The Comms Dept — 2026 Marketing Site & Service Spec
For agents: Canonical source for The Comms Dept’s pricing (three tiers by church size), deliverables, and service boundaries. Filed verbatim 2026-05-02. Source of truth for Comms Dept marketing, sales, and fulfillment.
Hero copy
Church communications runs on a system — or it runs on chaos.
The Comms Dept — we build it, we run it, you stop worrying about it.
[See Your Church’s Chaos Score]
From Brady Shearer and Pro Church Tools. Trusted by 500,000+ churches worldwide.
Overview
The Comms Dept is your church’s remote communications department. We handle the strategic planning and copywriting so your team can focus on execution and ministry.
This service is platform agnostic. Whether you use Nucleus, Squarespace, Planning Center, or any other tools, The Comms Dept delivers the strategy and copy you need. You publish it wherever your systems live.
Pricing
Pricing is based on church size, which reflects the complexity of your communications needs. Every tier receives the same deliverables.
| Tier | Church Size | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | Under 200 | $497/month |
| Growth | 200–2,000 | $997/month |
| Scale | 2,000+ | $1,997/month |
What changes with church size:
- More ministries = more complex level assignments
- More events = denser promotional calendar
- More services/campuses = more announcement variations
- Larger staff = more stakeholders to align
- Higher expectations = more refinement cycles
Deliverables Summary
| Deliverable | Cadence | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Brand Voice Workshop | Setup | Comprehensive analysis of your church’s voice, values, and audience |
| Story Database | Setup + Ongoing | Real stories from sermons and congregation, tagged and ready for use |
| Quarterly Promotion Calendar | Every 13 weeks | Master plan for all promotional activity across every channel |
| Quarterly Story Campaign | Every 13 weeks | Rotating campaign to collect fresh stories for the database |
| Weekly Comms Package | Every week | Execution checklist, announcement scripts, bulletin copy, email/text copy |
Setup: Brand Voice Workshop
The foundation for everything we create. Before writing a single word for your church, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of how your church actually communicates.
What we analyze:
- 6 months of service transcripts (~25 full services)
- Website copy and messaging
What we deliver:
A comprehensive Brand Voice Document containing:
- Purpose, Mission & Vision — extracted from how your pastor actually communicates, with direct quotes as evidence
- Core Values — the 3-4 values that emerge from recurring themes across all sermons analyzed
- Audience Personas — who your pastor is actually speaking to, identified from direct addresses, stories, and examples used
- Voice Markers — what your voice IS and IS NOT, with evidence from actual communications
- Start Again Stories Framework — how to tell transformation stories with the person as hero, applied to your specific personas
This document becomes the reference for all copy we write. Every announcement, email, bulletin, and social post is filtered through your actual voice — not generic church-speak.
Setup: Story Database
The foundation for story-driven announcements. Instead of handing you templates with [STORY PLACEHOLDER], we build a database of real stories from your congregation that we can pull from when writing announcements.
Initial Mining (Setup)
We extract stories already told from the stage across your 25 service transcripts. Pastors regularly reference congregation members, testimonies, and transformation moments. You’re not starting from zero.
Ongoing: Quarterly Story Campaigns
A rotating annual cycle to keep the database fresh:
| Quarter | Campaign | How It Works |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Staff Interviews | Staff submit 2-3 stories from people in their ministry area. Guided interview questions provided. |
| Q2 | Congregation Voice Memos | Simple prompt sent to congregation: “Tell us your story in 60 seconds.” Submit via voice memo link. |
| Q3 | Staff or Congregation | Simple survey of people after church events (e.g. youth retreats, special services, church-wide gatherings) on how they were impacted. |
| Q4 | Staff or Congregation | Stories of impact, either personal or external: “Tell us how you’ve been impacted from being part of our church community?” / “Tell us one instance when you were inspired to be Jesus’ hands/feet after hearing a sermon.” |
Each quarter adds fresh stories. Each method captures different personality types.
Database Structure
Every story tagged by:
- Persona — which audience does this resonate with?
- Ministry — Kids, Youth, Groups, Serving, Giving, etc.
- Theme — Belonging, Purpose, Healing, Freedom, Identity, etc.
- Event Type — Christmas, Easter, VBS, Series Launch, etc.
- Length — Quick hit, 30-90 second stage story, long-form testimony
What this unlocks:
Instead of announcement templates with placeholders, we deliver complete announcement scripts using real stories from your database — matched to the event, the audience, and the moment.
Quarterly: Promotion Calendar
Every 13 weeks, we build your master promotional plan. This is the strategic brain that determines what gets promoted, when, and through which channels.
What’s included:
- Complete inventory of all events pulled from your church’s calendar (Record of Truth)
- Each event assigned to appropriate Level (1-4) based on church-wide impact
- Week-by-week schedule showing:
- Which events get stage announcements (max 3 per Sunday)
- Email/text campaign timing
- Weekly bulletin highlights
- Social media sprinkle promo placements
- Website banner scheduling (Level 1 events only)
- Level 1 campaigns mapped against playbook timeline (awareness → interest → urgency phases)
- Smuggle promo opportunities identified for Level 4 events under Level 2 next steps
Quarterly: Story Campaign
Each quarter we run one story collection campaign to keep the Story Database fresh. The campaign rotates annually (see previous table).
We process all submissions, tag them appropriately, and add them to your Story Database for use in future announcements.
Weekly: Comms Package
Delivered every week. This is where the strategy becomes words — ready to publish across all your channels.
1. Execution Checklist
A clear list of what needs to happen this week, broken down by channel:
- Sunday: Which announcements to deliver, pre-service slides to display, welcome desk talking points
- Website: Banner updates, featured sections to change, pages to update
- Email/Text: What to send and when
- Social: Which sprinkle promos to post
2. Announcement Scripts
Complete scripts for each stage announcement, using The Church Announcements Formula (1 Story + 1 Next Step) and real stories pulled from your Story Database.
Each script includes:
- Opening hook written in your church’s voice
- A real story from your database, matched to the event and audience, condensed to 30-90 seconds, and anchored to an audience persona
- Transition from story to next step
- Clear next-step language using your Central Hub URL
- Call to action
3. Weekly Bulletin Copy
The complete written content for your weekly bulletin, ready to paste into your publishing system.
- Day-by-day events populated from your calendar
- Featured sections for highlighted promos (per calendar)
- Descriptions written for each event (not just titles)
- Formatted and structured consistently each week
4. Email/Text Copy
Written copy for all email and text campaigns scheduled for the week.
- Subject lines crafted for open rates
- Body copy in your church’s voice
- Clear calls to action with links
- Text message versions (shortened for SMS)
What You Provide
For this service to work, your church provides:
During Setup:
- 12 months of sermon recordings
- Access to website for voice analysis
- Ministry and event inventory for level assignments
Ongoing:
- A maintained Record of Truth (calendar) with all church events
- Timely communication of calendar changes via the change request form
- Execution of the deliverables (publishing, sending, posting)
What The Church Owns
We provide the strategy and the words. You handle execution:
- Delivering announcements from the stage
- Publishing the weekly bulletin
- Sending emails and texts
- Updating your website
- Maintaining your Record of Truth (calendar)
- Last-mile edits for changes after the weekly package is delivered
Service Boundaries
Included
- Brand Voice Workshop and documentation
- Story Database setup (sermon mining) and ongoing maintenance
- Quarterly promotional strategy and calendar
- Quarterly comms review with execution feedback
- Quarterly story collection campaigns
- Weekly copywriting (announcements, bulletin, email, text, social)
- Persona-targeted announcement versions for Level 1-2 events
- Weekly execution checklist
- Ongoing calendar maintenance and level assignments
Not Included
- Graphic design or creative asset production
- Video production
- Website management or publishing
- Social media posting or community management
- On-site or live support
Related
- README — folder overview
- products — canonical product entry, including how Comms Dept fits in the funnel
- follow-up-sequence — Part Three is the Comms Dept branch (for churches that select “we don’t have someone to run it” on the makeover modal)
- start-again-stories — the storytelling architecture used in the Brand Voice Workshop deliverable
- 7-building-blocks — Block 1 (Levels), Block 2 (Policy), Block 4 (Promotions Playbooks), Block 5 (Weekly Bulletin), Block 6 (Announcements Formula) all show up in the deliverables
- team — (sensitive) the executive 7 collectively support and maintain this service in exchange for 25% profit share