Earlier this month, we introduced you to one of our new Center for Church Communication (CFCC) board members: Jenny Rain. Today, we are pleased to introduce another new addition to the board: Cleve Persinger.
Cleve is the director of strategic partnerships at The Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham, N.C., a freelance communications/marketing consultant and founder of Creative Missions—mission trips for media professionals.
What’s your church working on right now that’s fun?
Cleve: I’m directing/organizing The Gospel Summit conference. It’s not only a nuts and bolts conference for church leaders, but also what it looks like to transition from a gathering to sending mentality.
One of your board tasks is overseeing Creative Missions. This is the trip’s fifth year in operation. What are you looking forward to this year and what’s changed since the beginning?
Cleve: The unique situations of the churches we serve is what most changes from year to year. For example, we’re serving a lot of missional, community-based churches in Boise this year.
I’m looking forward to that stretching and teaching our crew many things about how we can best serve the increasing trend of missional over attractional in American churches and abroad.
Part of Creative Missions and even the wider CFCC ethos is helping churches. Sometimes the church isn’t very good at helping each other and working together. Why do you think it’s important for churches to help one another?
Cleve: Ultimately, cities will be redeemed by the gospel when many different Christian churches and denominations lock arms and become one movement—a movement that reaches many neighborhoods and peoples, reflecting the God-ordained diversity of humanity.
We’ve been very fortunate serving churches through Creative Missions that are networking with other churches and resourcing the under-resourced. Sometimes it’s lending volunteers. Other times it’s just sharing what’s working. There’s always something in a closet collecting dust that another church could use.
What’s the single greatest thing you think churches can do to communicate better?
Cleve: Internal communication between ministries, leadership and staff.
What do you see in the future of church communication?
Cleve: Churches will need to adapt to the changing landscape of social media, specifically as new options for social media engagement compete with Facebook and Twitter.
I work at a church in the middle of three major universities. We have 2,000 college students attending every week, and a majority are not active on either Facebook or Twitter—that’s where their moms and grandmothers are. Instagram, Snapchat, and Yik Yak are the main apps getting the most use out of that crowd.
Gary Vaynerchuk says, “Everything ages up. People don’t leave forms of communication behind. They stick to what will allow them to communicate the most and at a large scale. Pay attention to where the younger generations are going. This is the reason so many people in their mid-30s right now still use Facebook. All their high school and college friends use it.”
