A working glossary

A person voluntarily sharing an experience, invitation, or testimony because it has become meaningful to them.

IN BUSINESS:

Advocacy shows up as referrals, reviews, and word of mouth. It can be encouraged and made easy, but it cannot be bought outright.

IN THE CHURCH:

Advocacy sounds like come and see. In John 4, one woman's invitation carried more weight in her town than any announcement could have.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

Advocacy grows where an experience was worth talking about. You earn it upstream.

The specific people a piece of communication is designed to serve.

Everyone is not an audience. When a message tries to reach everyone, it usually reaches no one in particular.

IN BUSINESS:

Audiences are segmented so the message, channel, and offer fit the people receiving them.

IN THE CHURCH:

Your audience includes people who have not arrived yet. For many of them, the first campus they visit is digital.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

You cannot prepare a place for people you have not taken the time to understand.

ALSO CALLED: INTENTIONAL BRAND

The meaning people learn to believe because of the promises an organization consistently keeps.

Brand is not a logo, a color palette, or a style guide. Those are tools that carry it. Every organization already has a brand. The only question is whether it was chosen on purpose or assembled by default, one preference at a time.

IN BUSINESS:

Brand differentiates, builds equity, and lowers the cost of every future introduction.

IN THE CHURCH:

Brand is the accumulated answer to whether your stated mission agrees with people's lived experience of you.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

Trust grows where consistency exists. The experience confirms or contradicts the story.

ALSO CALLED: CTA

A clear invitation to take the next appropriate step.

IN BUSINESS:

The call to action moves a person toward trial, purchase, or commitment, and it is measured relentlessly.

IN THE CHURCH:

A faithful call to action respects agency and matches the trust already established. It invites; it never corners. A Call to Action requires a clear plan, we can't invite someone to a trip that we haven't planned.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

The ask should never be larger than the relationship. See earning the ask.

A coordinated, time-bound effort that brings multiple projects together around one shared purpose or measurable objective.

Each project solves a different part of the larger problem. It may serve a different audience, pursue a different outcome, and produce its own deliverables. The campaign gives those projects a common direction and keeps them working as one effort. Projects can be organized by audience, channel, discipline, or recurring content stream. A year-long campaign to increase social media engagement by 50 percent might contain separate Instagram and Facebook projects. The same campaign could instead be organized around weekly sermon clips, inspiring quotes, and Sunday photo galleries. The right structure reflects how the team owns, produces, and measures the work.

IN BUSINESS:

Campaigns align multiple projects, teams, timelines, and budgets around a shared objective. Individual projects may pursue different outcomes, but each one should make a measurable contribution to the larger purpose.

IN THE CHURCH:

A VBS campaign might include projects for recruiting volunteers, registering children, producing the creative and technical experience, and managing budgets and goals. Each project has a different outcome, but every outcome serves the same ministry purpose.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

A campaign does not require every project to pursue the same outcome. It requires every outcome to serve the same purpose.

Polish improves execution. Change improves direction. Knowing which one a moment calls for is leadership.

Most teams reach for polish because it is safer. A better photo, a cleaner layout, a tighter edit. But no amount of polish corrects a wrong direction, and no direction change excuses careless execution.

The accumulated cost of unclear, inconsistent, or neglected communication.

Like financial debt, it compounds. Every confusing announcement, outdated page, and contradictory signal borrows clarity from the future. Teams pay it back with interest, usually in the form of repeated questions, low trust, and rework.

The relational environment in which transformation is recognized, strengthened, and multiplied.

In John 4 the journey does not end with one conversation. It moves from a well, to a woman, to a town. Communication that stops at the individual has stopped early.

The moment a person says yes to an invitation and crosses from one level of engagement into another.

IN BUSINESS:

Conversion is a measurable event: a signup, a purchase, a booked call. Optimizing it is a discipline of removing friction.

IN THE CHURCH:

The word carries deeper weight here, and that is worth honoring. A click is not a conversion of the heart. Ministry conversions are steps of trust that only God can finish. We also use this term to refer to when a seeker makes a deeper decision to engage with the church. For example moving from a visitor to an attender or from an attender to a member.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

Every yes is preceded by a dozen quieter moments that made the yes possible.

ALSO CALLED: BRIEF

Clarity before creativity. A document that describes everything that is necessary to produce a creative work. It should answer questions about audience, message, and outcome, written before the work begins.

A creative brief is not bureaucracy. It is the kindest document in the building, because it lets everyone decide direction while the work is still cheap to change.

ALSO CALLED: JOURNEY

The sequence of experiences through which a person moves from awareness toward deeper engagement.

IN BUSINESS:

The journey often moves toward purchase, continued use, loyalty, and advocacy. Teams map it to find the moments where people stall or leave.

IN THE CHURCH:

The journey moves toward trust, belonging, spiritual formation, service, and transformation. People are never merely prospects moving through a funnel. We describe it as AWARENESS -> VISIT -> ATTEND -> MEMBER -> MINISTER

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

Every touchpoint either helps or hinders the next faithful step.

A finished piece of work produced by a project and handed off, published, installed, performed, or otherwise put into use.

A deliverable has an owner, requirements, a deadline, an approval path, and one clearly defined job. Tasks are the individual actions required to complete it. A deliverable is not the outcome. It is the thing the team produces in service of the outcome. For communication deliverables, the one-job rule usually means one audience, one message, and one action. For other deliverables, the job may be different but should be just as clear. A budget report accounts for spending. A volunteer schedule tells each person where and when to serve.

IN BUSINESS:

Deliverables are the finished outputs a project promises to produce. Clear requirements, ownership, deadlines, and approvals make it possible to evaluate the work without confusing completion with results.

IN THE CHURCH:

A deliverable may be a sermon clip, registration form, volunteer schedule, production plan, stage environment, training session, or final budget report. Different projects produce different kinds of work, but every deliverable should serve the purpose of the campaign.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

If it does not ship, it is not a deliverable. Give it one job and make that job clear.

The intentional process of solving communication problems.

Design is not decoration, and it begins long before fonts and colors. It begins by asking better questions. Beautiful work is evidence that the problem was understood. Poor design invites someone; good design welcomes them by preparing a place.

Building enough clarity, relevance, and trust before requesting a deeper commitment.

It is not manipulation. It is respect for the person and the relationship. An ask that outruns its trust reads as pressure; an ask that trust has prepared reads as an open door.

The faithful stewardship of communication to understand people, meet them where they are, clearly express truth and hope, and invite them toward transformation without coercion.

Seth Godin describes marketing as “the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Marketing helps others become who they seek to become.” That generosity begins with empathy. It asks us to understand another person's questions, hopes, obstacles, and story before deciding what we need to say. In the church, we are not manufacturing desire or manipulating people toward a decision. We are preparing a place, removing unnecessary barriers, telling the truth clearly, and helping people take an honest next step toward Jesus. We do not create transformation. We faithfully serve the people God is already drawing. The pattern is older than the vocabulary. In John 4, Jesus goes to the marketplace, sees a person rather than a demographic, listens for the need beneath the request, and earns every deeper moment of the conversation.

A need a person can currently recognize or articulate.

Felt needs are often the doorway into deeper questions, but they should not be confused with the whole person. The woman at the well came for water.

The people God is calling us to care for before we know who they are.

Future does not mean hypothetical. They may already be driving past, searching for answers, watching a sermon on YouTube, encountering a social post, visiting the website, or opening an email. Long before they enter the building, they are learning what the church believes, who it welcomes, and whether there is a place for them.

IN BUSINESS:

The closest parallel is a prospective customer or future customer. The language usually describes someone who has not yet purchased but has begun experiencing the organization through its story and touchpoints.

IN THE CHURCH:

The future congregation is not a market to capture. They are people God has called us to prepare a place for. In the post-COVID church, communications is preaching to the future congregation, and the first campus many people visit will be digital.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

Ministry can begin before a person arrives. We begin caring for people before we know who they are.

The practice of reducing unnecessary barriers and helping people know where they are, what is happening, and what they can do next.

Think of a grandparent preparing the house before a grandchild visits. Nothing about it is generic. Every interaction communicates whether someone belongs: websites, signage, emails, photography, typography. All of it welcomes, or discourages.

IN BUSINESS:

Hospitality is the experience layer: onboarding, wayfinding, support, and every reply that makes a customer feel expected.

IN THE CHURCH:

Hospitality begins before anyone arrives. The website is a front porch. Communication is ministry because we begin caring for people before we know who they are.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

People can tell the difference between being processed and being prepared for.

The physical and digital places where people already live, gather, work, search, and form meaning.

Going to the marketplace means refusing to wait passively for people to enter spaces you control. Jesus went through Samaria; he did not wait in the temple courts.

A frustration, fear, obstacle, or unmet need experienced by a person.

Pain points should be understood with empathy, never exploited. The difference between serving a need and leveraging one is the difference between ministry and manipulation.

A research-based representation used to understand a particular group's context, needs, questions, motivations, and barriers.

IN BUSINESS:

Personas focus product, message, and media decisions so teams build for someone instead of everyone.

IN THE CHURCH:

A persona is more than a demographic. A persona represents a person God has called us to prepare a place for.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

A persona serves personhood. It never replaces it.

A coordinated body of work within a campaign, created to pursue a specific outcome through a defined set of deliverables and an agreed budget of time, money, and resources.

A project gives one part of the campaign clear edges. It has an owner, scope, timeline, budget, and definition of done. That budget is never only financial. It includes the time available, the money authorized, and the people, tools, space, and attention committed to the work. It may be organized around an audience, channel, discipline, event, or recurring content stream. The structure is useful when the team can see who owns the work, what it must accomplish, what it will produce, what it may spend, and when it is complete. Projects live inside campaigns, produce deliverables, and break the larger purpose into work a team can responsibly own. When everything gets called a project, priorities blur and nothing finishes. The hierarchy is not bureaucracy. It is how creative teams share the load and trace their work back to the purpose it served.

IN BUSINESS:

Projects turn campaign objectives into accountable work. A social media campaign might contain projects organized by platform, such as Instagram and Facebook, or by content stream, such as sermon clips, inspiring quotes, and Sunday galleries. The better structure is the one that makes ownership, production, and measurement clear.

IN THE CHURCH:

A VBS volunteer recruiting project has a distinct audience, staffing outcome, owner, timeline, and set of deliverables. It can be completed independently while still contributing to the larger VBS campaign alongside registration, production, and administration projects.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

If it does not end, it is not a project. A project is complete when its agreed work and deliverables are finished and the result has been evaluated against the intended outcome. Completion and success are not the same thing. That distinction is how a team learns.

A clear articulation of the meaningful future, value, or hope being offered.

Brands are built from kept promises and dismantled by broken ones. In Christian communication the promise must remain truthful; we cannot guarantee outcomes God has not promised.

The faithful investment of resources, attention, trust, influence, and opportunity for the good of others and the mission entrusted to us.

Stewardship is not what you protect. Stewardship is what you invest. Communication is one of the talents we have been entrusted with, and the question is never whether we will preserve it but whether we will multiply it.

IN BUSINESS:

Stewardship reads as responsible management: budgets honored, attention respected, brand equity grown rather than spent.

IN THE CHURCH:

Stewardship is the whole posture of the work. Every touchpoint is an entrusted talent, and burying it is not neutrality.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

What is entrusted is meant to be invested.

The meaning people assign to your organization, built from every experience they have with it.

Every organization tells a story. Some intentionally, some accidentally. The work is not inventing a story; the work is discovering the right one and making sure every interaction tells it consistently.

ALSO CALLED: STORYBRAND FRAMEWORK · SB7

Donald Miller's framework for making a message easier to understand by putting the audience at the center of the story. They are the hero. We are the guide. We name the problem, offer a plan, and invite them toward a clear next step.

A guide earns trust through empathy and authority: “I've been there. I know how to help.”

IN BUSINESS:

Most organizations lead with themselves: who we are, what we do, and why we are great at it. StoryBrand turns the conversation around. It begins with the customer's problem, the change they are looking for, and the help they need to move forward.

IN THE CHURCH:

That distinction matters in the church. The church is the guide, not the hero. Empathy says, “I see you. I understand what you are carrying.” Authority says, “I know how to help you take the next step.” StoryBrand can help us communicate with greater clarity and care, but it is still a messaging framework, not a theology. The Gospel is not a product. People are not prospects to capture. We prepare a place, tell the truth clearly, and trust God with the transformation.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

People lean in when they recognize their problem, understand the invitation, and can see what to do next.

ALSO CALLED: KPIS

The signals a team agrees to watch in order to learn whether the work is doing its job.

IN BUSINESS:

Revenue, retention, conversion rate, cost per acquisition. The numbers map cleanly to the health of the enterprise.

IN THE CHURCH:

Attendance and clicks are easy to count and easy to misread. Trust, belonging, formation, and service resist the spreadsheet, so measure what you can, and hold it humbly.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

You get more of whatever you celebrate. Choose metrics that deserve celebrating.

The smallest unit of work required to complete a deliverable.

Tasks are where systems meet Tuesday afternoon. If a task cannot be finished, it is probably a deliverable wearing a disguise.

Any interaction through which a person experiences an organization: websites, signage, conversations, social posts, events, emails, environments, follow-up.

Touchpoints are the moments where people decide whether your stated mission agrees with their lived experience. None of them are neutral.

A meaningful change in understanding, identity, relationship, or behavior.

It is deeper than a click, an attendance count, or a transaction. Transformation is the outcome the whole journey serves, and it cannot be manufactured on a deadline.

Confidence built through consistency, dignity, honesty, relevance, and demonstrated care.

Trust creates room for deeper conversation, but it never entitles an organization to control the response. It is the currency every other term in this glossary spends.

Speaking honestly within a relationship marked by dignity and attention.

It does not mean delaying truth deceptively or avoiding it indefinitely. It means the hardest true things travel best on roads that trust has already built. Jesus revealed what he knew about the woman at the well after the conversation had earned the depth.

A concise expression of why an invitation matters to the person receiving it.

IN BUSINESS:

The value proposition answers why choose us, in the customer's own terms, faster than a competitor can.

IN THE CHURCH:

Handle this language carefully. The gospel is not a consumer benefit, and living water is not a product feature. The discipline is clarity about why the invitation matters, without reducing what is being offered.

WHAT REMAINS TRUE:

If you cannot say why it matters to them, you are not ready to invite.