No job description prepares you for what this role asks of you.

What takes the longest to learn

You were hired to make graphics, shoot and edit video, post the social calendar, and update the website. You probably have a pretty good understanding of what goes into that aspect of being a communications director. What takes longer to learn is how decisions get made where you serve, who needs to be part of a conversation before anyone announces it, how far ahead a request has to reach you for you to protect your creative bandwidth, and how to prioritize all the requests that will come in from ministries. Be encouraged: that part takes time, and you have been called, so God will equip you.

Aside from all the technical skills that you will pick up and hone along the way, the softer skills of leadership, brand management, strategy, and building unity are just as important. It might take a while in your new role to begin to see the voids where humble leadership is needed. You’ll notice the subtle feeling of brand promises that don’t meet expectations. You’ll begin to see the necessity of a strong strategy in helping ministries stay aligned all under your pastor’s guidance. Do not let your youth be despised; wisdom comes not with age, but with experience.

I thought corporate was cut-throat

I spent years in corporate marketing and internal communications for a national restaurant brand before I accepted my full-time call to ministry in communications. I use the same design and storytelling principles I learned and crafted while working there. What I was not ready for was how much more the ministry and the church would ask of me. I guess the stakes are higher, the weight of the responsibility is more, but the payoff of helping people come to faith in Christ by sharing the gospel as my work is so much more rewarding.

Selling chicken sandwiches paid better, but I’d still rather be doing this. The purpose is worth more to me than the paycheck ever was.

God calls, then equips

In Judges 6, the angel finds Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from an army, and calls him a mighty man of valor before he had done a single thing to earn the title. God calls people and then equips them for what He called them to.

So if you’re sitting in a staff meeting wondering when someone will notice you’re still figuring this out, you’re in good company.

Learn the people before you change anything

The instinct in a new seat is to show value fast, usually by changing something visible and quickly. I understand the pull as a fellow people pleaser. A redesign is visible, and visible feels like proof you were worth hiring.

Give it a little time first. Ask your pastor what he/she wishes the congregation and community understood about your church that they don’t currently. Ask a volunteer who has served ten years what gets people excited that your church is doing together. Sit in on the meetings you’re invited to and maybe ask about ones you aren’t in yet. You’ll build something different because of what you hear in those first months. I argue that it really takes a full year in the church calendar to get a complete hold onto what all goes on.

Start with what confuses people

In my experience, clarity is the first thing worth fixing, and it costs nothing but some attention to detail. Find where people get lost in the current comms cycles. New families who can’t tell which door to enter and can’t find the kid’s check-in. An event with three names if you ask three people what it is. A ministry function that nobody can describe in one sentence, including the person leading it.

Fixing those is not always glamorous work, and it’s often the work people notice without noticing the most. When someone finds what they were looking for without asking anyone, that’s a win.

Lead time is a message

Just about every communications director I talk to brings up late requests in almost every conversation about what is dysfunctional in their role. It helped me to understand why it happens before trying to fix it. The people sending me last-minute requests were rarely careless or thoughtless or mean. They were volunteers and staff focused on their own ministry needs, and they had never seen what happens between the request and the finished piece when it’s rushed.

So show them what can happen when you have the time. When someone asks for a graphic on Friday for Sunday, tell them what three weeks would have bought: a real photo instead of a stock one, an email sent early enough to still capture registrations, a plan instead of a scramble. People give you lead time when they can see what you do with it as you collaborate together.

You are not supposed to carry the weight of the role alone

If your church has volunteers, you have a team, whether anyone has organized it yet or not. In a lot of churches, those volunteers are capable people who have never been given an area to own. There are lots of folks I have met over the years who attended the churches I served at who had tons of creative skills; they were just never asked to help out. I would be willing to bet you have an amazing photographer, designer, and coder in your congregation who would love to take on projects and use their skills; you just need to seek them out.

Giving one of them ownership of something specific, with a clear scope and your trust behind it, did more for my capacity than any tool ever has. It also grows people, which is a reasonable thing to want out of ministry work.

A seat at the leadership table gets earned

You may not be in the meeting where your pastor and leadership set the calendar, and that makes this job harder than it needs to be. I couldn’t argue my way into that meeting, and you can’t either. What worked was being consistent: doing what I said, on time, and bringing solutions to the meetings I was already in rather than complaints.

Over time, your pastor starts asking what you think before a decision instead of after it. That shift is worth more than a title change, and it comes from character shown repeatedly rather than from one good presentation.

Protect your capacity

I have given ministry everything I had, more than once, to the point of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion. Nobody needs to be in that state of being for more than a few days. Yes, it will get busy; just wait for Christmas Eve, but pace yourself. Your health and your creative process are worth taking the necessary time to rest, refresh, and rebuild.

Decide what your limits are while you’re rested, not in the middle of Holy Week. What you’ll take on Friday afternoon and what waits until Monday. How many services’ worth of content you can produce well before you need to reset. What has to be true before you say yes to another ministry’s project. Those are easier to hold when you made them in advance, and easier to explain when someone asks.

Where did someone get lost this week trying to find something at your church? Start there.