Wil Triggs Director of Communications “Going viral” in communications took on new and somewhat strange elements this year. With so much global focus on avoiding the virus, we relied more than ever before on the basic tool of communications. Words and images, whether appearing in pixels on a screen, or handwritten in a notecard delivered in a mailbox, helped us not feel isolated or alone. And we had more people checking us out virtually than ever before with between 7,00010,000 new visitors to our website every month of the year. Two of the top searches that drove people to click into our website were “online church,” and “find a church.” We hope that the new website will increase that traffic.
The online worship services ran ahead of our in-person worship services week after pandemic week. These online visitors offer a future challenge in terms of how to engage them more fully in the years ahead, as the new normal becomes a little more like our old normal. Remember that? This year we also changed email service providers, increased our social media output on a weekly basis and increased our online advertising through places like Google and Facebook. I’ve witnessed more openness to the struggles of life this year than any other year that I can recall. We so often want to tell ourselves and others that everything is going great, even if inside we’re struggling. This year gave us the time and space to admit that everything was not okay. I saw that reflected in our communications in positive ways. Examples? Saying goodbye to a son headed for war, trying to balance life with the demands of faraway family, navigating what it means to live for Jesus in a place like Myan-
On the front page of newspapers, on nightly news broadcasts over television cable news outlets and and in social media posts, the storm-toppling of our steeple had many people looking at College Church for the first time. Friends and family across the country saw photos and video footage of our toppled steeple after our August storm. Thanks to the clean-up crew who worked so hard to clear and clean. In the photo, Howard Kern holds the top of the steeple during the clean-up effort. We will have a new steeple installed later this summer.
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