Lessons from the Past 5 Years; Resilience, Persistence & Consistency
As mentioned previously, yesterday (May 2nd) was Digital Church Toolkit's 5th birthday. Here are some reflections from me (Peter) and lessons that might be helpful to you.
Resilience
Starting a business is hard, especially as most people don't understand what it entails. Just like Church comms.
I often think that church comms is a particularly difficult role, whether paid or voluntary. Most of your congregation, and friends, don't really know what staff get up to all day. And if you're responsible for comms, the other staff members also understand what you get up to all day either. Whilst piling you with requests for graphics or Instagram posts.
Pushing through difficulties requires resilience. In building Digital Church Toolkit, I have found that self-awareness allows me to know when to ask for help, when to push hard and when to take some time off. And I couldn't of develop a degree of self-awareness without professional help in the form of counsellors and therapists.
Persistence
Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Digital Church Toolkit.
It takes time to accomplish any vision, often with a few detours along the way.
Each day, we have tried to move the vision forward and focus on our core passion of serving UK churches. In the face of distractions and detours, we have had to be persistent.
If you are championing digital in your environment, you probably have to be persistent to get heard and see decisions get made.
Take small actions every day towards your vision, and one day you'll look back and see Rome.
Consistency
When I reflect on all we've done over the past 5 years, and how we've done it. I often think it's because we just kept showing up.
I have learnt that consistency, over the long haul, is probably the most underrated growth strategy.
Over the past 5 years, I have spoken with hundreds, possibly thousands, of people trying to improve their church's digital engagement. And I've discovered that consistency is also often the determining factor of meaningful engagement, or not. This is best summed up by a comment in our learning community, The Training Tribe, this week.
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