FAQ: How do you communicate with your leaders?

As the leadership base of any church grows, communication becomes more difficult. We continue to experiment and try new things, but we don't have it all figured out yet. Our communication to leaders primarily flows in two ways: 1) Email and 2) Zonegathering.com.

We structure our leadership with zone leaders and team leaders, and most communication flows via email from the Discipleship Pastor to zone leaders to team leaders to small group leaders. If there's something urgent or of extreme importance, the communication will flow directly from Pastor Mark or me to the inbox of every leader.

In 2005, we launched a new vehicle for communication-- www.zonegathering.com-- it's the online community for NCC small group leaders. Most things that need to get communicated to our leaders are posted here, and leaders can check in weekly, daily, or hourly to see what's new. Obviously, we don't post sensitive or confidential things to this site because people outside the NCC leadership base can access it.

Some pros and cons:

Email- Email is quick, easy, convenient, and all of our leaders have it. The advantage with email is that you can ensure that the message gets sent to the inbox of each and every leader. The disadvantage is that sometimes the news has to travel through several different people before landing in the small group leader's inbox. This can result in time delays.

Zonegathering- The blog method of communication is also quick, easy, convenient, and all of our leaders have access to it. The advantage is that anyone can check in at any time to see the latest news, and things don't have to wind themselves through the communication channels. The disadvantage, at least from my perspective, is that we cannot force our leaders to go to zonegathering on a regular basis. It's opt-in for them, and we never know who has gotten the message from there and who hasn't.