Prepare for the Unexpected: Crisis Communication Strategies for Your Church with Kim Tarlton

unSeminary Podcast

Welcome back to the unSeminary podcast. I’m excited to talk with Kim Tarlton, the General Manager of Church Communications Group which helps church communicators navigate the complexities of the modern communication landscape.

Many churches operate under the misconception that crises won’t happen to them. However, crises can arise from various sources, including issues in the larger community, financial scandals, or natural disasters. The key is to acknowledge the possibility of a crisis and prepare accordingly. Tune in as Kim delves into the strategic planning to effectively communicate about and manage various crises that may arise both internally and externally.

• Get a plan in place. // Not only do churches need to be prepared for crises, but also crisis communication with the congregation and the public. What message do you need to convey? What is your brand communicating? What are people hearing from your church? Who needs to be the one communicating? Churches need to be prepared for what God is calling them to do and preserve the message of Jesus. Acknowledge that any number of crises may occur at your church and put a plan on paper so you know what you have agreed to.
• Get a crisis response team. // One of the first steps in crisis preparation is forming a crisis response team. Who are your go-to people? This team should include key staff members who are integral to the church’s operations, elder board members who can provide outside oversight and guidance, and legal counsel to navigate any legal implications that may arise. Create a crisis management plan that clearly outlines who is responsible for what during a crisis and how to communicate with the congregation and handle media inquiries. Include each individual’s contact information so everything you need is readily accessible.
• Plan out your areas of response. // Develop good relationships with your local news groups. Invite them to events your church holds and have coffee with them. By taking time to build these relationships, you will be able to use them as a resource when you need to interact with the press during a crisis. Additionally, prepare press releases ahead of time that can be used in these situations.
• Levels of communications. // Many churches fail to communicate effectively during a crisis, leading to confusion and frustration among staff and volunteers. Share information first with the elders and executive leadership. Then inform the staff of the situation and how it will be handled. Finally, communicate with the congregation. This tiered approach helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and reduces the likelihood of misinformation spreading.
• PRAY with your crisis team. // Every crisis situation is different and it can be difficult to discern what information to share. Kim underscores that before doing anything, church leaders need to seek God for wisdom and cast all of their cares onto Christ. Use the PRAY acronym—Pause, Repeat what is true about God, Ask God and others for help, and Yield, taking time to listen to God and each other. Don’t be in crisis response mode, but rather crisis management.
• Get together to look at the plan. // Gather the crisis management team annually and audit the team and the plan every year. Fill empty positions if a member of the crisis response team is no longer there. Spend a couple of hours to review your plans for crisis management and make any necessary changes.

NEXT STEPS // Editable Crisis Communication Manual Template for Churches

Based on today’s podcast episode, here is a starting point for a basic crisis communication manual that you can use to begin preparing your church for unexpected situations. Download the editable template to customize for your specific needs.

To get help from Church Communications Group in crisis management or any other aspect of church communications, visit their website at churchcommunications.com and connect with Kim there.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey, friends, welcome to the unSeminary Podcast. So glad that you have decided to tune in. Really looking forward to today’s conversation with Kim Tarlton. This is going to be a fantastic conversation if you are in your church today and you’re thinking about the future and you’re wondering, are there things I can be doing today to get ready for stuff in the future, even if it’s some stuff I don’t want to think about today, will be a great episode for you.
Rich Birch — If you’re not familiar, she is the General Manager of Church Communications Group, which began really as an idea to create a space where church communicators could find support, resources, and inspiration, needed to gap navigate the complexities of the modern communication landscape. She has 26 plus years of being a creative leader in mega churches and excels in communication, strategy, and leadership. Super excited to have you. You’re a bonafide expert, Kim. Glad you’re on the show. Thanks for being here today.
Kim Tarlton — Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. And and, you know, obviously not a great like exciting subject, but still being able to lean in in this way um is really is really something that like we want to do. And so thank you for inviting me into this conversation.
Rich Birch — Yeah, I know it’s going to be great. So why don’t you kind of fill out the picture? You’re kind of owns a little bit of your story. Tell us a little bit more of the but Kim story, kind of fill out that a little bit before we jump in.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah, so um like you said, 26 years full-time ministry, I was working in the church. And I have been, I’ve been at three mega, well, I guess they’re like giga churches now because that’s the thing. And so I’ve been a part of three churches that ah the first one that I was a part of, there’s 300 when I left there, not because of me, all because of God, but like when I left there, they were running upward of 10,000.
Kim Tarlton — And so these churches and the church growth and the multi-site and all of that, being able to be a part of that for so many years, leaning in on um all areas, from production to creative ministry to stage management, and all those things as well as communications, ah God called me to the Big C church. And to allow the use of what he was giving me and training me and um leaning into me with…

Rich Birch — That’s so good.

Kim Tarlton — …for so many years, allowing me to take that to a bigger audience outside of these walls into multiple walls. And so um I was able to join the Missional Marketing Group of Companies, which is where the Church Communications Group is a brand under the Missional Marketing Group of Companies now. So yeah…

Rich Birch — Love it.
Kim Tarlton — …that’s just the the elevator version.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Love it. Well, you know, today we want to talk a little bit about crisis communication. Which um again, this is one of those episodes that I think it’s so good. It’s like leaning us forward thinking about the future.
Rich Birch — And we’ve got a dog, which is great. I love dogs on the podcast.
Kim Tarlton — Sorry about that. Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s all good. The um but but but first, let’s talk about like what do we mean by crisis communication? Like how do I know? Like obviously, there’s like the super extreme version that we probably can think of and we wish we never had to think of. But but but what does that look like, crisis communications? What is that?
Kim Tarlton — Yeah. So, um, for us, you know, first of all, I’ll start with the fact that like, when it comes to churches, we are, we’re kind of is some, not everybody, but some of us are kind of in denial mode. And we’re kind of thinking through this lens of like, that’s not going to happen to us.
Rich Birch — So true.
Kim Tarlton — Um, and maybe that, that might not be something that’s happening in our church or with our pastors or our people. But the bottom line is is that like the church is actually in crisis right now. It is becoming more and more obvious. We are seeing things that have happened in the past, like years ago, coming to light now.
Kim Tarlton — And so crisis is an actual thing. It’s something that we need to not be scared of.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — But we need to be prepared for.

Kim Tarlton — And so when we lean in for crisis communication, it’s saying there’s crisis management that your church needs to lean into, your staff, your pastors, everybody. But then there’s also crisis communication. And there’s that side of like, what is it that we’re saying? What is our brand like putting out there to people? What does this what are people hearing from us as a church?
Kim Tarlton — And when we look at crisis, there there’s so many opportunities for crisis to happen.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — It’s not even just in our walls, right, Rich?

Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — Like there’s crisis internally. There’s the church crisis. There’s community crisis. There’s there’s shootings in schools right now. There are things happening within our communities that are causing crisis and we need to manage those well.
Kim Tarlton — And then there’s world crisis, you know. Like right now where I am at, I’m probably dating this a little bit, but like where I am at in Indiana, we’re fine. But Florida is looking like it’s getting hit by hurricanes.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — How do we help manage that? That is happening not here in my state or with my church, but it is happening with churches around the world, or in cities, states, regions outside of our walls.

Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — So when looking at crisis, it’s really going, how do we manage it? But how do we communicate better? And and making sure that we are thinking through that process too…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …to make sure that we we don’t go into it kind of stumbling through our words, not sounding right, and not not really like following after what God is calling us to do…

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — …and care for people. Not protect the accused, but to protect the church, to protect the all around idea of like, and not protect Jesus even, I don’t even want to say that, like protect him, but protect the message really.
Rich Birch — Yeah, for sure. That’s good. Like and so you know to put a little more meat on the bones, we’re talking about like you know the the unfortunate situation, you you know. The ah report comes out that the youth pastor was having inappropriate sexual relations with a kid in the youth group. Unfortunately, friends, like these things are they’re like so common that it’s not even hard to think about what the problem is, right?
Rich Birch — It could be in a situation from 10, 15 years ago. There could be a financial issue. But it also could be, like you’re saying, like maybe one of your campuses burns to the ground. Or like you know which is or you have um you know some some sort of you know problem like that that happens to your church that does nothing really, it’s not like a sin issue, it’s just something terrible has happened.
Kim Tarlton — Right.
Rich Birch — Like you say, shootings in in in town, that kind of thing.
Rich Birch — And and so um you know we wanna be thinking, that’s kind of the frame that we wanna have as we’re as we’re thinking about these things today. But when we think about, you know, we’re sitting here today, first of all, before we get to kind of what we should be doing, why is it that, and I’m putting a little bit on the spot here…
Kim Tarlton — No worries.
Rich Birch — Why is it that there seems to be resistance with executive pastors, lead pastors—I say that as an executive pastor—on seeking help around communications? Like we don’t do that. I’ve said in other contexts, and maybe I’m just going to answer my own question. I’ve said in other contexts, yeah, when the church is really small, you have, you know, maybe the church planter’s doing the bookkeeping. And then eventually you pass it on to somebody else.
Rich Birch — And then eventually you might have like a whole department of people, CFO, the whole thing. And like, but there’s a something with communications where I would say communications is a professional function similar to finances, but there’s like a resistance to wanting to interact with an organization like yours. Why is that?
Kim Tarlton — Honestly, like, and I don’t have any, a lot of backing to this…

Rich Birch — Sure.

Kim Tarlton — …but what I hear is like, as soon as you bring light to something, a couple of things end up happening, right? So like I had a pastor give me this example, and this is like this is a terrible example, but I’m going to share it anyway, because it came from a pastor. He’s like, you know like when you are young and you like the girl, um but you don’t know if she likes you, and you’re kind of like unsure, but all that stuff.
Kim Tarlton — And then it comes out. And all of a sudden it’s like, Well, okay, I like you. Whether she liked you or not, now she’s thinking, I like you too. Or maybe there might be something there.

Kim Tarlton — And so there’s this idea of like, as soon as we start talking about it, as soon as we bring light to this, is that going to now shine like this extra spotlight on us at the church? Is this going to make it seem like we’re having that we have something that we’re looking into or that we want to hide or that we’re trying to figure out how to get our way past it. Instead of us looking at it and going, we’ are we want to prepare ourselves. We want to be prepared as a church, and we want to be prepared as a community.
Kim Tarlton — Instead, we’re looking at it and we’re going, oh, that might not make me look good. So I’m going to hide. I’m going to kind of hide it in the background. And so that’s kind of one…
Rich Birch — Interesting.
Kim Tarlton — …probably there’s multiple reasons…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — …but that’s one of the reasons I am hearing most from churches right now.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Okay. So what, what can we do to be prepared for this? Like with this, is one of these things we don’t want to think about, but like insurance, we’d none of us want to pay insurance, but like, cause it’s like, where does all that money go? But this is similar. It’s like, we’ve got to be thinking ahead about these things.
Kim Tarlton — Yes.
Rich Birch — How could we start thinking ahead, um, for kind of a multiplicity of, of situations? Um, obviously by definition, it’s it’s a crisis so we don’t, you know, we didn’t plan for it. But what what can we be doing now?
Kim Tarlton — Yeah, so um there’s there’s there’s obvious there’s levels and layers to preparing yourself. And when we talk about crisis, you know you mentioned some some of those things as well. Like there’s there’s not ah It’s not always just sexual abuse…
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — …or or something of sexual nature. I think there’s that this list that’s out there, um and if you it might be Barna Group or somebody has a list, like the top five areas that um cause crisis management to happen within a church. And sexual abuse of a minor is number one. And then I believe on that list is like zoning issues, um and personal injury.

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — Somebody actually like getting hurt on site, property disputes. And then I think the other one is insurance issues.
Kim Tarlton — But like one of the things that we’re also seeing a lot in the church right now, um and I believe um I believe I heard this from ah one of our team, um is that like what we’re seeing in church right now, too, is um there’s a high percentage of, even when it comes to the finances of the church, um embezzlement things like that are happening, and it’s happening behind closed doors. And we’re not we’re not prepared for that. We we think, okay, that we’re okay there in the finance side. And then all of a sudden it comes out and it’s like, well, maybe somebody’s been pocketing a few too many of the the giving and the tithes.
Kim Tarlton — And so there’s kind of this like layers and elements of like there’s so many different things and so preparing how do we prepare for all of those things that could happen? And the first thing that I’m going to say is being prepared. Like, that’s probably just being willing to say, you know what? We are willing to, as a church, understand that anything could happen. And even if it doesn’t happen in our walls, like I was saying, there’s stuff happening in your community, happening in your world, and being prepared. How do we respond in these situations?
Kim Tarlton — So number one is just actually leaning into, it’s time to be prepared. I would say every single church staff needs to come together. They bring their staff in the room and they need to say, we are willing to be prepared. And so we’re going to invest in that. And you have to look at your budget and you have to go, what does this look like financially?
Kim Tarlton — It probably is going to look like your communications person, which a lot of those communications leaders are coming right out of college. They maybe have not experienced a crisis of their own. They’re not really…
Rich Birch — They’re good on Instagram. Give it to them.
Kim Tarlton — Exactly, exactly.

Rich Birch — There’s a lot of that in the church world.
Kim Tarlton — There’s a lot of that. And and and that like, as much as we need them to step in because they are our communications leaders, at the same time, they don’t know what they’re supposed to do.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — They don’t know how to write a press release correctly and and all those things. And so getting them the help that can help them prepare. Bringing in the right people to help go, let’s put a plan together. And I think that’s like such a huge need, is making sure you put your plan on paper so that when something happens, we all go back to the book and we pull the book out together and we say, we know, we have agreed, this is the plan.

Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — And we’ve put our team together and we’ve put our, you know this is what this is what a press release is gonna look like, and how this should feel. And this is who should be sending it and doing it.

Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — I had a i had a situation come up um at a church that I was working with that we had the plan, right? Like the plan was there it was visible it was ready to go and then when crisis hit, all of a sudden the pastor went, oh i should be the voice. No, no, no we had discussed this…

Rich Birch — This is why we did it

Kim Tarlton — …that that you are not the voice. And so you have to make sure you plan, you put it on paper, and we all agree to it. So bringing everybody into that conversation is really important.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — You don’t just have the pastors and the executive pastors do that. You bring your communications team in. You bring your family ministry team in. Because they need to know when that kid breaks their arm at camp, what do we do?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — We need to call. Or when that kid is at camp, um I’ve had that experience. When this kid’s at camp and they’re like, hey, my parent, something’s happening at home that shouldn’t be happening at home.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — You know what the wrong thing is to do is to be like, okay, yeah, let’s go home. No, no, no. I’m going to talk to your parent about that.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — I, again, I’ve experienced it myself. We’re we’re going to talk to your parent. Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That is the wrong thing for us to do.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — We need to report this.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — That is the first thing we should be doing is reporting that. Because that is an actual complaint of something that we need to lean into and deal with. And our churches are going, but I don’t want it, I don’t want it to come out. Like I don’t want us to be linked to that.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.
Kim Tarlton — Like I don’t want to report that. And so making sure we have a clear plan as a team, bring in the right people. If your communications team, or your executive pastor, or somebody has experience in this, make them the crisis management lead, and allow them to lean in and start start preparing your church. If not, start reaching out…
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — …finding the right people to help you build this plan. You have to have a plan, or you’re just going to go into it.

Kim Tarlton — But I literally, a church I was at, we found out about a crisis as we arrived to the office and the news reporters were there.
Rich Birch — Wow.

Kim Tarlton — And we were just like, I don’t know what to say.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — Like we didn’t know who to say, you know, talk to this person or do this. We were just all like, what are you talking about? Like, I i don’t know what to say. Wait, what’s happening? What’s in the news?
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — What are you reporting on?
Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — So prepare yourself for sure.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. I’d love to talk a little bit more about some of those things you think would be in that plan ahead of time, but I should have a personal experience with this. I for years ran a ah large Christian camp and ah literally my very first summer being in charge of the entire thing, we had a kid go missing…

Kim Tarlton — Oh gosh.

Rich Birch — …and it was, um yeah, it’s like the it’s like the worst case scenario. Like by definition, when people send their kids to camp…the the end of the story was very happy in the end. It was it was fine. But this this person went missing and we have this like alarm and it went off and and it went ah and we all this was thought out ahead of time. When that alarm got to a certain point it had been going for a certain amount of time, it triggered our crisis response.
Rich Birch — And it’s funny how to this day, I still have this very positive visceral memory of taking the crisis manual off the wall and flipping to the page where it’s like, OK, what do I do? And and it included all what you’re talking about. It was like, here’s who you call. There was a pre-written, like, basically fill in the blank you know press release. Here’s the only people that are going to talk you know to the press. Here’s, even just simple stuff for me, like please call you know like, and I was the Executive Director, but it was like the board chair that like and it was like listed their phone numbers had that all right in front of me.

Kim Tarlton — Good.

Rich Birch — Because in that moment you’re like, oh my goodness, like all you’re just seeing red, right? You’re like you know and now it was thankful that it ended up in a positive situation.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — But it man, if I hadn’t done that ahead of time, we would have been scrambling.
Rich Birch — So what would be some of those things when you think about, okay, we’re gonna work on this ahead of time, what would be a couple of those things that we should think about that maybe are not intuitive that we should be planning ahead?
Kim Tarlton — Yeah, yeah. So a few things. One is getting a crisis response team is what we would call it. And so putting together, who is your response team? Who are the people…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — …that are going to be our go-to, right?

Kim Tarlton — Um, one person from, from your church staff, absolutely. An elder, um, or the elder board, maybe. Your leadership team, your executive pastor – who are these people, these key people who are going to be the people that number one, when this happens, we call them in and we go, here’s what’s going on. What do we need to do? And let’s all start leaning into our areas.
Kim Tarlton — Don’t make this just all about your staff. Do not just have your pastor, your executive pastor, and your communications person. You need to bring in some of those outside resources.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — You need those key volunteer or a professional who is maybe associated with your church, um an attorney, something along those lines.
Kim Tarlton — You always want to in, in most given situations that are crisis, you want to contact your attorney and get them on that team. But then also making sure that we have this, you know, a crisis management plan is super important.
Kim Tarlton — So that’s the first thing. And, and I would document that, like you did. I would document that and have their names, their email address, their phone number, like what is our easy access?

Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — Um, I, you know, I would even like in the day and age of cell phones and text messages, I would even build a crisis response kind of text message chain that it’s like, we’re not going to always be, this isn’t a group text where we’re sending like cat memes or anything along those lines.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

But this, this is like that group that when something happens, we basically, we have our, it’s all in, you know, all hands on deck and everybody knows where you meet up and it’s time to talk.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — Um, and I think that’s, that’s just so key.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — I would say another thing is, um, kind of, plan out um your your areas of response. So there’s there’s media response, right? And one of the things that you can start doing is—there’s so much you can do—but like one of the things I highly recommend to churches all the time is let’s start leaning into um our local news. Let’s start building that relationship. Because nothing can save you more from bad press than having a good relationship and good press.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s true.

Kim Tarlton — And so if you start building that relationship now with somebody and you are inviting them, you know, every quarter come and have some coffee and let’s chitchat about the church. And we have this big event coming up and come out and see what’s going on there. When that crisis hits…

Rich Birch — Yes.

Kim Tarlton — …and you have that person to call and you say, hey, you know we’ve been building this relationship and I need to I need you to step aside as the journalist for just a second and help me know what questions are going to come my way and help me prepare for that.
Rich Birch — That’s good. That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — I will absolutely talk with you and I will absolutely lean in because we have this relationship, but can you help me…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …build into what I’m about to say or or these conversations I’m about to have.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so critically important.

Kim Tarlton — I would say um also preparing you know some of those press releases, like have that prepared ahead of time? Just a general note, you know, for immediate release press release. We’ve received this information or we know this information and this is ah what you need to know and how we are handling it. Being prepared in that kind of way to where you can go, let’s just say your communications director is is involved in the situation that is happening. For your leadership, your volunteers to be able to go, great, we now have a well-formatted press release. We have well-formatted email that would go out to all church. Um, we have this and it’s, it’s taken care of like, it’s already ready to go. We just fill in the gaps. What a win, right?
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.
Kim Tarlton — Cause we don’t want to send out something that has spelling issues and all of that’s never fun.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Exactly.
Kim Tarlton — Um, and then I would talk, of I would like from there, I would just go through like, what are the levels of communication? Um, one of the things that I’ve seen done really wrong. And again, this is, this is churches that I’ve been at. And so, you know, I, I was there too. Um, and we didn’t handle things right all the time. Um, and it’s those levels of communication. And what we end up doing is we go, there’s a crisis. We need to tell everybody what we’re doing.

Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Kim Tarlton — And we need to let everybody know. And then there’s this small group of people called our staff. And then there’s other group of people, our key volunteers, and then this other group of people, our church, that all start to go, gosh, why am I finding this out when the world is finding this out?
Rich Birch — Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — Why am I being communicated to when everybody else is being communicated to?
Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s so true.
Kim Tarlton — Um, and we’re not honest too. Sometimes we’re like, Hey, there was a problem and we took them off our staff list and like, everything’s going to be great. You know what? No, there’s a problem. Here’s what the problem was.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — We’re going to be honest with you. But build up that levels of where do we start? We’re going to start internally, and we’re going to make sure all the elders and all the executive leadership know. Then we’re going to make sure all the staff know what is the situation, how are we handling this. Then we’re going to build and we’re going to build those layers.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — I think one of my staff members calls it something about like communicate to the egg. And so I like you know you the yolk. And then you have the like messy part of it, the egg white.

Rich Birch — Yes. Yep.

Kim Tarlton — And then you’ve got the frying pan, you know, you’ve got all the pieces.
Rich Birch — That’s good.
Kim Tarlton — And so like starting like, we have to start with the yolk and we have to build it out from there and put together our plan. I could go on and on and on, but I would definitely be leaning into um all these. And honestly, like you could you go into Chat GPT right now. Who doesn’t love Chat GPT nowadays? And you could say, Chat GPT, what are the things that I need to prepare in order to prepare my church, my organization for potential crisis? And you will get a list of things just like this…

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — …that you lean into and questions to to get answers for.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. It’s interesting that there seems to be, I think in these situations, there’s like two tendencies. There’s what you talked about, which was the like, it’s almost like an over communication.
Rich Birch — It’s like, okay, you are like very quick to like, I think there’s a lot of, and and some of my best friends are lead pastors.
Kim Tarlton — Yes.
Rich Birch — They believe if I just get in front of people, I can solve this. Like we can stand up and just figure it out.
Kim Tarlton — Right.
Rich Birch — Or there’s the opposite, which is, leaders just go silent. Like something happens someone’s making accusations, they’re posting stuff online, and then we don’t say anything. And it’s almost like and in some cases they’ll even have like a like a gag order. We’re not talking about this and they believe if they just turtle, it’ll it’ll pass over.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Help us to discern, and I know every situation is different. It’s really hard to speak in generalities about this. But help us to discern when should we be thinking about, okay, we’ve got to do some kind of strategic communication here, or maybe we should just be quiet. What is too much? Again, I know, I know it’s a super nuanced question…

Kim Tarlton — Yeah.

Rich Birch — …but help us through that.
Kim Tarlton — I’m probably not going to give you the answer that ah that you expect.
Rich Birch — Yes. Sure.
Kim Tarlton — Um, and for me, it’s like, one of the first things we have to do is stop and pray.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — And I I do believe, like and now now I’m not one of those, like I need a new job, so I’m gonna sit on my couch and I’m gonna pray, and then God’s just gonna drop a job into my lap.
Rich Birch — No, no, that’s good. Yep.
Kim Tarlton — I don’t believe that at all.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yep.
Kim Tarlton — But I do believe that if we go to God for wisdom and we go to God for what is it that we should be doing…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …in this situation, I believe that pastor that is maybe frustrated, that pastor that maybe is like, okay, we gotta do this, and we gotta do this, and we gotta do this, yes, we do. I want you to stop for a second and I want you to lean into prayer…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …and I want you to lean in heavy. And let’s let’s come together, this crisis management team that we’ve put together, we’re gonna come together and we’re gonna start by the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna pray.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — And Putting that prayer time in there is gonna allow you to now go, Okay, we’ve now cast all of our cares on Christ.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kim Tarlton — So now now, what is it that we need to do? And we’ve calmed and we’ve relaxed ourselves and we’re going, okay, let’s think through this responsibly. Let’s think through this well. I think the the prayer acronym, there’s like a prayer acronym, it’s ah p the P-R-A-Y, so you pause, you repeat, like repeat, God is good, he’s in control, he’s got this, right? We ask, God, we ask news reporters. We ask those people that that relationship, we ask. And then we yield, right? And so making sure we’re leaning in in that way and we’re learning and we’re listening to each other and we’re not, we’re not like in that crisis response. We’re in crisis communication, crisis management…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …not crisis response. So that’s, that’s what I would say. Stop. And just remember who who were her we’re for…

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — …like who are like this is this is all about. This is all about Jesus. And so like, let’s start there.
Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. I love it. Yeah, I think that’s a great word ah for sure, because I think there are times where, um you know, we want to jump… by definition, leaders are biased for action kind of people. And even if that action is, we’re definitely not saying anything. But but slowing down and saying, no, like let’s let’s take this to the Lord and say, hey, what is it that you, how do we, at the end of the day, we want to see, kind of regardless of what the impact on our ministry is, we want to see the message of Jesus lifted up in this. And what is that? What? That’s hard to that’s hard to discern, right? It’s hard to know, okay, what and what is the best way to go from here?
Kim Tarlton — It’s really hard to discern. And and um what it’s ah fear, it’s like fear-based, right? We we have a we, our discernment ah we have an inner fear that comes and we start to ask these questions like, you know do people really need to know what’s going on there? What you know what what’s what is this all about? Like is this is this reflection of the church, or is this a personal thing? So it’s like and then that those are all things that start to build up in us with fear. And so we start to respond wrong instead of saying, you know, I’m going to cast, ah I’m going to cast my cares on God. The fear of the Lord – that’s like, that’s the only fear that I have to deal with right now.
Rich Birch — Yeah, totally.
Kim Tarlton — And so, yeah, bringing it, bringing it to God is like, um, it, it helps us calm the fire, you know? Cause like, as soon as crisis hits, it’s like this flame ignites, right?
Rich Birch — Right, right.
Kim Tarlton — Yeah.
Rich Birch — Yeah, are there any principles there around, you know that we should be thinking about? And again, I understand, friends. I’m sure there’s people are listening in like, Rich, every situation is different but, but are there some general principles for us to be thinking about? You know, should we try to do a cascading communication here? How quick do we respond? Is it generally like is, or is it asymmetrical? Like, you know, over responding has a greater risk than under responding. So you would default towards, well, maybe we’ll try to take a more measured approach. Is there, are there any principles around that that we should be thinking about in this area?
Kim Tarlton — I would, ah but you know, I’m, I would, for me, being prepared…

Rich Birch — Right. Sure. Sure.

Kim Tarlton — …you’re going to answer those questions before they come. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — So like, in you being prepared, you’re not gonna go into this and go, are we responding too much, or are we not responding enough? Because you’re gonna think about the situation…

Rich Birch — That’s good. Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — …and you need to think about every, like we talked about like property disputes.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — Okay, that’s like a thing. You know, we had a ah church the within Church Communications Group that we were working with where um there wasn’t anything that happened like within the church. They they went and they did flyers on doors. And somebody was not happy that they received a flyer on their door. So they went into their social media account and posted a really ugly thing about the pastor. Not true, not at all true, but they were unhappy about this situation…

Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — …so they said something about the pastor, which now all of the sudden people are like, oh, well, this church is a massive mess.

Rich Birch — Yeah, wait a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting.
Kim Tarlton — If we’re not, we didn’t talk about like, how do we handle this, which they hadn’t. Like, you have to be able to go any situation that could happen…

Rich Birch — That’s great.

Kim Tarlton — …whether it is it is this, or it is that, how do we handle it? And that preparedness is going to allow you to respond the correct way.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great.

Kim Tarlton — Now, there are things that you probably need to be doing as a church um that, like you can prepare your crisis plan, but there’s things that you need to be doing as a church on the regular that help keep you away from and help protect the church from potential crisis. I would say things like a background checks, right? There are so many churches out there that, number one, are not running background checks. Why? Because it’s expensive.

Rich Birch — Crazy. That’s crazy. Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — That’s the worst reason to not be running a background check.
Rich Birch — 100%.
Kim Tarlton — Number two, they’re only running background checks with kid people that works with kids’ ministry. Okay?
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kim Tarlton — That’s a problem because you now have some, you know, you now have open volunteer positions.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — That’s hard. You’re you’re hiring on staff. If you’re only working with kids ministry, that’s one layer.
Rich Birch — Yeah.
Kim Tarlton — So I always encourage like do the background check. I know it’s expensive. but do the background check on anybody that comes into contact with people.
Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — And that’s like people go, whoa! Hold on!
Rich Birch — No, no, no, that’s true.
Kim Tarlton — So lot, now, obviously, if you’re coming into the church, that’s one thing. But if you are serving, if you are directly you know working with student ministry, kids ministry, if you are handing out flyers and um and and programs on the weekend, and you are coming in contact. There was a church that um, that reported like there was some, there was a guy just looking at women. Interestingly enough, they ran the background check and he had a background with women.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — And so it’s one of those like, you need to know who it is that you’re putting into service.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — I’m not telling you don’t have them serve. But what I’m telling you is make sure you have that background check. And make sure if you have somebody and you’re like, okay, this is somebody that maybe has had, uh, a questionable past, but we’re going to put them behind the counter doing guest services. Okay. So now you got to put a plan together with that person. We’re going to do a monthly check-in or a quarterly check-in and just see how you’re doing.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Yep.
Kim Tarlton — Because if you’re struggling with coming in contact with men or women or anything like that, I want you to know that I’m a safe place to talk about that. And we are not going to like, we’re not going to put you in front of the church and make you feel bad. I just want us to have an open conversation and know that I am here.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — I am here to check in on. If you are struggling with something and I know that you want to follow what God has for you. I know that. And so but if you’re struggling, I want you to know I’m a safe place for you to come to and struggle. And and that I might have to pull you out for a season. But know that I am here for you, to care for you, and to love on you.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — And that I am a safe place. Doing those background checks, did you know like ah too, um you were supposed to, ah most churches are doing it, like if they do it, they do it with kids ministry. And then um one, they’re either not redoing the background check ever again, or they’re doing it every three to five years.
Rich Birch — Right. Right.

Kim Tarlton — But you’re supposed to do it every year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — Every year.
Rich Birch — Right.
Kim Tarlton — These are those kinds of things that like, oh my gosh, it costs so much money. Yeah.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — But let me tell you how much it’s going to cost you when that crisis happens.
Rich Birch — No, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kim Tarlton — Because that…
Rich Birch — And and ultimately, like I think on these things, that’s a really good good word for sure. And I’ve definitely seen that with the churches I coach, that where the standard is shifting to anybody that is in a regular volunteer position, regular by defined as it’s ah you’re on a schedule. We’re moving towards getting all those people um background checked.

Kim Tarlton — Yeah. Yes.

Rich Birch — Because they have a level, even if they’re never over in the kids space, they have a level of influence because they have a name tag that says staff or volunteer. And you know there’s there’s risk there. And it also, I think the other piece of this, which is like um well back to when I was running that that summer camp, this is a really kind of dark way to think about these things. But oftentimes, when we would think about this, I would put it through the lens of, OK, so when I’m standing in front of the judge down the road, because something really negative has happened in our midst, and I have to explain what got us here, I want to be able to say, I’m I feel really terrible that XYZ thing happened. But let me explain to you the layers of stuff that we did that that could have prevented it.

Kim Tarlton — Absolutely.
Rich Birch — And we still had an accident. We still had something terrible go wrong. But we weren’t negligent. We weren’t like we don’t have like years of email saying, we’re not affording the $25 thing for for this. Because, man, you do not want to stand in front of a judge eventually and say, well, Yeah, we it would have been an extra thousand bucks a year.
Kim Tarlton — Right? Right?

Rich Birch — Like, what are you talking about? Like, that just isn’t, it’s just not worth it.

Kim Tarlton — No.

Rich Birch — And so, yeah, that’s a good word. How how often would you encourage churches to to review the this kind of crisis communications manual? Is this like an annual thing, every couple of years? What would you suggest?

Kim Tarlton — Yeah, I would suggest every year…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kim Tarlton — …that our crisis management team gets together.

Rich Birch — Yep. That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — First of all, you need to audit the team every year.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kim Tarlton — Um, let’s just say something happens within the team, or somebody leaves the church, right? You want to replace that position.

Rich Birch — Yep.

Kim Tarlton — You don’t want it to just be like, Oh, we’re fine. We can do it without Susie or we can do it without Rob.
Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s good.

Kim Tarlton — No, no, no. There was a reason they were in there. So let’s make sure we’re replacing if we, if we lose somebody we’re replacing. And then we want to look at it every year. The reason I’m saying every year, is because COVID, right?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Kim Tarlton — Like, did we know COVID was coming?

Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s true.

Kim Tarlton — No.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Kim Tarlton — Were we prepared for COVID? No. We don’t know what is coming. We don’t know what we don’t know.

Rich Birch — Right.

Kim Tarlton — And so us just continuing to refresh it, to keep our eyes on it, to know what is our plan and to make sure we’re building that right team. It’s it’s something, once a year, for a couple hours get together.

Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah.

Kim Tarlton — That’s not that big of an ask, again, when it comes to protecting your church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, totally. Yeah, good. It’s it’s again, it’s like insurance. It’s it’s preventative work. I understand every church has stuff that is crisis related in the fact of not this kind of crisis, but the like there’s always things right in front of you, but this is one of that stuff that we’ve got to push back and say, okay, let’s let’s take some time. You know we can we can invest a couple year couple hours a year, bring up the Google doc, let’s talk, let’s take a look at it.

Kim Tarlton — Yes.

Rich Birch — Do we need to update? What are we missing? That sort of thing.

Kim Tarlton — Yes.

Rich Birch — Um, this has been, this has been fantastic. A little bit depressing, Kim. We got to have you come back on and have, I don’t know, like how to make great Christmas flyers, like something very fluffy…
Kim Tarlton — We can have a better conversation. Yes.
Rich Birch — …next time.
Kim Tarlton — Count me in. Count me in.
Rich Birch — Yeah. Is there anything else you’d like to say just as we wrap up today’s episode?
Kim Tarlton — No, I’m I you know I like I so ah like I said earlier, um you know I come up with a plan um and there are there are a lot of resources out there. Church Communications Group does work with churches on your crisis communication plan. There are some great great options out there and I would just encourage every church, like I can’t say that enough, encourage you to start building that plan and and reach out and find somebody that can help you dig into that plan.

Rich Birch — That’s fantastic. Kim, this has been great. Yeah, I’d recommend you reach out to Church Communications, Kim, specifically. If you’re, you know, you might be listening in, maybe you’re listening to this a couple of years from now and something is happening at your church that you need some help.

Kim Tarlton — Yeah.

Rich Birch — You should reach out. If people want to get in touch with you or with Church Comms, how can they do that?

Kim Tarlton — Yeah, you can just go to churchcommunications.com and um and right there um is all of our information. You can schedule a call. You can even just say on there, hey, I would like to talk to Kim directly and we’ll make sure that that happens. It’s a lot easier for me to give you churchcommunications.com than to try to give you my email address…

Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, I get that.

Kim Tarlton — …which is probably too hard to remember.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Well, I appreciate you, Kim. Thanks for being on today and thanks for all the help. Take care.