Churches stop growing or they plateau for several reasons, too many for one blog post. So I’m tackling them in a series of posts featuring growth barriers for churches I have encountered during years of strategic consulting. I’m calling these posts “Churches Won’t Grow When.”  While some of the issues that keep churches from growing can be classified as communication barriers, in my experience, the most debilitating ones are leadership and systematic mistakes that will derail growth or even kill a congregation. Interestingly, these apply to business and ministries as well. Your church will stop growing when its leader put his or her interests before what’s best for the congregation. I call it the superstar syndrome. I have seen this one play out time and time again. These are gifted communicators who are able to draw large crowds but can never get past making personal sacrifices for the sake of…

My friend didn’t know why his social media strategy was not as successful as that of one of his peers who, in his words, “is just killing it!” I didn’t have to think at all to answer that question. The answer was simple and obvious: it’s because he’s engaged and you’re not. If you have a public presence online whether you are an author, speaker, actor, politician, reporter, pastor, CEO or housewife, I’m convinced that’s virtually impossible to have an impact-full social media presence if you delegate your message solely to an assistant or to a marketing company. In full disclosure, my company, The A Group, often designs, implements and manages social media campaigns, but we’re very careful not to do what only our clients can do: be themselves. And when they abdicate that privilege, results are never what they could be. If all your posts are about your product,…

“we have a technology problem,” is what I often hear from a client or potential client, but while that might be true, most of the time it’s not the technology problem that’s causing the issue, but a communication one. My company, The A Group, has a technology division where we have developed a sophisticated platform for media-rich tools as well as a powerful and easy-to-use content management system. While I’m happy to sell our products to anyone who needs faster, easier and overall better technology, I’m always careful to make sure people understand that’s the communication strategy that drives the technology and not the other way around. This might sound simplistic to some, but I can tell you from personal experience that many churches, businesses and not-for-profits believe that a shiny new website, a powerful digital media tool, or an iPhone app will cure their communication problems. They won’t. What…