Email Best Practices for a Church Staff

If you work at a church, or just about anywhere, you probably send and receive a lot of email.  You’ve no doubt received some poorly written emails and likely have even sent a few yourself.  Recently, I gave our church staff some suggestions for writing better email:


1. Send it “To” the correct people, that is who needs to receive the information and do something with it. We recommend filling in who you are sending the email to last, as it saves you from inadvertently sending the email before you are done.

2. “CC” the correct people. Feel free to CC anyone who might need to know the information in your email as an FYI, but is not expected to respond. In general, we encourage you to be liberal in CCing people, as we want people in the know, but please do not go overboard.

3. Reconsider before using “BCC.” Ask yourself why you are really using BCC. And ask yourself how the recipient will feel when they find out you blind copied someone else, and how you are going to feel, when you find out, that they found out.  It’s probably better to simply use CC.

4. Unless absolutely necessary don’t respond to an email you were CCed on. You were CCed for your information, not your input.

5. Think twice before hitting “Reply All.” There are over 20 people on staff, even if it takes the average person 5 seconds to read and delete your reply, you just wasted a minute or two of the church’s time (20 people x 5 seconds = 100 seconds). That’s one to two minutes, on the low end, every single time someone does this.   Whatever you do, don’t reply all with an email that simply says “Great!”.

6. Use a strong, clear, informative subject line. Your subject line should not be long, but it should be clear. Some bad subject lines I have seen recently include a blank subject line, “Hey!”,  “Today” and one where the entire three sentence email was in the subject line.  People decide whether they are going to open emails based on subject lines, so if you want them to read your email, chose well.

7. Only tackle one subject in each email. Your email may be a summary of multiple things under one heading (such as Sunday Follow-Up or Funeral Info for John Doe) but don’t put two unrelated subjects in one email. It gets too confusing when people start replying to different parts of the email and it also causes people to miss things.

8. Be concise. Very few people respond to a massive block of text. If you’ve ever received an email back saying “let’s just talk about this in person” that is code for you just wrote too much to read, process and respond to in an email. If it requires more than a paragraph or two, then it is probably better to handle in person.  Also, don’t bury the lead.  Get right to the point of your email.

9. Ask for the response you want. A great way to end an email is to simply state “Can you have this to me by 5pm on Thursday?” or even, “No need to reply, but I just wanted you to be aware of the issue.” Tell the person what you want them to do with the information you have just presented. If you are not specific in what you are asking for, don’t be upset when you don’t get the reply you want.

10. Remember your tone – Email is horrible at communicating tone. You have to be over the top to get tone to come across in email. Avoid negative words like failure and wrong.  Be sure to use please and thank you.   Be especially careful with humor, as it often doesn’t translate.  Use exclamation points sparingly!!! Never argue via email.  Don’t use ALL CAPS unless you really are trying to yell something.

11. If you are upset, wait a day. We rarely say the right things, in the right way, when we are mad. Actually, this one really should be “if you are upset, wait a day, and then go talk to the person face-to-face.”  It’s easy to go pop off an email in anger, it’s hard to deal with the relational consequences your short-tempered email will produce.

12. Do not copy other people in on someone else’s email when you reply without getting the original senders permission first. Likewise, don’t forward someone’s email without their permission.  Just so you know, I view this a breaking confidentiality which is the “unpardonable sin” on staff.  When I send something to you I am choosing the content and wording that I would say to you, not necessarily someone else.  Also, don’t hit reply all and then communicate a private/confidential reply.

13. Read every email. Email is the primary way we communicate throughout the week, so it is important and it is part of the daily responsibilities of your job. Neglecting email is not an option.

14. Reply to every email where your response is requested or needed. Our staff policy is to reply to every email that a response is needed for within 24 hours, unless you have a day off or vacation. It is far better to reply and say, “I don’t have an answer to that, but I will ask at staff meeting next week and get back to you” than to leave them waiting a week. If you know you are not going to get back to email within 24 hours then you should use your out of office assistant.

15. Proofread every email. I once heard the rule of thumb that you should proofread an email one time for every one person you are sending it to. That is a little overboard for an inter-staff email, but if it is going out to a group in the church it may not be far off. If it is an email going to a large group, have two or three other people proofread before sending it.  We do things with excellence.  Sloppy emails are not us.

16. Use your church email address for church matters, and use your personal email address for personal matters. Again, we do things with excellence and professionalism. Your old AOL email address is actually vintage cool, but it doesn’t work for sending church emails from.  Alf may have been your favorite TV show growing up, but ilovealf@gmail.com is not going work for sending church emails.

17. Be careful with abbreviations and emoticons. Again, be mindful of professionalism. This is especially true in mass emails and in your first email exchanges with people.   They may not appreciate all your emoticons as much as you do.  They may not even understand your abbreviations.  How many people actually know what QUE stands for?  Or NNTR?

18. Don’t use read receipts. First, they are annoying. Second, they do not usually work, as people decline them or block the feature altogether.  Third, they communicate a lack of trust.

19. Remember nothing is confidential. On staff, forwarding an email without permission is a breach of confidentiality. Remember though, when you email someone outside of this staff, there isn’t much that keeps them from forwarding it to everyone they know with a couple of keystrokes.  Assume that others, including those you may not want to, will see everything you write.  Along these lines, as a general rule, do not use email to discuss confidential information.

Posted on
Category: Staffing

Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

294 thoughts on “Email Best Practices for a Church Staff”

  6. She arrived at Lincoln Zoo on 25 October and has locked eyes with Randhir from their enclosures, but the pair are yet to be formally launched. She’s going to now kind a breeding pair with Randhir, Lincoln Zoo’s five-12 months-previous male sloth bear, as a part of the European Endangered Species Programme. The United States was born in Philadelphia on 4 July 1776. In 2026, the city again takes centre stage as it celebrates the nation’s 250th anniversary with a yr-long programme of historical past, sport and artwork. Beyond the trail, travellers can experience two extraordinary nightscapes: Wintjiri Wiru, the Anangu-led drone-and-mild storytelling experience above the desert; and Field of Light, marking its tenth anniversary in 2026 as Bruce Munro’s now-iconic installation of 50,000 glowing stems. Selected to host the twenty fifth annual Central American and Caribbean Games from 24 July to eight August, the oldest European metropolis within the Americas is preparing for an inflow of athletes from 37 international locations to compete in the one centesimal anniversary of the competitors. Visitors can help identify migrating blue whales, be a part of coastal clear-ups, or participate in annual conservation festivals that fill the plaza with music, food and storytelling.

    West Brom have few positives to remove from this season, however they have been agonisingly close to frustrating the champions for a second time in the marketing campaign, having drawn at Anfield in late December. Phnom Penh is having a moment. The town that had only one site visitors mild 15 years ago is now a showcase for sustainable urban tourism, from its new Chaktomuk Walk Street – a pedestrianised riverfront road that turns right into a weekend festival of Khmer road food, native crafts and dwell music – to the electric tuk-tuks owned by the newly opened Rosewood Phnom Pehn lodge which are being used to ferry company round the city. The research, led by Dr Sophia Adams of the British Museum and published this week in Internet Archaeology, shows the fragments to be the first evidence for an Iron Age gold torc from Sussex, with the artefact now estimated thus far again to between 2,300 and 2,four hundred years ago. A significant spotlight is fifty two Weeks of Firsts, a citywide sequence marking 250 years of Philadelphia’s pioneering spirit.

    The city’s welcoming feel is no accident, due to Cambodia’s pioneering late architect, Vann Molyvann, who acknowledged that no constructing might rise higher than the Royal Palace. Greater than half of Uruguay’s roughly 3.5 million residents live in Montevideo, the vibrant capital that has the texture of a seaside resort regardless of remaining a busy port. This accolade just adds to its growing listing: town already hosts the World Air Guitar Championships and is the self-declared winter-cycling capital of the world. A new wave of Gen Z-led sustainable boutiques, distilleries and third-tradition espresso outlets reflects a rising homecoming movement among younger Cambodians. Each set up displays themes of creativity, climate change and our connection to “nature’s time”, echoing town’s broader effort to encourage slower, charmdate.com more mindful journey. In 2026, the typically-ignored area is sharpening its concentrate on affect-driven journey with a new astrotourism venture, two conservation-driven camp openings – Basecamp Samburu and Soroi Samburu Lodge – and ongoing work on a climate change action plan that prioritises reforestation and renewable power. Beyond the bustle of Nairobi and the traffic jams of the Masai Mara lies Samburu County, a distant swathe of northern Kenya that has long prioritised its environmental and neighborhood-led conservation efforts.

    Travellers can discover by day-boat, keep in eco-lodges on close by islands or sail between remote bays on traditional phinisi vessels for a deeper connection to the archipelago. In gentle of the Cambodia-Thailand battle, the US State Department and UK Foreign Office have issued warnings to travellers wanting to go to locations close to the border. Peter Skelton, counsel to the coroner, asked if the e-mail may have been sent by Mr Perepilichnyy’s widow. Maria was surprised when i advised her I made borscht and despatched her images. So, the revelation that some police officers had been instructed not to use England and Wales’ NHS Covid-19 app shortly after its launch drew consideration. Nevertheless it isn’t a superb matter for discussion whenever you wish to catch her consideration. If in case you have ever come across as a member of enormous worldwide relationship platforms like TrulyRussian, you probably acquired the attention that many younger and single Russian ladies seek mature international males there, if not for the one. The combination of conventional relationship values, fashionable training, and cultural adaptability makes Ukrainian girls particularly effectively-suited to severe worldwide partnerships. AnastasiaDate is a world on-line relationship webpage that primarily connects males from North America with ladies from Eastern Europe.

    Reply