Less Clutter, Less Noise
Kem Meyer is the Director of Communications at Granger Community Church in South Bend, Indiana. I’ve been following her blog for a while; it has become a source of great insight for creating clean, uncluttered communication within a church.
Kem has now written a book: Less Clutter, Less Noise
True to the title, this book leads the reader through clean discussions about communication purposes, priorities, methods, and myths. In the freshest way possible, it brings clarity to how an organization like the church can most effectively communicate to those it serves.
Today, Kem is on a blog tour. Twenty-six bloggers submitted questions to Kem, she replied to the questions, and each blogger is posting their conversation. This allows a wide audience of readers to learn more about this idea of less clutter, less noise. Plus, each tour stop will give away a copy of the book to one lucky reader.
My brief q & a with Kem:
KIM: As I read your examples of Granger Community Church’s communication policies and practices, it’s apparent that both the method of communication (medium) and what is being communicated (content) strive to be uncluttered. To me, this indicates an overall mindset of simplicity regarding what actually happens as a part of GCC ministry, not just how things are communicated. How did this mindset come to be a part of the DNA of the leadership of the church?
KEM: Kim, you’re right. It’s part of the leadership DNA. Mark Beeson set the stage when he planted our church 22 years ago with GCC’s mission statement “Helping people take their next steps toward Christ…together.” Since that time, he has led from the front with the wisdom of deliberate simplicity…communicating over and over that people experience life change one step at a time.
As the church grew, more ministries evolved outside of Mark’s individual scope. So, he raised up leaders and empowered them in their roles to protect and extend the mission, to create systems that help the parts see what the whole is doing.
People are busy, skeptical, bombarded and life is hard. They’re looking for answers that make a real difference in their lives. The value we provide grows in direct proportion to how easily people can find and say yes to their next step.
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Did you see that idea of ’helping the parts see what the whole is doing’? This is gold.
As a bonus, Kem includes a ‘Back of the Book’ section with examples of GCC’s policies & communications processes. A super bonus leads to a free download of the entire GCC Communications Manual which I highly recommend.
Learn more about Less Clutter, Less Noise
Find examples of GCC’s communications forms & processes
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June 1 edit: the winner of a free copy of Less Clutter, Less Noise (randomly chosen from those comments posted prior to 9am CST today) is Larry Baxter. Congrats Larry!
Thanks again Kim for participating in the tour, as well as for your heart for ministry, serving others, and desire to help others along the journey.
I gave you and some other bloggers a shout out and thank you today at http://stepuptothecall.blogspot.com/2009/06/im-getting-less-clutter.html
Take care, stay strong, and keep on sharing life’s little stories! – Larry
How interesting that I should see this after the huge fight with my husband this morning over cluttered communication!!! Are these principles that can be applied to relationships also?
Great thoughts on communication here. I have a tendency to clutter, which is one reason I’m so interested in this book.
Meanwhile, for lunch I had breakfast…bacon, poached eggs, sausages, mushrooms, home-made baked beans, potato rosti, all washed down with cloudy apple juice. Yum.
that’s an impressive breakfast, David. Except please explain cloudy apple juice? :)
I think the biggest challenge is our individual biases. We all hear things differently. We filter it through our own experiences and what we expect to hear… Or want to hear.
For lunch, I had tilapia. And it was delicious.
Great question, for a girl who had trouble thinking of a question!
I keep wondering what it would be like to have a conversation with both of you. I’d say, “Well, Kem, what do you think? And you, Kim? Kem? Kim? Kim-Kem? Kem-Kim?”
Oh, the power of a vowel…
Tilapia. yum. yes, this whole thing brings back the Oprah-Uma thing from years gone by, right? :)
Thanks Beth. :)
Great question and another solid response from Kem. I like your observation that both the content and the delivery need to be uncluttered for maximum effectiveness.
A major challenge the church faces is how to faithfully share the gospel and its claims of truth people who think they’ve heard it all or are offended simply by the idea that something can be ‘the one way.’ We need to not clutter that message with a whole lot of ‘You must…’ or ‘You shouldn’t…’ that distract.
(Oh, and I had a Penn Station sausage sub for lunch!)
thanks for the comment, Larry. Yep, you’ve named a big challenge. And you’ve also given me an idea for lunch…
I think the problem is that most churches are afraid to say no. We say yes to so much that we are unable to help anyone focus on something specific.
We need to get simple and remain clear.
I agree. It’s the ‘getting simple’ that’s so hard. Something has to go.
I think a big challenge is the surge of people who think the church should promote their thing: fund-raisers, blood drives, mission effort #4271 for worthy cause #940; those who want to honor mothers or veterans or teachers or police officers or boy scouts or grandparents…
I try to teach our publication people to say no, but they’re sweet polite ladies who can’t bear to do it….
noooo kidding, Mark! It is so hard to help people understand that a narrower message is better. we have the same issue.
The most difficult thing to communicate that I see is the Gospel. I think what makes it is difficult to communicate is us (me). I try to get cutsy and “creative” thinking it will make things better and people will understand is more clearly. Not true. It’s the Gospel. It doesn’t need my creative input or help. Certainly I bring my own God given presentation method/medium, but if I try to change the message it all just falls apart.
BTW, a daunting task for you to interview someone else named Kem. Probably felt a bit schitzo…
Good thoughts, Kenyon, thanks!