What’s in this Episode?

Hey, have you ever found yourself at a point where you say man, we need to promote this event coming up? Oh my goodness, we got something going on this fall, January’s coming,. We gotta promote! You know, you find yourself just spinning your wheels! Promote this, promote this. Wouldn’t it be great if you could actually have a 12-month plan together that could actually walk you step by step through the whole essence of marketing your church? There are great things happening in your church and you need to communicate it to those outside your church. Stay tuned to this episode of Church Tips. And we’re going to talk about that exactly.

---

Read the Transcript

Dick Hardy 0:39
Hey, it’s great to be with you on this episode of Church Tips. We are glad to be with my friend Ryan Wakefield, the wild man.

Ryan Wakefield 0:48
That’s a first!

Dick Hardy 0:48
Is that what Amy calls you?

Ryan Wakefield 0:49
No, that’s a first! Come on episode 62!

Dick Hardy 0:52
Episode 62!

Ryan Wakefield 0:53
It took 62 episodes, but I made it!

Dick Hardy 0:54
That’s right! Well, you know, Ryan is the founder of Church Marketing University.

Ryan Wakefield 1:00
CO-founder with you and Jonathan!

Dick Hardy 1:02
Oh yeah we were involved with that the beginning!

Ryan Wakefield 1:05
Really involved!

Dick Hardy 1:06
And then we get booted and he takes it and blows the thing up here, so but Ryan’s done a great job with Church Marketing University, if you haven’t had a chance to check that out you’ll want to do so. We’re gonna talk about some very specific things today, relative to how you can really put together a 12 Month Plan for your church in terms of communicating the good that’s happening inside your church to those outside your church. But why don’t we get a little quick snapshot? You’ve got a conference coming up here in just a few days on the 29th and 30th. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Ryan Wakefield 1:38
Yeah, in fact, that’s what we’re gonna do at the conferences, come together, two days all online, and work on churches putting together their 12-month marketing plan. So the whole goal of the conference is a different kind of conference. The goal is to help churches walk away with stuff checked off their to do list. Not more stuff on it. So it’s all about implementation. I think it’s going to be incredible. The feedback that we’ve got on the direction we’re going, a pastor’s like, yes, that’s what we need. We need inspiration, encouragement, we need a lot of help implementing this. We don’t need more ideas that never get done, we need a plan that’s going to actually translate into results. And that’s what this is all focused on.

Dick Hardy 2:14
Oh, that’s cool. And we’re privileged, Jonathan and I are both privileged to be part of it. One small part along the way, where we’re talking about the development of leaders, volunteers and leaders to actually help make this happen. So talk to us a little bit about that whole concept of developing a 12-month plan, you know, because a lot of pastors will be out there saying, yeah, I got an event coming up and I want to market it. Well, if it’s, going to be done right, it’s got to be way more than that. So what’s a little bit of the Genesis of that Ryan?

Ryan Wakefield 2:42
Yeah, and one of the push backs we get right now during the season were in is like, who can plan 12 months out. And I think the great philosopher Mike Tyson said, everybody’s got a plan until they get punched in the face. You know, and we’ve, I feel like the church world, we kind of got punched in the face, but at the same time that I would like to throw out there. Converse to the kind of statement that Mike Tyson’s like, when you get punched in the face, you’re sure glad you had a plan for the occasion. Right? And the other thing is when we started CMU, we worked together on an assessment where we had I think, over now, getting close to 5000 churches fill it out because we wanted to find out what are growing churches doing different than plateaued or declining churches. One of the things that we identified in that assessment we did together was growing churches plan farther out. Typically, if you’re planning a, you know, 30, 60, 90 days, you’re way more likely to be a growing church and I think part of that is because…

Dick Hardy 3:33
Versus somebody who’s just trying to go week to week?

Ryan Wakefield 3:35
Yeah, just trying to survive and that honestly that’s kind of one of the angles we’re doing with the conference is how do we move churches from “hey, we’re just surviving to now we’re like thriving we got a plan. And so like, yeah, because if you have more time and you have a plan, you have more time to get the word out. And to do some things that we talked about inside Church Marketing University, to help share the good news with more people, but you got to kind of get a plan in place to do that. So you can get these things, these tools.

Dick Hardy 4:00
Yeah. And you know, one of the things I’ve appreciated about what CMU has done, what you have done, is this is not specific. This isn’t big church stuff. You do the gamut, small church, medium sized church, large church, that whole planning concept is very real and is going to make the difference for churches.

Ryan Wakefield 4:19
Yeah, we got a lot of church planners right now that I mean, they’re planning in this crazy time. And they’re like, man, we understand. We’ve got to use all these new levels. Like we have no other option. We don’t have, you know, congregation that we’ve ever met in person. So a lot of church planters right now. But yeah, anybody who’s looking forward and saying, yeah I think biblically we look at this kind of phrase, make the most of every opportunity. So that’s what we want to do. We want to look at your calendar year. And you want to say, okay, how do we make the most out of every opportunity that we have coming up to share the good news, reach people in our community, see more visitors coming every single week? And so that’s what CMU does. That’s what the conference is going to do. And so churches are going to walk away with this plan. Like, how do you go and make the most of January? How do you start a year strong? Because looking at the data if the church starts January strong, that momentum infuses all throughout the calendar year. But if January is a dud, sometimes it gets, its, you just are behind, momentum, like the wind is, it feels like you’re running into the wind and so it’s like, you know if we can show you how to make the most of January, you’re gonna have momentum going into Easter, which then that momentum, we need to take that into Mother’s Day. And then we need to do some strategic things over the summer.

Dick Hardy 5:28
To prepare for the fall.

Ryan Wakefield 5:28
Yeah! You can actually then just keep cycling around.

Dick Hardy 5:32
So if a pastor is going to that get that conference is September 29th and 30th and we’ve got a link here in the show notes for you to jump on to that and it’s leaders.church/conference. And if you just go to leaders.church/conference then get it in the show notes, you’re going to be able to jump right in and the cost of the conference is…

Ryan Wakefield 5:52
You can get free tickets!

Dick Hardy 5:54
Free tickets, Ryan Wakefield gives you free tickets.

Ryan Wakefield 5:57
And we recommend go through this together as your team. Block of those days, go through it together as your team because, again, every hour that you put in watching the content, like you said, you guys are doing a session, we pray, it’s two to four hours off your to do list. So block it off, go through it with your team. And again, you will walk away, fired up, you’ll walk away with confidence about your plan, and then you’ll walk away with the tools that you need to implement the plan.

Dick Hardy 6:23
Okay, here’s the question. I don’t know the answer to it. So we’ll see if I get in trouble asking it. Is it time date sensitive? So if you’re going to watch Dick and Jonathan Hardy on the leaders, you gotta watch that at one o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, or is it, can they catch it whenever they want?

Ryan Wakefield 6:40
Yes, and yes. The live experience is going to be your best way to enter the conference, because it’s really going to be a conversation. We are really, really big on community conversation, not just one way information. That’s my pet-peeve with a lot of conferences. It’s like a lot of great one way information, but there’s no conversation. There’s no community. There’s no dialogue and application and implementation, so big on community. So if you can make it to the live experience, you’re going to get the most out of the conference. But when you get your free ticket through that link, you’re also going to get a conference dashboard. The replays are going to be available there for a week.

Dick Hardy 7:15
So that’s just for the next week they’re available?

Ryan Wakefield 7:17
Yes okay, from the 29th and 30th, they’ll have a week to just jump in if they have to miss a session. And then we’ve got a workbook in there, it’s a 60 page workbook that helps you with implementation. We spent way too much time on it. But I’m proud about it because I’ve got to back up my word that everything is designed to help the church actually implement these ideas.

Dick Hardy 7:39
You can do it! You can actually do this. Again, I’m telling you, small church, medium sized church, large church, you can do the kind of thing that Ryan is talking about here.

Ryan Wakefield 7:47
Yep. And I think I my goal is when people experience the sessions, when they see the amount of planning and the amount of emphasis on helping a church actually implement it, I hope it’s going to be jaw dropping. And I really think it will. I think because we’ll have information. Like I was just watching a session from Katie Alred. Katie runs a church Communications Group of over 27,000 church communicators. It’s a fantastic session. But not only are we going to give you that session that she’s talking about how you train your team to be evangelists, your congregation, definitely evangelists. But she talks about man, you should do this and this and this. And our teams come alongside and like, well, if she says, do this, we’re going to go ahead and and create all those materials for you. So not only are you going to get the ideas from Katie, but we’re going to be like, okay, here’s the email. Here’s the all this, all the stuff

Dick Hardy 8:32
That is so good. Go to again, go to leaders.church/conference to get signed up for the conference. That’s September 29, and 30th. And it is going to set you on a new course you’re going to be ready to go. Is it fair to say that ideally, this is going to be something they can take and implement this January?

Ryan Wakefield 8:50
Yeah, like it will start this year going into Christmas. Okay, then we’ll go January and then we’ll just build from there and then once you know how to make the most of the opportunities from a marketing communication standpoint, your team’s going to know how to go through 2022 and 2023. Obviously things change tools change course. But you’ll understand the principles will be big on. If you can do this once your team will know how to do this for the future.

Dick Hardy 9:12
That’s good. Any parting shots?

Ryan Wakefield 9:15
Man, we’re just pumped about it. I’m pumped about it. Yeah, it’s gonna be a different type of conference. It’s not a conference as usual. It’s all online.

Dick Hardy 9:21
What time does it start?

Ryan Wakefield 9:22
So 10am, central.

Dick Hardy 9:23
10am Central on the 29th. Then it ends…

Ryan Wakefield 9:26
4pm Central will wrap up on the 30th. We’ll be pretty, we’re pretty big on throwing parties. So there’ll be some after parties.

Dick Hardy 9:32
There we go. Ryan Wakefield always full of surprises. So this is good, Ryan, really, thanks very much for hanging out with us. And thanks for watching this podcast and certainly encourage you to go on to whatever platform that you want listen to and watch your podcasts and subscribe and spread the word to your friends and go to leaders.church/slash conference and you’re going to get some great value on the 29th and 30th. Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. Make it a great one, and be blessed.

Subscribe & Follow:

• Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
• Follow on Spotify
• Subscribe to YouTube Channel
• Subscribe on Google Podcasts
• Like us on Facebook
• Follow us on Instagram
• Follow us on Twitter

Other Resources:

• Leaders.Church
• Leaders.Church Blog
• Church University
• Take the Free 5 Day Leadership Challenge for Pastors
• Get Free Access to the 4 Secrets Masterclass

Share This Article

---