This is part two of my conversation with Cynthia Ware, Executive Director of the Center for Church Communication (CFCC).

Cynthia, What new strategies and ideas are you adding at CFCC?

We’re doing some thinking and planning about new directions.

We’ve  redesigned our website.

We’ve launched the Church Marketing Directory, an exhaustive resource of all church communication professionals. Anyone can Submit Resources for the church marketing community.

Something we’re also excited about is “Suggest a Project,” where we come alongside individuals or groups to help them launch ideas that would really make an effective difference in change for church communications. We want to see people come together, connect, find resources and inspiration.

Tell me about your new “Firebrand” narrative.

The easiest way to think about our community is that we’re “A Firebrand of Communicators.” Our job is to see the Church grow in its ability to effectively and clearly communicate the gospel.

Communication models change with every generation. A communication approach that worked well four or five years ago may not work today. To go along with the narrative, we’ve created “Firestarter” to recognize churches that have ignited ideas and sparked brilliant communication. The hope is that this project will fan the flame and spread those creative embers to other church communicators.

The reason behind it all Gordon is that we know the church has a number of needs that aren’t being met yet.

Where does the church go from here in communications? What trends do you see?

The reality is, we’re a marketed to culture. The church’s competition is everything the media is barraging us with. We must pay attention, if we’re going to get anybody to notice. We will have to think about what our message is…from the billboard, to the sign in front of the church, to the flyers left at the local junior college announcing that we’re having a Bible study.

The values, the embedded code of ideology that the new media or participatory media embody, is very transforming to the Church at large.

Here’s a practical example.

If someone is on their way to the hospital, you hit Facebook with the need and you have five or ten people praying within minutes. We’ve never had that capability before.

The technology landscape is constantly shifting. What has your attention?

The specific technology that will have the most substantial effect on our future is the cell phone. Mobile ubiquity is really going to transform everything.

We still think of the phone as a phone. We’re going to be wearing it. It will be a camera recording our lives and the lives of those around us. It will be a projector, it will be a browser, it will be a video production device, a calculator.

And the type of ubiquity I’m talking about is coming fast. It’s really going to be the thing that gives us the most traction over the next decade or so.

According to Thom Rainer and Sam Rainer, authors of “essential Church,” more than two-thirds of young adults drop out of church between the ages of 18 and 22. Do you believe an understanding and use of technology could play a role in helping the Church reconnect with our youth?

We must come to terms with technology if we’re going to know how to most effectively reach the next generation. We need to understand how it is changing things for them.

The younger generation, and I’m talking about ten to fifteen year olds, don’t live in both worlds the way most of us do. They don’t know television with commercials. They only know “on demand.” My 15 year old daughter doesn’t know what the yellow pages is. She’s never heard of it. Fifteen hundred photos a week on their iPhones is not unusual. Kids sleep with their phones. The phone is their alarm. It’s their radio.

The web is becoming an intermediary to almost everything we do. And, it all has to do with communication.

The Church has survived without all these advancements. So what happens if it fails to catch up with the marketplace in its use of New Media?

We have before us what could be our greatest opportunity to use new media to reach the next generation; tomorrow’s leaders. Cynthia Ware

The Church is the bride of Christ. It can’t die off. That’s a given. We don’t HAVE to embrace technology to retain the life of the Church. The Church is bigger than any of the obstacles or limitations that we would put on it because it has the power of Jesus in it.

But we have an opportunity here and why would we want to miss it? It’s a tribe of Isaachar thing, “Leaders who understood the times and knew what Israel should do.”

Our whole heartbeat at the CFCC is to evangelize the idea and value of excellence in church communications for people that don’t know, so they don’t miss it.

Cynthia, thank you for giving us an in depth look at the great work the CFCC is doing. I have a feeling the best days for church communications are ahead.

The Center For Church Communication (CFCC) is a nonprofit organization helping churches more effectively communicate the gospel.

At the end of 2009, Cynthia Ware became the first Executive Director of CFCC.

Cynthia is an interactive media consultant with an in depth expertise in online technologies and strategic church development. Her personal blog is The Digital Sanctuary and she is a co-contributor to Digital, the Leadership Network’s technology blog.

I was eager to hear Cynthia’s thoughts about the current state of church communications and trends she sees for the future.

This is part one of a condensed transcript of our conversation.

Cynthia, you’ve been consulting and writing on communication strategies for many years. What changes are you seeing in church communications today?

Having a communications background means that I’ve looked at the topic from all sides. From nonverbal communication to print to visual media.

What’s fascinating to me is that New Media, interactive and participatory media, has become so predominantly mainstream that it has forced Christian leadership to reevaluate all forms of communication. I’m talking all the way down to the building.

We know that the Church isn’t a building, it’s a set of people, yet we meet in a temple. Today, people are even using their facilities to communicate a message. So, maybe it’s something as simple as ‘we allow coffee in our sanctuary.’ That communicates a message. It will appeal to some and to others it won’t.

We all know there are disadvantages to technology and new media. They’re well documented. There are so many positive benefits though, that Christian leaders are having to reevaluate everything or run the risk of being left out of the global conversation.

Do you think church leaders understand the significance of your last statement? There seems to be some that are embracing the new technologies and others that are still reluctant.

There’s a continuum of understanding.

The people at one end of the spectrum are somewhat unaware, for example, of the importance of the website. When someone is looking for a church, the website is their first stop. If it’s an excellent quality website, that means a lot and the person may visit. Some leaders wouldn’t think in those terms. To them, a high quality website would just be an encumbrance and additional expense. Something that doesn’t require much of a focus. They’ll have one of their college kids cobble it together.

On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a very astute understanding. Pastors, leaders and many Christians are beginning to understand that if you’re going to talk to a generation that has seen Indiana Jones 30 times, and now Avatar, then you’re going to have to produce high quality communication.

Most church leaders are not trained to manage the visual arts, media techniques or technology driven processes for communicating messages. How does using technology or understanding quality affect ministry, both to people inside and people outside the church?

One of the things that has happened with our global village is, there’s no specific formula for communication. That means there’s room for great diversity in the body of Christ.

For example, take a home church or network of churches that meets in homes or in urban settings or in unique environments. They can leave technological means completely out of the loop and still see intimate relationships formed.

Then there’s the younger generation. The 15 and under group. For them, the slickly polished productions are outmoded. That represents the old school media model. They would much rather have content from handheld camera phones, shooting what they want, and put up on YouTube.

Gordon, the truth is, you don’t have to have super high quality anything to accomplish personal ministry.

But, for corporate endeavor, we still have many issues to wrestle with. Corporately, the Church is dealing with a global audience that is used to sitting in the nicest movie theaters in the world, watching the most elegant productions in the world. This affects how we communicate with the world outside the church.

It has changed everything.

The CFCC is helping the Church cope with that change. How did it get started?

Christian leaders are having to reevaluate everything or run the risk of being left out of the global conversation.

Brad Abare brought a team of people together to explore the idea of building an organization to support the church at large. The purpose wasn’t to sell products or pump a specific agenda. They wanted to create more of a resource bank for people that serve in churches.

The organization would help church staff develop more elegant and effective communication. That would include everything from helping with graphics to giving advice on how to form a communications team.

The CFCC has several primary channels for communicating your own message. By the way, the name of the Center’s blog, Church Marketing Sucks, ‘suckered’ me in. I thought, someone really hates marketing in the church so much they’ve devoted a blog to it?

(Laughing) I told my children they’re never allowed to say that word. We designed the blog to get attention. To frustrate, educate and motivate people to think about what they’re communicating. Tough topics are thrown out so everyone can wrestle with them. It’s a place to hang out and listen to the dialogue about church communications.

We also have a set of “Labs,” where you can show your work and have it reviewed; find your next staff member; or meet up with others working in church communications.

No money is exchanged. All the help is free.

Who is on the leadership team of CFCC?

There’s a substantial board of directors, the top players from church communications in the U.S.

• Maurilio Amorim
• Lori Bailey
• Dawn Nicole Baldwin
• Chad Cannon
• Phil Cooke
• Drew Goodmanson
• Scott McClellan
• Kem Meyer
• Tim Schraeder
• Kent Shaffer
• Brad Abare (founder, board chair)

In part two of my conversation with Cynthia, we discuss new ideas and strategies coming down the pipe at CFCC. We also look at future trends.