get a second set of eyes on it

Have a qualified proofreader look over your piece. Typos and misspelled words undermine a beautifully crafted piece. Not only is this a best practice, it’s a must practice.

• Have a goal: For every piece of communication, before you do anything else, determine the goal. Do whatever is needed to gain clarity about the desired outcome and keep it in front of you during the entire creation process.

• Add an evaluation step: Once the piece goes out, it’s important to look back and ask whether it met its intended goal. What can we learn for future pieces?

• Know your audience: The group we’re talking to determines how we approach our communication. What is their experience with us? Put yourself in their shoes and communicate based on their perspective.

• Don’t load people down with too much at once: Maybe you need to delay communicating one message so another has a better chance of getting through. Or it might mean you only present the first step in a process instead of five action items.

• Choose the right channel: Your message and your goal should determine the communication channel you use, whether it’s a text message, video, email, social media post, etc. For example, if people need to take action online, an online method of communication might be the best choice.

• Consider context: Where is your content going to live? What else is being talked about there? Does what you’re communicating conflict with that? Does it duplicate that? Is it out of place there?

2. Lead with the most important thing

Don’t bury key information under several sentences or paragraphs. Use an inverted pyramid style: keep the most important, foundational information at the top.

• Cut, cut, cut!: Avoid redundancy and wordiness. Once you write a piece, see how much you can eliminate without losing meaning.

• Use an active voice when possible: An active voice gives your words a strength and motion that a passive voice can’t give. In an active voice, the subject takes the action.

• When speaking as a ministry or group use the first person plural. Such as "We are excited to see you this Sunday!" instead of "I am excited to see you this Sunday"

• Avoid overused words: Tired phrases and words that are used too often fail to communicate anything at all since we start tuning them out.

3. Understand Your Audience

• Avoid Announcement Fatigue. If every announcement is labeled as "important" or "urgent," then nothing is important or urgent. Overusing urgency causes message fatigue, leading your audience to tune out all communication entirely.

• If everyone gets everything, no one gets anything: Broad announcements sent to the entire congregation should be reserved only for church-wide initiatives, major events, or critical updates that apply to everyone. When we send out everything to everyone we will end up with no one listening to what truly is important.

• Segment your communication: Target specific ministry groups, age demographics, or teams directly rather than blasting the whole church. People pay attention to messages that feel tailored specifically to them.

• Prioritize the Sunday stage and main channels: Limit top-tier communication channels (like Sunday morning stage announcements or full-church emails) to 2–3 high-priority items at a time to protect your congregation's attention span.

• Match urgency to reality: Reserve words like “Urgent,” “Important,” or “Action Required” strictly for time-sensitive, high-stakes information. Keep standard event sign-ups and reminders welcoming, clear, and low-pressure.

• Focus on value, not volume: Before pressing send, ask: "Is this relevant to the person receiving it, or are we broadcasting just to get it off our to-do list?" Informing fewer people with targeted clarity yields far better engagement than spamming everyone.