CCK Life blog

Matt Simmonds manages communications for Church of Christ the King (CCK) and is also responsible for all online communications for Newfrontiers. He is married to Jo and they have two lovely daughters, Ellie (who just turned 3) and Lydia. Jo is expecting their third child, which has kept Matt busy redecorating their house! In the midst of his very hectic schedule, Matt was gracious enough to spare Yohaan Philip a few minutes of his time to talk about the role he plays in advancing the gospel of Christ. Yohaan writes:

It’s always a pleasure talking to Matt! His cheerful countenance rarely betrays the highly stressful nature of the responsibilities he carries. At a very exciting time in the life of CCK, Matt plays a pivotal role as this massive ship is being guided across the seas. I’m excited to hear his thoughts! But first things first..

YP: Tell me Matt, what is the secret behind your ageing so slowly. A lot of men (and some women too!) would love to know what you do!

MS: Uhhh.. good sleep, fairly relaxed attitude to life? I don’t know!

YP: Thanks for that very enlightening answer. And what gel do you use?

MS: Dax Wax – it comes in a red tin, that’s all I know. Jo does all the beauty product shopping…

With that out of the way, I move on to more serious affairs..

YP: In most corporations, one of the key, underlying objectives of the communication departments would be to communicate their brand to a target audience with a view to make a profit. As communication manager for a church, what are some of your key objectives?

MS: Broadly speaking, marketing is about satisfying a customer need so that you can make an exchange. If you’re a charity, it may be an exchange of ideas or involvement, but obviously for corporations, it’s for money – trying to satisfy needs to get more money.

For CCK, or most other churches, we have a different fundamental background -  we’re communicating the gospel and not seeking a financial return.

There are three broader groups who are our audience:

• The Village – This group consists of all members committed to the church. I look to update them on news, various meetings and events that happen across the life of the church. We also aim to envision and resource them as much as we can. For instance, branding a preaching series hopefully shows that there’s a process to go through; they can read sermon notes, watch preaches online and follow the theme that the preacher is taking them on. The CCK blog as well as the ccklife blog serve this purpose. We’ve not been great at this in the past but we are trying to put things in place (like this blog) to serve church members better.

• The City- This group consists of anyone in Brighton and Hove who is not part of the church. Our different strategies and communication methods are built towards Sundays. The internet serves as people’s front door to church so you want a website that is visitor-friendly and not filled with Christian jargon and loads of information that would confuse them and put them off. Currently we are working towards a new visitor homepage for the CCK website bearing that in mind. Recently we videoed the evening service at CCK. This video will be the main feature of the home page and it will be helpful in explaining what CCK is to the unbeliever.

• The World – Thousands of people all around the world visit the CCK website. Only 30% of our traffic is from Brighton and Hove. We’re seen as Terry Virgo’s home base; Brighton is where it all started for Newfrontiers in many ways. People look to us for our resources. Preaches by Terry, John Hosier and Joel Virgo are popular downloads. We’re also looking at how can we resource the larger Christian world.

YP: You mentioned ‘preach series’. Can you tell me briefly some of the strategies used to promote these ‘preach series’?

MS: For the last few years we’ve been branding our preach series. In the autumn term later this year, Joel Virgo is going to be doing a set of preaches from the book of I Corinthians. He’s called this series ‘Alternative City’.

People are our main strategy to communicate this series. There are nearly a thousand members in our church who can be advocates for us. Historically, people have been drawn to Jesus through other people. In John 1, after encountering Jesus, the first thing Andrew does is to tell his brother, Peter, to come see the Saviour. And that’s how it works. ‘Come see’ , ‘Come find’ Jesus, look at Him – and I think that’s how Christianity has spread. This continues to work, especially in the marketing media age we live in. We can produce thousands of videos, fliers, knock on every door in Brighton, but if a friend tells a friend it still adds more credibility and weight. So, whatever clever strategies we make it never really diverts from the fact that people are most important. For the autumn season to really fly, we need small groups and zones to really own this and think up new ideas and ways to get people to church.

All the time we are trying to draw people to our Sunday meetings. Joel and the team have worked really hard to make Sundays welcoming for visitors. We want to make sure that visitors are not looking in at Christians engaging in their own private little world, but that they can come into something they can feel part of and feel it’s for them too. We’ve tried different things like have a DJ, host gigs in the lounge, serve alcohol and good coffee in our coffee shop, host a question and answer time after the preach, show videos of people’s testimonies, welcome teams, host teams to name a few! Marketing is not just promotion but it’s shaping what you have or what you do. With regards to CCK, we shape our meetings so that when people come in, there’s enough to engage them. For example if people are not into the preach but would come to the gig and say “wow! this is good”, they would then want to come back to it. Initially they may not be into the gospel but hopefully we can engage them more and more and ultimately help them find Jesus.  Ultimately, our main and most important objective is that we want to draw people to Jesus.

I also aim make use of social media technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube. We use that as much as we can. Online social networks offer an unprecedented opportunity – we now have everyone’s friends and contacts at the touch of a button.

YP: Wow! That sounds quite exciting! Matt, your job seems quite functional and almost corporate in nature. Being a devout follower of Jesus, how do you maintain a God-centric balance in your work?

MS: I don’t see any sort of divide between my ‘work’ life and my ’spiritual’ life. True, my job may not appear to be overtly ’spiritual’ or ‘pastoral’ but essentially I’m working to communicate the gospel and to serve the life of the church and trying to make use of communication and marketing skills and technology to do this. We’re not just doing this because we feel it’s trendy. Essentially I see my role as almost that of an evangelist. I’m proclaiming the gospel whether it’s to believers or unbelievers.

YP: So you’re the church evangelist? (chuckles)

MS: (chuckles) No, I wouldn’t say that at all! But, partly I do see that as my role in communicating the gospel to people. Whether it’s a preach by Joel going on the website or the making of a new video, it’s still the gospel going out.

YP: Church of Christ the King, over 1,200 people attending weekly. How do you get people involved with your department?

MS: I’m always looking to people being involved with my department. People have different skills and can bring much to the table. Sometimes, I may have a particular job in mind and look at people fulfilling a role. Sometimes people come to me with a skill and passion and I’d build on their skills and passion. For instance, Rich Spear came to me and said that he wanted to help me out with stuff and that he had a passion for apologetics. So, we set up the reason blog and got him to run it.

There are different ways we can get the gospel out. I’m always looking for people with different creative skills and abilities who can give time, mostly voluntary, to help us out in different ways. We have been commissioned to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the ends of the world and we need everyone we can to fulfill this mammoth, powerful task.