Below you'll find our best practices for the communication review process here at Life.Church.
Operations Pastors/Associate Operations Pastors should monitor written communication without being a bottleneck—working more like a consultant than a content creator. Talk to your Campus Pastor about what that would look like ideally.
Focus primarily on things that people will be seeing on their first or second touch with Life.Church. For the insider communication (like special-focus blogs, ministry leader emails, etc.), work on a spot-check basis asking to check things periodically.
Things that should definitely be reviewed: talk notes (each week), campus emails, potty pub, mailers, and anything else with a broad audience.
Some Specific Ideas to Consider:
- Give your team the Communications Values & Best Practices document. It's a great resource for anyone who uses words. Really.
- Let your team know what sort of pieces you'd like to review and when you'd like to review it. Have them send you their final draft for review.
- Set expectations for a turnaround time from you – can you get to everything that day, need a couple days, etc.
- Let them know what you can and cannot do for them. Point them to resources they can pull from when creating content and focus on reviewing.
- Identify and work closely with other skilled proofreaders and editors on your team including volunteers. Share the communication resources, guides, and standards with them. Consider having different people review for different things – one for grammar and spelling, another for context/message, another as a newcomer, etc.
- Consider setting up a proofing volunteer team. Just a handful of volunteers who you can send materials out to.
- When someone brings you something to review – ask who, what, when, where, why, and how. Have them tell you the goal of the piece.
- If the piece will be printed – review it printed. If it's an email or online material – review it electronically.
- Don't just point out what's wrong, but what you like and what they did right.
- Teach them along the way – you're the one with the communication standards in mind not them.
- If you routinely see "bad" communication from a team member or ministry, take some time to work with them or have standard pieces and content they can pull from when needed. Be sure to give them examples of good writing.
- Above all be flexible and let the team know that you'll be working out a process and things could change – but it will be for the better!
