Converge MidAtlantic

Those Swedish immigrants organized as a fellowship of churches called the Swedish Baptist General Conference, and they had a focus on reaching communities with the gospel, especially other immigrant communities. But as Swedish immigration declined, English became the predominant language used in churches, and more and more non-Swedish churches were planted and organized.

In 1945 they renamed themselves the Baptist General Conference, and as a missional movement, the BGC became a multiethnic, worldwide family of believers and churches: diverse, yet committed to the common mission of fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission (Matthew 28:16-20) for the church.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the Baptist General Conference name began to feel limiting, so in 2008 the board of overseers approved a new missional name: Converge.

Rising to the Challenge

As a region, Converge MidAtlantic is comprised of over 110 churches scattered across nine different states. The goal was to strengthen connections between these pastors with Converge MidAtlantic providing support for them as well as funneling resources to and between them.

The challenge was how to communicate with all of these churches in ways that would help the regional office to clearly communicate to pastors, invite church planters and pastors, and encourage collaboration and participation in Converge.

An additional complexity was that while they had many churches under their purview, some were disengaged or didn’t know exactly what Converge had to offer.

So when Regional President Brian Weber was elected in 2018, he knew he was up for a communications challenge.

Communication As Necessity, Not Luxury

Brian describes his job as “to foster a community of local churches and leaders so that they’re in relationship with one another.” Fostering those relationships and the interconnectivity of member churches is his passion.

Because Converge places high value on the autonomy of the local church, Brian is not a top-down leader. Converge doesn’t operate as a hierarchical denomination, so Brian says, “Our structure is completely dedicated towards serving the local church, so my role as regional president is below the church…Any authority that’s granted to me is relational.”

He also faced the additional hurdle of the scope of his mission as a regional president because, as he put it, “I’m not like a pastor in a church that has a pulpit on Sunday and gets to share every week with his people. We are 100% reliant on our communication strategy.” He wanted to inspire his regional leaders with a message of unity, but how? It would need some clear strategy accessible to everyone.

COVID brought additional complications. It meant suddenly needing to adapt to a conglomeration of online communication, hybrid communication, and some print communication. Even though Brian had been working on a communications strategy since he was elected, “COVID came in and changed the game.” 

During the pandemic, the Converge MidAtlantic team spent a lot of time learning about different solutions people were trying, such as the development of online ministries and broadcasting services, and trying to pass on what worked to their pastors. Sometimes that was easier said than done, and they also saw some communication gaps they were eager to address.

According to Brian, “A lot of churches, sometimes they do a great job with internal communication…but we see this increasing gap in our communication between the church and the community. And church organizations like ours wrestle with both of these things like trying to communicate well among our members, but then beyond our members to our region.”

Brian and his team met at the beginning of 2023 and realized that to be their best, Converge MidAtlantic needed a messaging strategy to leverage all of the communication tools at its disposal to bring clarity, efficiency, and unity to its churches and encourage more collaboration and participation within their region.

Brian recalled, “We needed to figure out how to communicate to people in this post-COVID era and in the ways that people are listening to today. What are all the tools in the toolbelt in terms of how we communicate to our pastors and leaders and how we recruit church planters and new pastors and develop pastors and leaders? What does it look like to be a fully engaged church in a community like Converge MidAtlantic?”

At a Communications Crossroads

Converge MidAtlantic reached out to ArtSpeak to help bring clarity to their communications through branding and strategic messaging. The first step in the process was for them to complete a branding questionnaire, a series of questions to help ArtSpeak learn more about them as an organization: their aims, goals, and needs.

Brian didn’t go it alone when it came to the questionnaire. He wisely leveraged the questionnaire’s full potential by bringing his team members on board and inviting their input by setting up focus groups. He said, “I gathered as much of just talking about what is Converge MidAtlantic from our local church leaders as I could. Those local church leaders serve on my board and they serve on other teams for me. Then I submitted that to your team.”