Six buckets. Four ways we deliver.
This blueprint separates what gets improved from how Ministry Builders delivers it, so Forest Hill can see the whole engagement clearly.
Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time.
How to read this blueprint
The 6 buckets
The six areas of ministry communication this engagement can move. Reusable for any church.
The 4P model
Every bucket moves through the same lifecycle: Plan the strategy, Produce the assets, Promote them, and Protect what is built.
Operating rhythm
Plan annually, adjust quarterly, report monthly, execute weekly. The steady rhythm we run the engagement on, detailed in Roadmap & Cadence.
The six buckets
The Audit scores where Forest Hill stands in each bucket today. The Strategy tab holds the recommendations, area by area. Roadmap & Cadence sequences the work; Engagement explains the partnership options.
The Communications Audit
Where Forest Hill stands today, scored across the six buckets.
Context: about 72% of known people are unreachable by email, and the 14+ related social accounts are more than any team can manage well, and spreading thin across that many is rarely the strongest strategy.
The bottom line
Forest Hill has the hard parts handled: a clear mission, five campuses, a logical next-steps ladder, an active social following, an in-house creative team, and a fast, secure website (with opportunity to improve). What is missing is the connective tissue: the front door for guests, the metadata that makes you findable, and the integrations that tie a roughly 65,000-person database and an 18,000-plus social audience back to the place they take a next step.
Church leadership describes Sunday mornings as a place where God is clearly at work, through worship, the message, and the discipleship that happens all week, and wants the digital platforms to be a window into that.
Scorecard by bucket
Exactly where Forest Hill stands in each of the six buckets today, scored 0 to 100. Color shows urgency at a glance; the gauge above is the average of these six.
Each bucket score is the average of its items; the overall (38) averages the six buckets. Audited numbers come from the website and channel audit: Messaging 72, Search 44, Social 55, YouTube and teaching 58, Lead pastor 47. Brand (48) and Website (45) are set below their raw audit grades on purpose, to reflect how valuable a refresh is after a season of change and the open opportunity in content, structure, search, and sermons. The rest are readiness estimates for areas that are gaps to build rather than properties to measure. All are directional, meant to size the opportunity, and the build raises every one.
Foundation Website, brand & the connection gap
Website scorecard · 62 / 100
| Dimension | Score | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Brand & Messaging | 68 | Medium |
| Visitor Journey / CRO | 56 | High |
| Search Visibility | 44 | Critical |
| Social & Cross-Channel | 55 | High |
| Technical & Performance | 74 | Strength |
| Accessibility | 64 | Medium |
Critical No "Plan a Visit / What to Expect" page
Checks for /plan-your-visit, /next-steps, /im-new, and /visit all returned 404. The nervous first-timer (parking, kids, dress, service length) has nowhere to land.
Fix: Build one flagship visit page (60-second what-to-expect video, parking, kids check-in, "come as you are," soft "let us know you're coming" form) and make it the primary CTA site-wide.
Critical No meta descriptions, Open Graph, or schema, anywhere
Homepage, Give, and Connect ship with no meta description and no OG or Twitter tags, so shared links look broken and search snippets are scraped. There is zero Church or LocalBusiness schema, so Google cannot surface service times, address, or events.
Fix: Add OG and Twitter tags plus a branded share image site-wide; write meta descriptions for the top 15 pages; add per-campus schema with service hours.
High Thin content engine & pinch-zoom disabled
Only 3 blog posts are indexed (versus roughly 440 events), with no sermon recaps feeding search or social. The mobile viewport sets user-scalable=0, a WCAG 1.4.4 failure that blocks zoom for low-vision guests, pointed given the Disability Inclusion ministry.
Fix: Publish a weekly sermon recap and transcript page (50-plus assets a year at near-zero cost); change the viewport to allow zoom.
Strength Fast, secure, well-structured
About 0.13s time-to-first-byte (edge-cached on Flywheel), HTTPS enforced, valid sitemap, all images carry alt text, and a memorable mission line: "Bringing Heaven to Greater Charlotte, One Person at a Time."
Critical Every campus runs its own separate website domain
Beyond foresthill.org there are at least five standalone campus sites (South Park, Ballantyne, Fort Mill, Waxhaw, South Blvd), plus two school domains, a dead blog.foresthill.org subdomain, and fhcnextsteps.com. The campus sites are on separate Apache hosting, not the main Flywheel install.
Why it matters: a dozen-plus domains means duplicated maintenance, splintered SEO authority, inconsistent branding and security, and a confusing path for guests.
Fix: Consolidate campuses into foresthill.org/locations/<campus> on one platform, or, if local autonomy is the goal, enforce a shared theme, security baseline, and analytics across every property.
The Known Connection Gap · Priority One
About 65,000 contacts, only about 18,000 reachable by email. Building reliable Connection Pathways to the people Forest Hill already knows is the single highest-leverage move.
Critical CCB and MailChimp do not talk
CCB holds roughly 65,000 contacts. MailChimp holds about 18,000. There is no integration, so when someone takes a next step in CCB they never flow into the list you email. Roughly 72% of the people you know are invisible to your primary nurture channel.
Fix: Move email and automation onto a more robust CRM that integrates with CCB natively. MailChimp is built for broadcasts, not for discipleship journeys; a stronger platform syncs the database, automates welcome and next-step flows, and lets you re-permission and safely activate the gap between 18K and 65K.
High ~65,000 phone numbers, unclear texting permissions
Roughly 65,000 phone numbers sit in Growth Method, but the team is not sure which are opted in. A large, high-intent channel sits idle behind a compliance question.
Fix: Build compelling content offers (a sermon-based devotional, a reading plan, a next-steps guide) that disciple people while gathering their contact info. Each opt-in grows a clean, permissioned SMS list as people raise their hand for something they actually want.
Medium Response is not tracked, and the seat-back QR codes go nowhere measurable
The team flagged that response is "not tracked very well currently." QR codes on seat backs and print pieces drive action, but no analytics loop tells you what is working across Activate, Easter, Next Gen Summer, Awaken, and Christmas.
Fix: Route every QR and print CTA through a tracked short link to a campaign landing page, with the opt-in writing back to CCB so print finally becomes measurable.
The platform stack
A capable but sprawling, loosely integrated estate of 20-plus tools.
CMS & Build
- WordPress 7.0
- Salient theme
- WPBakery page builder
- EventON (~440 events)
Hosting & Delivery
- Flywheel (managed WP)
- Fastly (CDN / edge cache)
- AWS Route 53 (DNS)
- Apache (campus microsites)
Giving & ChMS
- Pushpay (giving)
- FreeWill (planned giving)
- Church Community Builder
- fhcnextsteps.com funnel
Email & Texting
- MailChimp (~18K of ~65K)
- Growth Method (~65K numbers)
- Microsoft 365 / Outlook
- Focus Growth (web forms)
Ops & Project Mgmt
- Planning Center
- Monday.com
- Microsoft Teams
- eSpace (facilities), Zoom
Data, Files & Finance
- Box (file sharing)
- Airtable (databases)
- QuickBooks + Ramp
- Proliant (HR / payroll)
Creative, Video & AI
- Canva, Adobe
- Frame.io (video review)
- Vimeo, Carrd
- ChatGPT + Claude Pro (to enterprise)
Production & AVL
- Resi to Sardius Media (transitioning)
- AVL, all 5 campuses
- YouTube (live + archive)
- Google Maps embeds
Keep, integrate, or replace: no tool is the problem on its own. The problem is the seams: CCB does not sync to MailChimp, the 65K text list is not permission-clean, response is not tracked, and there is no church app. The highest-leverage technical investment is integration, not replacement.
| Verdict | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Keep | Pushpay, FreeWill, CCB (giving and membership backbone), Planning Center, Microsoft 365, Teams. A credible church stack in good shape. |
| Integrate | CCB to MailChimp sync (priority one), the ~65K Growth Method list (permission-clean it), tracked response across QR and print. Strong systems that are not wired together. |
| Replace / consolidate | The dozen-plus separate campus and school domains splintering SEO and brand, the dead blog subdomain, and the "no church app" gap to fill. |
Discovery Social, search & presence
Social channels, scored individually
14+ related accounts, ~18K combined reach, no main account holding them together. Read the campus scores as "what we are consolidating away from."
| Score | Channel | Role | Reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| 74 | IG @foresthillchurch | Main org account, the hub | ~7,600 followers, active. Not linked from the site; limited short-form. |
| 66 | IG @foresthillsouthpark | South Park campus | ~2,980. Healthiest campus account; overlaps the main feed. |
| 62 | IG @foresthillfortmill | Fort Mill campus | ~1,450. Active; reposts org content. |
| 60 | IG @foresthill_waxhaw | Waxhaw campus | ~1,390. Handle uses an underscore, hurting discoverability. |
| 58 | IG @foresthillballantyne | Ballantyne campus | ~1,000. Linked from its microsite, not foresthill.org. |
| 55 | IG @foresthillsouthboulevard | South Blvd (bilingual) | ~810. Smallest reach despite a distinct Spanish-speaking community; little Spanish content. |
| 58 | YT Forest Hill Church | Main YouTube, sermons | Weekly full sermons. Long-form only; not embedded in indexable sermon pages. |
| 48 | FB /FHCcharlotte | Main Facebook page | ~1,100, low cadence, older demo. Underperforms the church's size. |
| 45 | FB campus pages x5+ | South Park, Ballantyne, South Blvd, Eastland, Preschool | Reach split across small pages, inconsistent naming and upkeep. |
| 40 | YT @ForestHillFortMill | Fort Mill campus YouTube | A second channel splitting sermon views from the main channel. |
| 38 | YT @FHCMusic | Worship music, South Park | Separate worship channel; needs an amplification plan. |
| 25 | blog.foresthill.org | Legacy subdomain (dead) | No longer resolves, yet legacy URLs can still surface. SEO and trust liability. |
| 20 | TT @foresthillchurch | Official TikTok | Critical: small, not linked from the site, not running as the short-form engine. The opportunity is activation, not account creation. |
| 55 | Portfolio average | Weighted across all channels | ~18K total reach, 14+ accounts, 0 on-site links. Strong audience, weak architecture. |
On the numbers: follower and post counts are approximate, from public search snippets and profile previews.
What the social audit reveals
Critical Shares produce no preview card: word of mouth is throttled
With no Open Graph tags, every link shared from these accounts or in a member's group text renders as a naked URL. The strongest growth channel, personal invitation, hits a broken first impression. Fix: add OG and Twitter tags plus a branded share image site-wide. One fix improves every future share.
High Consolidation is the right call. Build the engine first, before August 26
Six Instagram accounts, five-plus Facebook pages, three YouTube channels, and inconsistent handles. You have decided to sunset the campus Instagram accounts by August 26. The risk is collapsing accounts without a content engine to replace the local cadence. Fix: stand up a central engine first, one weekly asset pack the main account runs and campuses amplify. Keep youth separate, as planned.
High No active short-form layer = invisible to under-30s
The strategy is long-form sermons plus static posts, with no consistent Reels, Shorts, or TikTok clips, the exact formats reaching the next generation. Fix: cut 3 to 5 vertical clips from each weekend message; activate and link the official @foresthillchurch TikTok and post the same clips there.
Medium Website and social are disconnected both ways
The site does not link the socials, and the socials drive to a site with no clear visit CTA. Fix: add social icons to the header and footer and an embedded feed; point every social bio link to the new Plan a Visit page.
Lead pastor, scored separately · 47 / 100
The lead pastor's public digital presence is underdeveloped relative to the trust-building role it could play. After a leadership transition, that presence carries unusual weight: it is how a community re-anchors trust.
Lead pastor presence
A modest personal following on a single platform, with little cross-promotion from the church accounts and no personal site or newsletter. Directional; confirm current figures with the team.
Score breakdown
- Reach: 45
- Platform spread: 30
- Discoverability: 35
- Content cadence: 50
- Pulpit / video: 72
- Brand alignment: 62
The raw teaching content to fuel a personal-brand engine already exists; it just needs clipping and distribution.
Critical The leadership page links no one
The page lists about 20 staff with no bios and no social links for any of them. A guest researching "who leads this church" hits a bare list of names. Post-transition, that is a missed trust-building moment. Fix: give the lead pastor and campus pastors a real bio, a short story, a sermon embed, and a link to their profile.
Full account inventory
| Platform | Handle / Page | Role | ~Reach | On site? | Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| @foresthillchurch | Main hub | ~7,600 | No | 74 | |
| @foresthillsouthpark | South Park | ~2,980 | No | 66 | |
| @foresthillfortmill | Fort Mill | ~1,450 | No | 62 | |
| @foresthill_waxhaw | Waxhaw | ~1,390 | No | 60 | |
| @foresthillsouthboulevard | South Blvd (bilingual) | ~810 | No | 55 | |
| @foresthillballantyne | Ballantyne | ~1,000 | No | 58 | |
| YouTube | Forest Hill Church | Main sermons | n/a | Indirect | 58 |
| YouTube | @ForestHillFortMill | Campus (duplicate) | Small | No | 40 |
| YouTube | @FHCMusic | Worship, South Park | n/a | No | 38 |
| /FHCcharlotte | Main page | ~1,100 | No | 48 | |
| campus pages x5+ | South Park, Ballantyne, South Blvd, Eastland, Preschool | Mixed | No | 44 | |
| Blog | blog.foresthill.org | Legacy (dead) | Low | Subdomain | 25 |
| TikTok | @foresthillchurch | Official, disconnected | To confirm | No | 20 |
| Pastor | Lead pastor (personal IG) | Personal presence | Modest | No | 47 |
Team & Tools Capacity behind the work
You have the team; you are missing the system. Under the Communications & Events Director there is a real in-house group. The job is to multiply it with systems and an engine, not replace it.
Design
- Two in-house graphic designers
- A part-time creative project manager
- Canva and Adobe
Video & Production
- Two video editors
- A Production Director over AVL at all five campuses
- An open full-time video production lead
Social & Comms
- A part-time social media contractor
- The Communications & Events Director
- Support hours from the production team
High Output is limited by workflow, not talent
Two designers, two editors, a part-time social contractor, and a part-time creative PM is real horsepower for a five-campus church. The read: output is limited by workflow, no central engine, untracked response, and tools that do not hand off. Fix: wrap the team in one repeatable pipeline (sermon to clips to posts to email to print), a tracked intake on Monday.com, and AI-assisted production, so the same people ship multiples of what they ship today.
Medium The weekend has a content gap right where stories belong
The service flow (call to worship, two songs, prayer, straight into Doc's message, response song, then campus-pastor next steps) is clean, but there is no story/testimony moment between worship and the message, the highest-conversion piece of content a church produces. Fix: build a lightweight story-video pipeline (one life-change story a month) the production team can run, doubling as next-steps fuel.
Strategy
A roadmap from our working session, organized into six priority areas, with what we recommend and how Ministry Builders would deliver it. The throughline: do the next right thing, in the right order, with the people and tools you actually have. Knowing what to fix is not the hard part; knowing what to fix first is.
Brand design, messaging, and the website everything else points to.
- The website is the hub. The first thing people do when invited is Google you. Get the website and a baseline of social right before investing in an app.
- Simplify and consolidate. Too many places today, campus emails, campus Instagrams, campus micro-sites. That is sideways energy. Centralize toward one church, one voice.
- The homepage has two jobs: watch a sermon they missed, and find where it is, what time, and what it will feel like. Cut the five-CTA overload to one clear next action, and rotate real photos (preaching, worship, kids, people walking in).
- Brand builds trust; words drive action. When someone lands, tell them the one thing to do next.
- Consistency beats perfection. Lock colors, fonts, and style across web, social, signage, and print. That consistency is the identity.
- A refresh is justified after the leadership change, but settle the brand before rebuilding the website, social, or print, or you will redo the work.
- Decide voice, vote, and veto before any branding call. The veto list should be very small; Doc's input weighs most.
- One source of truth: CCB. You cannot disciple who you do not know. Bridge the CCB to email and text gap.
Brand Design
FN1A custom brand redesign that reflects everything the church has walked through, then a consistent system and templates the in-house designers can run across all five campuses. See the brand concept we created →
Messaging
FN2Consistent, clear messaging built around the mission, bringing heaven to a greater share of Greater Charlotte, one person at a time, and said the same way on every platform so the church sounds like one voice everywhere.
Website
FN3A total redesign built around the new brand: one unified site replacing the main site and campus microsites, with a Plan a Visit front door, SEO and schema foundations, and indexable sermon pages. Today the separate campus websites are confusing and inconsistent; unifying the setup, the visuals, and the workflow makes Forest Hill feel like one church with many locations, not a dozen separate sites. See the homepage concept we created →
Grounding: a main site plus separate campus microsites on different hosting splinter the brand and SEO; there is no Plan a Visit page, and the content, structure, and sermon pages all have room to improve.
How new people find Forest Hill: search, social, paid, local listings, and shareable links.
- Word of mouth is the number-one reach strategy. "Who is your one more?" Make inviting frictionless with a personalized invite-a-friend page they can text.
- They ask, you answer. YouTube is the world's number-two search engine. Title and structure content around the questions people actually ask.
- Social is a relationship tool, not an announcement board. About one in ten posts should announce; the rest build rapport. For action use email; what you really want is a text.
- Be everywhere they look, in an interesting way: Instagram, YouTube, email, text, a consistent and compelling reminder of Forest Hill.
- Shoot a walk-through video for every campus, parking lot to seat to kid check-in in under three minutes. People want to know what they are walking into.
- Lock down your domains. Find who actually controls them (today it is an unnamed support email, a real risk), then document, protect, and optimize ownership.
Search & Local (SEO)
DC1Always-on findability once the site ships with schema: content, per-campus local listings, and technical health. Grounding: search visibility scored 44; no meta, Open Graph, or schema today.
Social: Instagram, Facebook, TikTok
DC2Less about announcements, more about relationship and connection. A weekly rhythm where every piece is a collaboration with a campus or the lead pastor:
- Photo posts that stir a longing to gather again
- Multiple sermon clips each week
- Instagram: quality over quantity, two to three posts a week
- YouTube Shorts: quantity over polish, two to three a day
Grounding: 14+ related accounts, none linked from the site; consolidate the duplicates behind one engine and activate TikTok as the short-form layer.
Paid Media later
DC3Hold off for now. Targeted invite and Plan-a-Visit campaigns make sense later, once the foundation, channels, and content engine are in place; paid spend before then pours into a funnel that is not ready to catch it.
Shareability
DC4Open Graph and branded share cards so every link a member shares looks credible. Grounding: no Open Graph tags today, so shared links render as bare URLs.
Lead Pastor Presence
DC5Treat the lead pastor as a content channel: short-form clips cross-promoted from the church accounts to build trust after a leadership transition. Grounding: the presence is underdeveloped relative to that role.
Sermons and the teaching library, plus the stories, clips, content multiplication, templates, and production rhythm that turn one message into a week of content.
- Fix the YouTube fundamentals first (it is a "message graveyard" today): search-friendly titles; thumbnails with a clear speaker photo and big, skimmable text; full descriptions with timestamps and a give link; cross-linked sermons, podcasts, and series playlists; custom end screens; and the collaborations feature with guest speakers to borrow their audience.
- Repost the live service as an on-demand video, for more total views and a cleaner, searchable library.
- Two different games: Instagram is quality over quantity; YouTube Shorts is quantity over quality. Ramp short-form volume.
- Use the tools: Opus Clip to auto-clip, caption, and schedule across platforms; AI to draft SEO titles, descriptions, and timestamps.
- Story videos are the secret sauce. Life-change testimonies between the worship prayer and the message, the most shareable thing you make. Get them onto YouTube and embedded on the site (they were dying on Sunday morning).
- Start a sermon-tied podcast, recorded right after the message while it is top of mind.
- Leverage the lead pastor's brand. People follow people, not organizations. Manage Doc's account alongside the church's.
- Embed video on the site rather than shipping people to YouTube (you keep them on-site and still get YouTube credit), and build toward a searchable sermon and story archive.
Teaching Library & Sermon Search
CE1An advanced, searchable sermon library, like search.coe22.com, that makes every message findable by topic, scripture, or question, a real advantage few churches have. Tied together with indexable series and sermon pages on the site (video, recap, and transcript), so years of teaching start working for search and discipleship instead of sitting unused.
Sermon Content Multiplication & Clips
CE2One message becomes many: a transcript, a small-group discussion guide, an email recap, per-platform posts, and three to five vertical clips for Reels, Shorts, and TikTok. Grounding: the AI tools are already in use, just not yet wired into a repeatable workflow.
Story & Testimony Video
CE3A standing pipeline for 60-to-90-second life-change videos, ready to drop into the weekend. Grounding: the weekend has no story/testimony moment between worship and the message today.
Templates & Production Rhythm
CE4A repeatable weekly pipeline and a tracked intake so the same team ships multiples of what it ships today.
Worship Channel lower priority
CE5A plan to amplify the separate worship channel so it reinforces, rather than splits, the main audience. Lower priority on time than everything else here, worth doing once the core engine is running.
Email, texting, forms, QR codes, event follow-up, and the first-party contact data underneath them.
- Accurate, segmented lists are priority one. You cannot disciple who you do not know. Segment by where people are in their journey so you can recommend the right next step.
- Get a short code (the 44-11-22 model). It is one step versus the QR code's three, and you capture the phone number instantly.
- Lead with resources, not asks. People want to do nothing; give them something valuable in exchange for their info.
- Do not ask for too much at once. The top four fields are name, email, phone, campus. Use branching workflows to collect more over time (baptized, serving, kids).
- Use a real two-way texting platform (Clear Stream): keywords, workflows, a two-way inbox, and CRM sync. Not the cheapest, but the opportunity cost of not having it is higher.
- One email, one call to action. Catch-all emails with fifty things make ministries feel good; they do not drive action.
- Centralize next steps under a single keyword ("text NEXT") so people always know where to go.
- Honor permission. Only text people who opted in, and route sensitive topics (anxiety, divorce, suicide) toward prayer and care, not a generic page.
Contact Data & Consent (the spine)
CP1Move email and automation onto a CRM more robust than MailChimp, one that integrates with the database natively, with a consent flag on every record and a clean re-permission path. This is the Known Connection Gap, and every other pathway depends on it. Grounding: about 65,000 contacts versus about 18,000 reachable, with no integration; texting permissions unclear.
When someone joins an email list for the first time, an automated welcome series helps them get to know the church and find a way to get involved. Easy opt-ins across the site capture interest in all kinds of content offers, and a weekly recap keeps everyone connected, all fed by the data spine so the reachable list grows toward the full database.
Texting / SMS
CP3Move to a dedicated SMS short code so people can opt in to content offers and connection with a single text (text one word to join). It builds a clean, permissioned list and powers timely guest follow-up, the after-Sunday lifeline.
Forms, QR & Tracked Follow-up
CP4Every QR and print CTA routed through a tracked link to a landing page that writes back to the database. Grounding: response is not tracked well today.
The path a person walks, made explicit and supported at every step.
- Run the content flywheel: offer a resource, capture contact info, drive repeat website visits, then offer the next resource. A constant offer over time. The Psalms example grew a 1,500-person list to 10,000.
- Message it from the stage as problem, solution, outcome ("Ever struggle to read your Bible? Let's do it together, text PSALMS and we'll keep you accountable.")
- Do not overcomplicate the resource. The audio-only daily devo and the simple Saturday men's text beat elaborate ideas at near-zero cost. Ask "any major objections?" not "what do you think?"
- Tie resources to series and momentum events (Christmas, Easter, Awaken, Saturate), when the most people are in the room.
- Build an app for daily habits eventually (gratitude, prayer, daily scripture). These create daily connection and produce measurable discipleship activity, like prayers logged.
- Let data inform teaching. Capturing that the number-one struggle was fear, then doubt, is gold for shaping a message. Consider a check-in question on what people are struggling with.
- Discipleship first, data second. Do not let it feel transactional. Want something for people, not from them.
Guest Follow-up Automation
DP1A warm welcome email and text and a same-week next-step invite the moment a visit form comes in, routed to the right campus and the next-steps team.
Next-steps Routing
DP2Connect the in-person ladder (groups, serving, baptism, care and prayer, generosity) to digital follow-up so no one stalls between steps. Grounding: a clear in-person next-steps ladder and team already exist; the digital connective tissue is missing.
Member Home Base / App
DP3One place for next steps, groups, giving, watch, and read, with push notifications. Grounding: there is no app today.
The systems and skills that make the other six sustainable. People, tools, and processes: you have to get all three right.
- Right roles beat more bodies. A cross-talented social media manager (boots on the ground: photos, basic video, creative, strategy) is a higher-value hire than another graphic designer.
- Build systems easy enough that ministries do not route around them. When a system is too hard, people invent their own (the MailChimp workaround) and you lose your single source of truth.
- Find "the helpers." The people who run with AI are often visionaries who finally have a way to build their ideas, not the most technical. Collect them.
- The future is highly autonomous and deeply human. Let robots do robot work so people can do people work. Treat AI as a five-talent opportunity, not something to bury.
- Build custom tools cheaply with Replit and Claude Code: booking engines, invite tools, micro-sites, sermon search. Things that once cost $100k can be done for a fraction.
- Context beats prompt. Feed the AI your examples and source material (sermon notes, transcripts, your style) and output quality jumps.
- Build reusable "skills" for repeatable processes (discipleship guides, blueprints): do the work once, then trigger it.
- Adopt dictation (Whisper Flow) and explore demo tools (Suno). Talk at 300 words a minute instead of typing at 100.
- Pay for the best tool, not the cheapest. There is always a cost of doing nothing.
- Add guardrails. Keep a human in the loop for anything biblically based, maintain an AI policy, and use extra caution before connecting AI to a live CRM. Do not break kids' check-in the week of a service.
AI Workflows & Enablement
TT1Practical AI plus staff training, so the team spends time on people, not platforms.
Analytics & Dashboards
TT2Tracked links, conversion goals, and a simple monthly scoreboard so every bucket is accountable. Grounding: response is not tracked today.
Platform Stack & Integration
TT3Connect the strong-but-siloed tools (database, email, text, giving, production) instead of replacing them. Grounding: a capable 20-plus-tool estate that does not hand off.
Governance, Hosting & Maintenance
TT4Hosting, security, backups, brand and template governance, and consent integrity, so nothing built quietly degrades. This is the Protect layer of the 4P model.
The point is not to do everything at once. It is to do it methodically, in the right order.
Immediate
- Consolidate social accounts (target Aug 26)
- Audit assets and metrics
- Fix the YouTube fundamentals
- Lock down the domains
- Establish CCB as the single source of truth
Near-term
- Settle the brand refresh
- Secure a short code and Clear Stream
- Launch resource-based opt-ins tied to the next series
- Build the content flywheel
Longer-term
- Stand up story-video production
- Build custom AI tools and reusable skills
- Rebuild the website with embedded content
- Consider an app for daily discipleship habits
Sequence and cadence
Foundation first, then discovery and connection, then the deeper content and discipleship work. Below: the operating rhythm we run on, the flagship builds in order, the full bucket matrix, and the split between one-time and ongoing work.
The operating rhythm
How the engagement runs over time, the same steady rhythm across every bucket.
Plan
Set the year's goals, priorities, and budget across the six buckets.
Adjust
Review what is working, re-rank the buckets, and reset the next 90 days.
Report
A scoreboard on every active bucket, so decisions stay grounded in real numbers.
Execute
Ship the content, posts, emails, and follow-up that actually move people.
The flagship builds, one per quarter
Foundation
Brand and messaging refresh, the unified website, and the contact-data spine connecting database, email, and text.
Discovery & Connection
Social engine and consolidation, search and shareability, and email, texting, and tracked follow-up.
Content & Teaching Engine + Team
The teaching library and sermon pages, sermon content multiplication, the story and video pipeline, short-form clips, AI workflows, and the analytics scoreboard.
Discipleship Pathway
Guest follow-up automation, next-steps routing, and the member home base or app, on the now-live data layer.
12-Month Strategy
Every service, sequenced by quarter, showing its bucket and where it sits in the 4P delivery model.
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy & audit (this blueprint) | — | Plan |
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| FN1 Brand design | Foundation | Produce |
| FN2 Messaging | Foundation | Produce |
| FN3 Website (into Q2) | Foundation | Produce |
| CP1 Contact data & consent | Connection | Produce |
| DC4 Shareability | Discovery | Produce |
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| DC1 Search & local (SEO) | Discovery | Promote |
| DC2 Social (IG / FB / TikTok) | Discovery | Promote |
| DC5 Lead pastor presence | Discovery | Promote |
| CP2 Email | Connection | Promote |
| CP3 Texting / SMS | Connection | Promote |
| CP4 Forms, QR & follow-up | Connection | Promote |
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| CE1 Teaching library & sermon search | Content & Teaching | Promote |
| CE2 Sermon content multiplication & clips | Content & Teaching | Produce |
| CE3 Story & testimony video | Content & Teaching | Produce |
| CE4 Templates & rhythm | Content & Teaching | Produce |
| TT1 AI workflows & enablement | Team & Tools | Produce |
| TT2 Analytics & dashboards | Team & Tools | Produce |
| DP1 Guest follow-up automation (into Q4) | Discipleship | Produce |
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| DP2 Next-steps routing | Discipleship | Produce |
| DP3 Member home base / app | Discipleship | Produce |
| Service | Bucket | 4P |
|---|---|---|
| TT3 Platform stack & integration (always-on) | Team & Tools | Protect |
| TT4 Governance, hosting & maintenance (always-on) | Team & Tools | Protect |
| DC3 Paid media (if budget) | Discovery | Promote |
| CE5 Worship channel (later) | Content & Teaching | Promote |
One-and-done versus ongoing
Produce One-and-done in a quarter
- Website rebuild and brand refresh
- Data spine and consent rebuild
- Social consolidation and engine setup
- YouTube archive cleanup and templates
- Email journey and template build
- AI workflow setup
- Story-pipeline system setup
- Church app build
These are typically scoped and quoted as one-time projects.
Promote Protect Ongoing every month
- Website hosting, updates, and security
- Data-sync health and consent upkeep
- Weekly social content and posting
- Per-message YouTube optimization
- Email sends and list growth
- Guest follow-up texting
- SEO (always-on)
- Monthly analytics and reporting
- Story-video monthly cadence
- App content and team AI coaching
These are typically carried inside a monthly retainer.
How we work together
The 4P model (Plan, Produce, Promote, Protect) is how Ministry Builders delivers. Here are three ways to partner for the year, built on our standard Growth Partnership. The custom brand and website are included from the Growth tier up.
Foundation Partnership
The complete marketing foundation: content, search, and the systems, with your site kept current.
- Monthly review call
- Quarterly plan review
- CRM and contact-data setup
- 8 social posts / month (combination of image, quote, carousel, or reel: designed and posted)
- Quarterly channel review & feedback
- SEO fundamentals
- Google Business Profile (1 campus)
- Starter site, up to 10 pages
- Hosting included, 2 updates / month
- No CMS
- 1 new custom app / year, like sermon search (search.coe22.com), an invite tool (invite.coe22.com), or a serve quiz (serve.coe22.com)
- Ongoing maintenance, support, and security management of all apps
Growth Partnership
A full execution team, a custom brand and website, and three new ministry apps a year.
Your custom brand redesign and custom website build are built in, not billed as separate one-time projects.
- Monthly call (up to 90 min)
- Monthly reporting + insights
- CRM + pipeline management
- Quarterly business review
- 12 social posts / month (combination of image, quote, carousel, or reel: designed and posted)
- Email audit & recommendations
- Monthly channel audit & feedback
- 6 Shorts / week
- Full SEO program
- Google Business Profile (up to 6 campuses)
- Email + texting nurture automation
- Custom site, unlimited pages
- CMS for easy in-house updates
- 1 managed update / week
- Custom landing pages as needed
- 2 new custom apps / year: sermon search (search.coe22.com), invite tool (invite.coe22.com), serve quiz (serve.coe22.com)
- Ongoing maintenance, support, and security management of all apps
Scale Partnership
Everything in Growth, plus a faster build pace and senior strategic firepower.
The custom brand redesign and custom website build are included, the same as Growth: unlimited pages with a built-in CMS.
- Bi-weekly strategy calls
- Full HubSpot ecosystem management
- Monthly executive dashboard
- Monthly 1-hour strategy call with Jay and your executive leaders
- Quarterly 3-hour deep-dive strategy session
- 1 in-person session per year
- Direct email and phone access to Jay
- Support for marketing and communication strategy, overall org strategy, and team growth
- 20 social posts / month (combination of image, quote, carousel, or reel: designed and posted)
- Full email marketing program
- Lead magnets, case studies, sales collateral
- Monthly channel audit & feedback
- 10 Shorts / week
- Comprehensive SEO program
- Google Business Profile (unlimited campuses)
- Multi-channel paid media
- Full marketing automation + CRO
- Advanced site, unlimited pages + CMS
- Unlimited managed updates
- Custom funnels + A/B testing
- 3 new custom apps / year: the full program, sermon search (search.coe22.com), invite tool (invite.coe22.com), serve quiz (serve.coe22.com), and a custom church app
- Ongoing maintenance, support, and security management of all apps
Each partnership runs on a 12-month agreement. Annual prepay discounts available.
The value of partnership vs. in-house hiring
In-house team cost
- AI developer: $75,000+
- Social media coordinator: $50,000
- Video editor: $55,000
- SEO / content specialist: $60,000
- Benefits (about 25%): $60,000
Ministry Builders partnership
- Full marketing strategy and execution
- Sermon-to-everything content (10 to 15 clips a week)
- Custom brand and website included
- Three new custom AI apps a year
- Team training and support
What Forest Hill owns
Everything Ministry Builders builds, Forest Hill owns: the site, the systems, the automations, and the data stay yours. We build for your people, not just on your tools, so the same team ships multiples of what it ships today.