John Rinaldo is the director of youth ministry in the Diocese of San Jose. He recently blogged about a youth ministry coordinator gathering where Julius and Benjamin Bercasio spoke about marketing our youth ministry programs. The workshop offered some free online resources to make a good and eye catching flyer, to using social media tools, to guerilla marketing.

We must market. Our young people need to know that we, our church, is out there for them.

John thought the most provocative thought that was shared before you can do any marketing, your ministry needs to have answers to the following questions:

   1. What are you and what are you about?
   2. What are your core values, mission, and vision?
   3. What is your core message?
   4. How do you effectively communicate this to you’re target audience?

Thinking about and naming these things are not enough. John suggests that we need to write these down and educate our community about these things before we can begin to effectively market our ministries. The next step is to ask how you create eye-catching designs that would be able to communicate your messages to your audience?

Read John’s whole post and check the attached power-point. For additional insights, check out churchmarketingsucks.com (where I found this online tutorial to help churches create a marketing plan that was put together by the United Methodist Church.