The St. Paul’s Ministries

Communications — an essential support function    By David Heath St. Paul’s Communications serves mainly as a support function for the Ministries, and its main objective is to satisfy all of their communications requirements. These Ministries are Membership, Worship, Outreach, Adult Education, Youth and Children, Pastoral Care, and Parish Life and Fellowship. We support them by keeping everyone — including current and potential members of St. Paul’s — informed about everything that is taking place and about all that St. Paul’s has to offer as an inspiring and welcoming place of worship. For current members, we provide information about the work and the decisions of the Ministries, upcoming activities and events, volunteer opportunities, and other ways to get involved and contribute to the success of the church. We also keep everyone informed about past events with reports and pictures. For potential members, our main focus is to enable all who are seeking an Episcopal Church in the Wilmington area to readily find the St. Paul’s website, and on it find everything about the church, including its outstanding music, its services, its beautiful sanctuary, its welcoming environment, and its many activities and events for people of all ages. For potential members, our main focus is to enable all who are seeking an Episcopal Church in the Wilmington area to readily find the St. Paul’s website, and on it find everything about the church … The principal communications media that we use include the St. Paul’s website, the weekly E-News, and local news media. Our monthly newsletter Parables has been discontinued because much of the current news is now in the weekly E-News. However, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Mark and Cheryl Wagoner, who have been doing a wonderful job producing Parables for many years. The St. Paul’s website, which Jeria Coleman, Administrative Assistant to the Rector, and I manage, is crucial to keeping current members of St. Paul’s fully informed and enabling potential members to find St. Paul’s and decide that they would like to come to one of our services. High priorities include ensuring that the site is welcoming and informative, and that it provides highly visible and current information on all important activities and events along with easy navigation. New information is posted almost every day, so please visit it often. The ability to accept credit card payments securely on the website is planned for implementation by the Spring of 2012. Other website priorities, which are not so obvious to those who visit the site but are nevertheless crucial, include achieving the highest possible search engine rankings so that potential members find us easily, and making sure that search engines display a description of the church that will encourage people to visit the website. We also make sure that the website is coded and organized as logically as possible to facilitate updating and to use the server space as efficiently as possible. The latest addition to our communications media is the E-News, for which Jeria does a great job assembling all the latest news and getting it out to members every week. The latest addition to our communications media is the E-News … It keeps everyone informed about the latest news and upcoming events and provides links to more-detailed information on the website. It is currently distributed as a PDF e-mail attachment and it goes to all members who have a listed e-mail address. It is also posted on the website each week, also in PDF format, making it available to all current and potential members. It keeps everyone informed about the latest news and upcoming events and provides links to more-detailed information on the website. Communications is also responsible for submitting information concerning upcoming events, especially concerts, to the local news media, such as the Star-News and local radio and television. This draws not only existing members to St. Paul’s but also new people and potential members. This can be a very rewarding activity, and someone who would be interested in taking it on will be provided with all the help necessary and will be a very welcome member of the Communications team! In keeping with the times that we live in, computer skills, programming skills, and proofreading experience are all valuable assets in Communications. If anyone would like to join the team, please contact me at infoexact@mindspring.com. David Heath Return to the list of Ministries to read about another Ministry

16 North 16th Street, Wilmington, NC 28401  Phone: 910-762-4578

16 North 16th Street, Wilmington, NC 28401  Phone: 910-762-4578