Archive for the ‘CFCC News’ Category


Interviews with the Board

Over the past few months we’ve been doing a series of interviews with the members of our board of directors over on our flagship blog, Church Marketing Sucks. Here’s a round-up of those interviews:

  • Phil Cooke: “Worry less about preaching in jeans with your shirttails out, and more about changing people’s lives.”
  • Brad Abare: “Churches that understand deep down how they create, transfer, embody and express value are churches that get it.”
  • Kem Meyer: “We need to spend less time creating content and more time helping people connect with and make sense of content that already exists.”
  • Scott McClellan: “It takes faith to tell a story before you’re sure there will be a happy ending. But it’s the conflict, the adversity, and the suspense that draw people into your story and invite them to walk it with you.”
  • Dawn Nicole Baldwin: “Discover what God’s unique call is for your church and live that to the fullest.”
  • Kent Shaffer: “Churches need to be measuring life change.”
  • Drew Goodmanson: “More churches are starting to get that the web isn’t just a new method of communication but a radical paradigm shift that impacts the entire organization.”
  • Lori Bailey: “What I hope to see is churches coming closer together in learning and sharing, as well as helping and rooting for each other.”
  • Maurilio Amorim: “If churches understood the power of social media in creating conversations over a wide platform, they would spend more time trying in that space.”
  • Chad Cannon: “At the end of the day, numbers represent people, and those people represent a story of potential life change. Churches should be about numbers.”

At the time we did the interviews, Tim Schraeder was on the board and Cynthia Ware served as executive director. Since then Tim and Cynthia have swapped roles, but we still have our interview with Tim and we can go back to an earlier interview we did with Cynthia:

  • Tim Schraeder: “Our message is unchanging but the ways we communicate it are changing before our eyes.”
  • Cynthia Ware: “If you are confused about who you are as a church–your story will always be confusing, possibly bland and likely impotent.”

New Leadership for CFCC

The Center for Church Communication (CFCC) announces two new additions to the leadership team. Effective Feb. 1, Justin Wise and Tim Schraeder will serve as co-directors of CFCC. They will replace the current executive director, Cynthia Ware, who will transition into a member of the board of directors.

Justin Wise is a blogger, communicator and creator of BeDeviant.com, a blog focused on church, culture and technology. Justin also serves as digital director for one of the largest Lutheran churches in the United States. In addition, Justin has served as a project catalyst and the social web strategist for CFCC. Justin and his family live in Des Moines, Iowa.

Tim Schraeder is a communications consultant for Church Solutions Group and was previously the communications director for a large church in downtown Chicago. He blogs his thoughts on church communications at TimSchraeder.com. In addition, Tim has served as a project catalyst and Regional Network Coordinator and in October 2010 he joined the CFCC board of directors (with the co-director position Tim will step down from the board and be replaced by Cynthia). He lives in Chicago.

Tim and Justin will continue to have “day jobs,” as the role of co-director is currently a part-time position. Tim will oversee relationships and communication, including the Regional Network Coordinators, media relations, the Cultivate Conference and the Outspoken book project, which Tim serves as the lead curator. Justin will oversee projects and development, including team oversight, Firestarter, CFCC Ad Network and sponsorships, and much of the new development on the horizon.

“The board of directors was unanimous in the selection and appointment of Justin and Tim,” says CFCC founder and board chair, Brad Abare. “We are thrilled to see where God leads us into the near future, under the capable and courageous leadership of two highly qualified and uniquely gifted men.”

Since Oct. 1, 2009, Cynthia Ware has been the executive director of CFCC. Recently she’s taken a larger role with a private university that has continued to demand more and more of her full-time commitment. “Cynthia was exactly what we needed these past 16 months,” says Abare. “Her ability to rally a team and mobilize the masses was critical to further establishing the foundation of this fledgling nonprofit. I’m so grateful that we will continue to tap into her wealth of experience as she transitions to a new role as a CFCC board member.”

The Center for Church Communication is a firebrand of communicators, sparking churches to communicate the gospel clearly, effectively and without compromise. It helps local churches communicate better through various Labs and associated projects, including its flagship blog, Church Marketing Sucks. Founded in 2004, CFCC is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.

CFCC’s Social Web Strategist

Justin WiseThis fall we welcomed Justin Wise to our team as our social web strategist. He’s overseeing our efforts in the social media realm, including Twitter and Facebook. He’s helping us make the most of our efforts there and recently shared his social media wisdom in a Church Marketing Sucks interview and at the recent Social Media Summit in Des Moines, Iowa.

You’ve probably noticed Justin’s handiwork in a number of Center for Church Communication efforts this past year. He came on board as a project catalyst and launched Firestarter.

You can keep up with Justin on his blog or follow his social media example on Twitter.

The Best of 2010

Over at our flagship blog, Church Marketing Sucks, we’ve been collecting some of the best of 2010. Take a look at our roundups from the past year:

Q&A with Phil Cooke

Today we launch a new series of interviews with our Center for Church Communication board members over at Church Marketing Sucks. We start with media guru Phil Cooke.

A few Twitter-able highlights:

  • “If we’re not offering the world something they can’t find anywhere else, why should they come?”
  • “There’s never been a more important time to create platforms where a local church can speak into the culture.”
  • “Hollywood is great at making fake things look real, and the church is great at making real things look fake.”
  • “Deliver messages that are so provocative that it starts people talking. Give people a reason to show up.”
  • “Stop chasing relevance. … ‘Chasing relevance’ only makes you hopelessly irrelevant.”
  • “I often wonder if the next generation of worship leaders will be filmmakers.  Maybe that wouldn’t be a bad thing…”

Read the full interview and feel free to use our short url: http://cmsucks.us/6y for all your tweeting needs.

New Board Members

The Center for Church Communication recently welcomed four new members to the board of directors:

Welcome aboard!

Refined Criteria for the Church Marketing Directory

Since launching earlier this year the Church Marketing Directory has continued to grow with user-submitted resources. Every time we think we have a good sampling of the resources in the church marketing community we receive another forehead-slapping submission that makes us wonder how we possibly could have missed that.

We recently refined the criteria for the Directory, noting that submissions need to meet two criteria, namely that they fit under the marketing umbrella and that they explicitly serve the local church. These definitely aren’t new criteria, but it is a more thorough and clear explanation.

You can read the complete guidelines on the Directory’s ‘Suggest a Link’ page.

Shared Mission of Communicating the Gospel

In para-church organizations like our own differences of opinion on matters of doctrine and belief are fairly common. Sometimes those differences can cause problems, division and dilute our effectiveness as an organization.

So we’ve come up with an ecumenical statement, approved by our board of directors, that gives us clarity of purpose as we face potentially divisive issues. In a nutshell, it’s ‘let’s focus on the gospel.’

Here’s the official statement, now available on our About page:

The Center for Church Communication is an ecumenical organization that reaches across denominational and theological lines to help churches communicate the gospel. That means differences of opinion over theological and cultural issues will often come up. The church has a 2,000-year track record of not disagreeing well. As an organization our only litmus test is a shared belief in the gospel–that Jesus Christ is the way of salvation. Let’s disagree well–even over issues of profound difference–and focus on our shared mission of communicating that gospel.

Welcome to Steve Fogg

We’re pleased to welcome Steve Fogg to our team of Regional Network Coordinators. Steve is a dynamic voice in the church communication field. He’s on staff at Crossway Church in Melbourne, Australia and regularly blogs about church communication.

This is our first international Regional Network Coordinator and we’re excited to expand our reach beyond the United States. We’re eager to add his experience and international perspective to the mix.

Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications

We recently welcomed Tim Schraeder aboard as a project catalyst, and churches are already going to start seeing the fruits of his genius.

This week, Tim announced Outspoken: Conversations on Church Communications. It will be a collection of short essays from Tim and over 50 church communication professionals, each focusing on their area of passion or expertise.

Already on board are names like Shawn Wood, Phil Cooke, Jon Acuff, Tony Morgan and Ben Arment.

The book is expected to arrive this winter and will be available in both printed and electronic versions. We hope it will become a guide and staple for anyone looking to re-imagine the way they communicate the gospel. Follow Tim’s blog or Twitter feed for continuing Outspoken updates, or you can follow Outspoken on Twitter @OUTSPOKENbook or “Like” it on Facebook for the latest.

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