This isn’t a typical communications role. You’ll be working with groups of local churches — each with its own culture, capacity and communication needs — to build a solid communications structure that enables churches to communicate clearly, confidently, and consistently so everyone feels connected, included, and that they belong.
The people you work with will be brilliant at what they do — but are likely to have limited experience with strategic or digital communication. They’re clergy, volunteers, and admin staff, often juggling many hats.
You’ll help create the conditions for effective communication that lasts — not by doing everything yourself, but by equipping others to do it well.
Your Two Main Priorities Will Be To
- Support a team to use existing church communication channels to maximise lay involvement and engagement in a shared project.
- Set up and embed long-term integrated communication processes that make the best use of new and existing comms methods (eg web, social media, ChurchSuite).
You will know you are successful when you see clergy, volunteers, and paid admin staff becoming confident communicators to their congregations and wider communities. Alongside this, the metrics of your success will include usage of ChurchSuite by all churches and the growth of their databases
Duties And Key Responsibilities
You will support multiple groups of churches during a significant season of change for them. For each group of churches, you will:
- Support the churches to communicate well during the 2-year change project
- Establish a communications sub-team with representatives from each local church involved in the project.
- Support this team to communicate with their own congregations, ensuring that everyone understands the purpose of the project and how they can get involved.
- Equip the sub-team to share updates, celebrate progress, and keep people informed using methods appropriate to each church context (print, spoken, digital, etc.).
- Support clergy and volunteers in how to shape communications that build trust, transparency, and grow engagement.
- Equip and empower local people to develop long-term, sustainable communication
- Support the comms sub-team as their focus shifts from project engagement to creating sustainable church communication systems for the future.
- Support and equip the local church communicators in:
- The rollout and integration of ChurchSuite – enabling each church to use calendars, rotas, contact lists, and group messaging to connect people and communicate church life.
- Creation of communications strategy for each church, as well as for the larger single parish (group of churches). This will include a 12-month communication content plan (including social media) as well as who and how it will make it happen locally.
- Building local capacity to use social platforms appropriately and effectively.
- Each church in the larger single parish will be unique, serving a specific community and having its own tradition and theology within the of the Church of England. You will help each church to define its shared voice and style that resonates with its current and future church members.
- Provide hands-on support, training, and confidence-building to ensure every church is actively using these tools in ways that help people feel informed, involved, and included.
- Develop easy-to-use guides, templates, and checklists that local teams can continue using long after your involvement ends.
- As the Support Services team is created support the new admin staff to:
- Develop the new larger single parish website – supporting content creation and regular updates that reflect all churches.
- Manage the admin for the social media platforms
- Take on the on-going comms support for the churches, managing the Church Suite admin, and modelling best-practice
- Monitor progress and share learning
- Track usage of communication tools across all churches and respond to gaps or challenges.
- Encourage shared learning and mutual support.
- Celebrate wins and highlight effective practices that can be scaled across the group.
- Share with the Fit for Mission team and the Comms team activities that may be of interest to others in Liverpool Diocese. As required connect Diocese Comms colleagues with local people whose stories will inspire others.
PERSON SPECIFICATION
Experience And Qualifications
- Strong background in communications, marketing, or digital media - preferably including internal or community-focused comms
- Experience equipping others and building communication capacity in low-resource contexts
- Experience working with websites, social media, and email tools (e.g. Mailchimp, Canva, WordPress)
- Experience working in or with churches, faith-based organisations or charities
- Must be able to travel to meetings across Diocese of Liverpool
- Willing to attend evening and weekend meetings as necessary, with notice
Knowledge And Skills
- Able to assess and improve communication systems sensitively and practically
- Excellent relational skills — able to build trust and work alongside volunteers and clergy
- A mindset of empowerment — committed to helping others grow, not building dependency
- A clear communicator, both written and verbal
- Confidence in training or coaching others who are not communication professionals
- Organised, self-managing, and able to keep momentum across different settings
- IT-literate and confident with tools like ChurchSuite, Microsoft Office, Canva
- Understanding of the values, language, and practices of the Church of England or similar traditions
Desirable Requirements
- Communications qualification(s)
- A member of the Church of England.
- Experience leading culture change or communications strategy
- Experience of working in a church context.
- Knowledge of the structures and organisation of the Church of England.
The post holder must be in sympathy with the aims and ethos of the Church of England. The post holder must also fully support the Values of the Diocese of Liverpool.
