Developing a Communication Plan for Your Strategic Plan
The suffix “ate” is of Latin origin typically meaning “possessing the characteristics of or denoting a certain function.” A comprehensive plan for communicating your church’s Strategic Plan must possess certain characteristics and functions.
Below are 30 functions and characteristics of a successful plan for communicating to the congregation the church’s Strategic Plan. Include answers to the following questions in your Communication Plan to ensure both thoroughness and effectiveness.
30 Questions for Developing a Communication Plan
1. Participate: To take part in.
Who needs to be involved in developing the Communication Plan?
2. Advocate: One who pleads a cause.
Who will drive the Communication Plan?
3. Formulate: To put in a clear and definite form of statement.
Who will be the wordsmith of the final draft of the Strategic Plan?
4. Disseminate: To spread or scatter.
What communication channels and platforms are we going to use to communicate the Strategic Plan?
5. Saturate: To cause to be completely penetrated.
How will we ensure communication of the Strategic Plan to every ministry, team and constituency in the church?
6. Allocate: To distribute or assign.
What are the various responsibilities within the Communication Plan and who will drive them?
7. Mandate: An official or authoritative command.
How are we going to communicate the origins and purpose for developing the Strategic Plan?
8. Legitimate: Authorized by following a logical sequence.
How will we communicate the process that was followed to discern the Strategic Plan?
9. Cultivate: To promote and foster the growth of.
What are the desired outcomes of our Communication Plan?
10. Consecrate: To set apart for the worship or service of God.
How will the Strategic Plan help Glorify God and fulfill the mission of the church?
11. Commemorate: To call to remembrance.
How can we tie the Strategic Plan to the historic values and passions of the church?
12. Differentiate: To express the specific difference in.
How will we communicate what will change, what will improve, and what will be done differently as a result of the Strategic Plan?
13. Stimulate: To excite the activity of.
How can we state the objectives of the Strategic Plan in terms of a call to action?
14. Motivate: To impel, induce and excite about the future.
How can we state the Strategic Plan in visionary and concrete terms that touches both the heart and the head?
15. Abbreviate: To shorten or abridge.
How can we state the Strategic Plan’s objectives in concise terms that are easily remembered?
16. Enumerate: To count or tell by numbers.
What Strategic Plan goals and measures are we going to communicate?
17. Accentuate: To make prominent; to emphasize.
What are the key talking points of the Strategic Plan we want to be certain to emphasize?
18. Template: Anything that serves as a pattern.
What is the common language we all agree to use when referring to the Strategic Plan?
19. Integrate: To unify or bring all the parts together into a whole.
How will we communicate how each ministry supports and is supported by the Strategic Plan?
20. Illustrate: To explain by means of pictures, graphs, figures, stories and examples.
What means will we use to clearly illustrate our Strategic Plan?
21. Donate: To give (money, time, resources) to help a person, cause or organization.
How will we communicate how the Strategic Plan will be funded?
22. Accommodate: To adapt or to conform.
How will we adapt the Communication Plan for different constituencies, demographics and learning styles?
23. Anticipate: To foresee.
What are the questions we should anticipate addressing in the Communication Plan?
24. Regulate: To adjust the amount, degree or rate of something.
What other messages will we intentionally de-emphasize while we are communicating the Strategic Plan?
25. Circulate: To cause to pass from place to place or person to person.
How will we create positive internal and external word of mouth for the Strategic Plan?
26. Elaborate: To perfect or improve.
Who will critique and approve the final draft of the Communication Plan?
27. Predominate: To have controlling influence or power.
Who is the primary communicator(s) of the Strategic Plan?
28. Initiate: To introduce; to begin; to set into motion.
How and when will the Communication Plan be launched?
29. Evaluate: To appraise.
How will we evaluate the effectiveness of the Communication Plan?
30. Perpetuate: To cause to endure indefinitely.
How will we continue to communicate the Strategic Plan as it is implemented and updated?
Posted on April 19, 2016
