Greetings, good people of the Grand Canyon Synod,

As the director of communication, my focus for this 2021 assembly update is our synod’s work in quickly adapting our communications in this last year of pandemic.

I’m very grateful for all the preparation we’d done prior to March, 2020. In her first year of office, Bishop Hutterer prioritized building trust and camaraderie throughout the Office of the Bishop team. I feel that trust was the most important resource we had. Our synod council’s work on a strategic plan—Communicate Jesus, Connect People, and Create Possibilities—proved to be a great compass as we stepped into the unknown.

When Covid-19 hit, we had a communications system in place that enabled us to track, schedule and broadcast information through targeted group emails and to our blog posts, Facebook, and weekly newsletter very efficiently.

I vividly remember the first time, early in the pandemic, when our weekly newsletter had no upcoming events. It saddened me. News was sparse and confusing as well. That frustrated me, because those sparse newsletters gave the appearance nothing was happening at the Office of the Bishop. In fact, we were overwhelmed with things to do. It was all hands on deck as we reached out to as many leaders as we could, and tried to discern what to do next. We were connecting with people with a sense of unprecedented urgency. We had no plan but to show up.

It’s strange how that crucial work of building and maintaining relationships isn’t “newsworthy.” Like gardening, it’s small, incremental, and quiet work. We often only celebrate the moments of a bounteous and newsworthy harvest. I am proud to be a part of this leadership team that also enjoys the day-to-day and mundane work just as much as “the big stuff.” We are finding good soil and nurturing it.

A year later, our newsletter is now full of events, news, letters, and opportunities. All that working of the soil in the last year has created a wildly growing garden. Some days, I feel we are almost buckling under the weight of all the things that are manifesting. We work on the big things like synod assembly and our Growing Generosity Appeal, but also the mundane things like project management, archiving, data maintenance, and scheduling.

I want to especially thank Theresa Thornburgh, who holds our office together. Almost every single aspect of the synod passes through her capable hands in some way. Like many others, I’m grateful to be able to rely on her every day.

Our synod is a garden of many gardens, and it’s a pleasure every week to announce all the different fruits of the Spirit. My hope is this report shows the bounty of what is happening in our synod, which we’ll explore through lists and numbers below.

After a good long sleep once assembly is over, I’m planning to focus on revamping our data systems and improving and clearing my project management systems. We are a small staff with lots to do, and are now three years into the Bishop’s term. I feel if we build an excellent foundation in our data and project management, we will be able to act quickly and efficiently as the Holy Spirit provides us with new opportunities. Just as our news system served us well in the pandemic, I’d like to have a good technical base ready for the next few years of change.

Working with the Growing Generosity Appeal team has been my most rewarding work of this year, and I look forward to more of that work and seeing where the excitement of this appeal leads.

I hope we continue to live in this liminal space opened up by the pandemic for a while, and resist the temptation to lock into a new system just for the sake of stability. I’d like us to move forward with some strange and new ideas to see where they lead us.

Freed in Christ,

—Brian Flatgard, Director of Communications

Some data notes

With a subscriber base of over 1,500 people, our weekly newsletters and Bishop letters have a rough average of 40% open rate (roughly 600 readers per week), and 15% click-through rate (roughly 300 people reading more of an article).

Assuming around 30,000 Lutherans in our synod, we are actively reaching 2% of them directly each week with the newsletter alone. Factor in our Facebook and blog posts, add the tremendous amount of phone calls, emails, and Zoom meetings from Office of the Bishop staff and synod council members and ministry partners, and we see what a vibrant and active presence we are to our brothers and sisters of the Grand Canyon Synod.

2020 numbers

Over 1,500 news items were published as posts on our blog, most of which are also pushed to our Facebook page and included in the weekly newsletter.
We sent 72 email blasts, which is about 100,000 emails. Roughly 40,000 of those emails were opened, and 15,000 were clicked on.
I can’t run yearly numbers on Facebook, but we reach roughly 1,000 per month with our posts engagements (reactions, comments, shares, clicks), easily over 10,000 for the year.

Our site had 52,000 visits from 44,000 unique visitors with 89,000 page views.

After this page, I’m including some screenshots with more detailed site analytics.

Brian Flatgard, Director of Communication, 2021 update

Greetings, good people of the Grand Canyon Synod,

Some data notes