Summary

The Communications Specialist creates content to further the Marcom's mission to foster missional engagement by building and holding the Covenant's shared story. This person is an innovative storyteller, showing a wide-ranging curiosity for listening to and telling Covenant stories. The Communications Specialist writes in a range of mediums and collaborates with the editorial team to communicate clearly, correctly, concisely, and completely.

This position contributes to the overall marketing and communication objectives of our Marcom team in aiding coordination and collaboration across all mission areas to inspire and inform local churches and regional conferences.

Essential Functions

• Engage in a professional, hospitable, and courteous manner with the ministry's constituents.
• Writes articles and stories, highlighting mission and ministry of churches or individuals throughout the Covenant.
• Reports on stories and activities throughout the Covenant, including ECC Events.
• Coordinates with conference offices and key constituency groups to promote and share regional Covenant stories, developments and events in cooperation with conference staff and ministry partners.
• Contributes to mission areas' communication and marketing efforts by researching, interviewing, and writing content as assigned.
• Verifies facts, dates, and statistics, using standard reference sources.
• Works with digital team to share content on social media platforms.
• Track and communicate story developments with constituents to foster and facilitate engagement.
• Demonstrate high journalistic and ethical standards, offering fair, objective, and balanced perspectives, accurate and complete content, and respecting the proprieties of copyrights and permissions as well as the rules governing plagiarism and attribution.
• Ensures grammatical accuracy and consistency in style and tone in all communications, this to include copy development, editing and proofreading.
• Aids in securing images to expand the readers' experience through photography or curation.
• Other duties as assigned by Director of Content and Editorial Services, and/or Executive Director of Marketing and Communications.

Education and Experience

Requirements: Bachelor's degree in journalism, communications, English, or a related field; general knowledge of the Bible and evangelical Christianity (familiarity with the Evangelical Covenant Church a plus); judgment and critical thinking skills in evaluating potential stories; strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work effectively with others. Proficiency in Office365, ClickUp and WordPress; familiarity with basic HTML is a plus. Able to type, accurately 55 wpm. Skills in photography and/or bicultural/bilingual in the Spanish language preferred.

Skills

• Strong writing and editing skills.
• Nimble storyteller, adept at writing for various platforms and outlets.
• Detail oriented, strong organization, prioritization, and time-management skills are essential.
• Works well under pressure and is able to accomplish multiple tasks, with conflicting priorities and timelines. Ability to track and report progress on a wide range of tasks simultaneously.
• Ability to respond to and deal with a range of ad hoc queries/requests.
• Writes clearly and informatively; edits work for spelling and grammar; varies writing style to meet needs; presents numerical data effectively; able to read and interpret written information.
• Ability to operate with discretion and, at times, confidentiality.
• Communicates with others to convey information effectively and efficiently. Responds appropriately and adjusts actions in relation to others.
• Develops workable implementation plans. Communicates changes effectively. Monitors deadlines, trouble-shoots, and evaluates outcomes.
• Self-starter, with the ability to work independently.
• Excellent people skills to embrace diversity of schedules, backgrounds, formats, contexts, etc.

Environment Conditions

Able to work well in professional office setting and remote work settings. Occasional travel. Must be versatile and able to work for prolonged segments sitting or standing. Must engage frequently with office tools and equipment, such as computer, copier, phone, web-conferencing equipment, cell communication, printers, etc. Must be able to occasionally lift or move items, less than 35 lbs. Occasionally pack and unpack, move and lift boxes that contain event materials.