Rich Birch

Rich Birch is one of the early multi-site church pioneers in North America. He led the charge in helping The Meeting House in Toronto to become the leading multi-site church in Canada with over 5,000+ people in 18 locations. In addition, he served on the leadership team of Connexus Church in Ontario, a North Point Community Church Strategic Partner. He has also been a part of the lead team at Liquid Church - a 5 location multisite church serving the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey. Liquid is known for it’s innovative approach to outreach and community impact. Rich is passionate about helping churches reach more people, more quickly through excellent execution.His latest book Church Growth Flywheel: 5 Practical Systems to Drive Growth at Your Church is an Amazon bestseller and is design to help your church reach more people in your community.

communications

8 Super Simple (But Often Overlooked) Tips for People “Doing Announcements”

Rich BirchSeptember 3, 2013

When "announcements" are done well they help move the community to be more engaged in the vision your church. When they are done poorly they drag on the service and make everyone wish they would just stop! The difference between these two extremes is often really simple things. Here are...

communications

5 Easy Ways to Create Visual Social Media Content for Your Church

Rich BirchAugust 30, 2013

Visual content is critical for driving engagement on your church's social media channels. The goal of posting on social networks is to get people commenting, liking and sharing ... and people love visual content! In fact, Facebook's EdgeRank system that decides what content ends up being viewed by people favors...

communications strategy

6 Subtle Signs of Organizational Silos in Your Church

Rich BirchAugust 29, 2013

Smart people instinctively understand the dangers of entrusting our future to self-serving leaders who use our institutions, whether in the corporate or social sectors, to advance their own interests. - Jim Collins Organizational "silos" is the term given to departments or ministries within your church that have a tendency to...

communications

8 Effective Ways to Follow Up With Guests at Your Church

Rich BirchAugust 27, 2013

You spend a lot of energy attempting to get people to attend your church. You craft great experiences with fantastic music and engaging teaching. You advertise your church through a number of ways so people in your community know you exist. You've trained your volunteer teams to do a great...

communications strategy

6 Reasons Your Church Needs “Big Days”

Rich BirchAugust 22, 2013

For years as a church leader I would proudly declare that "every weekend at our church is 'special' ... we don't do 'special weekends' because new guests arrive every weekend at our church!'" It sounded so good when I said it! It came from a good spot ... wanting to...

personal productivity

5 Biggest Time Wasters for Church Leaders

Rich BirchAugust 16, 2013

"Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity..." - Ephesians 5:15-16a Every ministry leader I've met is very busy ... there is always more to do that there is time to get it done. There are many things that happen in...

communications personal productivity

10 Google Services You Didn’t Know Existed and How They Help Church Leaders

Rich BirchAugust 12, 2013

Google's mission is to organize all of information in the world. They are known for being a search engine and increasingly for their incredible email service (Gmail) but they have a whole collection of other services that church leaders should be aware of. There are hundreds of online services that...

communications

5 Lessons for Church Communications from Shark Week

Rich BirchAugust 7, 2013

Every summer The Discovery Channel rolls out the longest running cable television event in history called Shark Week. For 26 years, this week long series of special programming has been entertaining and educating millions people in 72 countries around the world. For Discovery it's a "cash cow" ... our should...

communications strategy

8 Strategies for Making Church Services More Relational

Rich BirchAugust 4, 2013

"Good company upon the road is the shortest cut." - Author Unknown Making your church more relational is important regardless of it's size. In small churches it's often assumed everyone knows everyone and so as leaders we don't work to ensure that people are connecting. In medium size churches we're embarrassed...

communications strategy

14 Hints on Adding New Service Times from 13 Church Leaders Who Did It

Rich BirchJuly 30, 2013

Is your church thinking about adding new service times in the future? We recently interviewed a number of church leaders within the unSeminary community who have led their churches through this change to help extract some helpful hints for you. I've attempted to compress all of this learning down into the...