Category: Ministries OR Departments
The “Ultimate” Texting in Church Guide to long codes and shortcodes
By Jason Alexis | June 1, 2020
UPDATE (January 19, 2023)…Since this blog was written, the A2P 10DLC system number protocol came into being in the U.S. Briefly, this protocol is a way to register 10-digit long codes in order to keep spam to a minimum. This article has been updated to reflect that change. Read on to find out more about…
Reopening your church? Use this phased, 3-action “Back to Church” Communication Strategy
By Jason Alexis | May 25, 2020
In most states, churches are planning to reopen in some form. There are many good resources online which give advice and inspiration about the content of the first, physical get together in quite a while. Or you may have your own ideas about the direction you want to take. In this blog, however, we’ll focus…
Case study: Josiah Elias, Faith Chapel
By Jason Alexis | May 22, 2020
We want to talk about discovering the advantages of a one-number, communications HUB: your text-enabled church landline. Picture a church in which: The pastor and several church staff have all shared their mobile phone numbers with their ministry. Church members get confused about which number to use when. Quite often, the pastor and staff receive…
4 ideas for maxing ur txting characters 2 minimize ur msg costs
By Jason Alexis | April 24, 2020
At the moment (posted during the COVID-19 pandemic), your church might be texting more than usual…and that’s a good thing. Text messages can go a long way to keeping your flock feeling cared for and connected. Yet, more texts mean using more messaging credits. Though a system like PastorsLine allows you to send up to…
Case Study: Melissa McGurk, Perrysburg First United Methodist Church
By Anne Heath | July 8, 2019
Perrysburg First United Methodist Church is “here to serve, not to be served”. They serve a long list of local, national and international missions that support adults, youth, and children. Successfully running all these important missions depends on communication: people need to know what’s on offer as well as where to be, what to do,…
Case study: Ronee De Leon, Grace Fellowship
By Anne Heath | April 19, 2019
Even though they have four campuses in central Ohio and minister to 3,600 people over 10 weekly services, Grace Fellowship understands that their front doors need to be seeing new faces continuously. I had the pleasure of speaking with Ronee De Leon, Administrator of both the Local Impact and Guest Services departments at Grace Fellowship…
Bulk Text Messaging for Churches: Best Practices
By Jason Alexis | January 24, 2019
To the utter surprise of many of us, mass texting is the future of church marketing. Yes! Not email marketing, not phone marketing, and definitely not cold calls. Sounds intimidating? Well, let’s have a look at the reason behind this. Out of all the modes of messaging, text messages have an incomparable opening rate—98% as…
Interview: How Michelle Dyke of Real Life Church is saving time with PastorsLine multi user functionality
By Anne Heath | November 27, 2018
It was my pleasure to speak with Michelle Dyke of Real Life Christian Church in Orlando, Florida. Michelle (a former Actuary) shared that once, she considered herself a Christian who “believed in God but didn’t believe in going to church”. However, a life-changing life event made her feel lost, and she began looking for a…
How to make the most of SMS for VBS
By Jason Alexis | June 3, 2018
Many of you are hard at work on the fast-approaching VBS season. Whether a fully paid, subsidized or free series of events, VBS is a very big deal. In her article on the website, Facts and Trends, Sara Shelton informed: “Churches that used LifeWay VBS material reported more than 2.5 million people enrolled in VBS”.…
SMS text messaging, short and long codes explored
By Jason Alexis | February 14, 2018
There’s a lot of discussion about which of the two opt-in choices is better—shortcodes or longcodes. Just in case you are new to all this… Members and visitors must opt-in to be able to receive text messages sent by service providers. To do this, most service providers use what are called ‘shortcodes’ or ‘longcodes’. Shortcodes,…