You are the priest. Or the PPC chair. You have read a bit about parish communications, or someone has sent you the Pillar 1 cornerstone from True Light Digital, and something has clicked. The parish needs a proper approach to communications. A named person. A clear remit. Some structure.
And as you are thinking about who that person might be, it occurs to you that there is already someone doing most of this work.
The parish secretary.
She has been doing it for seven years. Maybe longer. Nobody has ever called it communications work. Nobody has ever put it in her job description. But she has been the one sending out the newsletter, updating the website, taking the calls from families in crisis, relaying messages between the priest and the finance committee, quietly deciding what can go in the bulletin this week and what has to wait.
She has been the Communications Champion all along.
And, if you are honest, she has been doing it without recognition, without authority, and without the support the role deserves.
This piece is about what to do now.
The honest assessment
Most English parish secretaries are carrying three jobs at once.
The first is the administrative job they were hired for: answering the phone, managing bookings, keeping the diary, handling correspondence, ordering supplies. This is the job in the contract.
The second is the pastoral coordination that accumulates around any competent person in that chair: liaising with bereaved families about funerals, helping newcomers find their way, relaying the priest’s messages to the various ministries, holding the parish together when he is away.
The third is the curator function for parish communications: deciding what goes in the newsletter, what goes on the website, what gets said on social media, what tone the parish takes in public. Nobody has named this as her job, but she has been doing it anyway because the work has to happen and nobody else was doing it.
Three jobs. Usually for the salary of one. Often part-time.
This is not sustainable, and yet many parishes have been running on exactly this arrangement for years. It works, if you can call it that, because parish secretaries as a class tend to be conscientious, generous, and slow to complain. Their goodwill is what is holding the system up.
It will not hold forever.
What you need to do now
Three things. In the order below.
First. Name it.
Aloud. In her hearing. In the hearing of the PPC.
Say, in so many words: “I have realised that you have been carrying the communications function of this parish, and that nobody has named it as your role. I am naming it now. Thank you.”
Do not generalise. Do not say “you do so much for the parish.” Say specifically what you have noticed she has been carrying. The weekly newsletter. The relationships with suppliers. The judgment about what goes where. The pastoral coordination that crosses every ministry.
She may be moved. She may be embarrassed. She may be quietly pleased. She may, if she has been carrying this alone for a long time, find the recognition more emotional than she expected.
Let the moment be what it is. Do not rush past it.
Second. Give her authority.
Explicit, named authority. In writing if possible, verbally if not.
She has the authority to edit submissions. She has the authority to hold submissions that are not suitable for the current week. She has the authority to decline submissions with a pastoral conversation. She has the authority to escalate to you when she needs to.
Most importantly: she has the authority to say no, and you will back her up when she does.
Without this, she has to re-negotiate her role every time a submission comes in. Every parishioner who pushes back on her judgment forces her to explain, again, why her judgment is legitimate. This is exhausting. It is also unfair, because the authority has been implicit all along but never explicit.
The Role Description template (T1) is designed for exactly this. Use it. Fill it in with her. Sign it.
Third. Protect her time.
If you are now formally recognising her as the parish’s communications curator, the other things on her plate may need to move.
Sit down with her and look, honestly, at what she is doing. What can come off her plate to make the curator function sustainable? Is there a volunteer who could take on hall bookings? Can some of the administrative work be reduced? Can her hours be adjusted, or her stipend?
If the honest answer is that she cannot take on more without something giving, and nothing is giving, then you are not actually recognising her role. You are just adding to her load with a new title. She will leave, eventually, and the parish will have nobody.
Protection is concrete. If you cannot offer concrete protection, do not ask her to take on the formal role. Keep her doing what she is doing informally, and find another way to address the parish’s communications gap.
What not to do
Do not announce, at the PPC or from the pulpit, that she is “now in charge of communications” without having the conversation with her first. That kind of announcement is a form of imposition dressed up as recognition.
Do not assume she will be flattered by recognition alone. Recognition without time, authority, and support is not recognition. It is more weight presented as honour.
Do not expect her to be enthusiastic immediately. She may be wary. She has probably been disappointed before. The enthusiasm, if it comes, will come after she sees that the recognition is real.
Do not try to save money by formalising her role without any adjustment to her contract or workload. Parish secretaries who have been carrying three jobs notice when they have been given a fourth and nothing has changed.
The conversation
Schedule an hour. Not between other appointments. Over tea. In her office or in yours, but not in a boardroom.
Begin by thanking her, specifically, for what she has been carrying.
Tell her you have realised the role she has been holding.
Ask her if she wants to continue in it, formally, with the recognition and support it deserves. She may say yes. She may say she is tired and needs to reduce, not expand. She may say she is ready to train a successor. All three answers are legitimate.
If she says yes, walk through the Role Description template together. Agree the specific remit, the time commitment, the protection from scope creep, the review date.
If she says no, or says she wants to reduce, respect it. Work with her to identify someone else who might step into the function, or to scale the function down to what the parish can sustainably offer.
Either way, at the end of the conversation, thank her again. Whatever she has carried for the parish over the years, it has been real, and it deserves to be seen.
A closing thought
The parish secretary who is recognised, authorised, and protected is a parish secretary who will carry the curator function well for another decade.
The parish secretary who has the weight piled on without the support is the parish secretary who will eventually break, quietly, and leave the parish with a hole that took her eight years to fill and will take three more to rebuild.
The difference between these two futures is the conversation you are about to have.
Take it seriously. She deserves that.
This piece is part of the Pillar 1 series within the True Light Digital Formation framework. For the full cornerstone essay on which it is based, see truelight.digital/formation/communications-champion/.