Fall Is Here!
As predicted, summer has been anything but slow. Between an epic road trip with my 12-year-old, volunteering at an Episcopal summer camp in northern Michigan, and reconnecting with people from Idaho to New York, my To Do list — rudely — did not get any shorter. If anything, it got longer, because every mile and every conversation kept generating new ideas.
I only worked about 65% of my standard hours this summer, so there's some irony in adding to the list instead of clearing it. But this kind of creative rejuvenation is exactly what I needed heading into the second half of the year. It just doesn't manufacture the time to get both old and new stuff done.
So here's a transparent look at the August 1 To Do List of an over-traveled (and, yes, over-caffeinated) church communicator, aimed at both task (taking care of my responsibilities) and maintenance (taking care of myself):
The logistics:
Clean up my inboxes and clean off my desk. I did every ounce of work this summer from a non-traditional location: my car, a hammock, a roadside picnic table, more hotel rooms than I can count. I don't need this stack of papers and old notes I've been holding onto like some kind of proof-of-accomplishment safety blanket.
Review my subscriptions. Make sure I'm using what I'm paying for, and getting reimbursed for what I'm using.
Update my calendar. I worked from every U.S. time zone this summer except Hawaii and Alaska. Time to know when I need to be where, going forward. While we're at it, my calendar now holds a good number of standing meetings. Let's make sure each one still has an agenda and still works for everyone's schedule.
What I'm actually excited to get to, once that's handled:
Templates. As I've lamented before, I spend way too much time resizing graphics. I want to wrangle this system once and for all: no more than 3 sizes for any promotional item (previously that's looked like square, vertical, and one business-card size). I need to go back and see where the first attempt at this, back in the winter, went off the rails.
Program year prep. With over a month before kickoff at the churches I work with, there's still time to prepare intentionally for the program year, stewardship season, Advent, even Holy Week. I'm digging back into my old (digital!) notes, pulling forward the ideas while there's still time to execute. That means a ⅓-page Program Year calendar people can stick on their fridge, a quote-graphic template pulled from last year's sermons, and a look back at how last year's stewardship emails actually performed.
SEO. Every website I manage could use a refresh, even if that just means checking analytics and confirming it's all good. Heading into fall, with several of my churches in transition, I want these sites set up to succeed as the front door of welcome they're meant to be.
Website advice. Kendall Martin’s “Small Changes, Big Impact” session in June gave us a genuinely doable 1-hour refresh: clarify the homepage, get service times and a real call-to-action above the fold, clean out anything over a year old, polish one key page…I nodded along in the Zoom room. Now it's time to make it happen. (Members, the full recording and worksheets are archived here if you want to follow along.)
Getting back on the platforms I've let slide. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that a church Instagram hasn't gained followers in the three months since I last posted. I've told a hundred church communicators that consistency beats perfection. Physician, heal thyself. For me, that's Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and Caffeinated Church's own Facebook page.
None of this is glamorous, and I doubt any of it will make it into a highlight reel. But this is the actual shape of ministry work: road trips and camp and good conversations on one end, inboxes and templates and stewardship spreadsheets on the other. Both halves matter. I'm just grateful for a season that reminded me why the second half is worth doing well.
