Effective Church Communications

PODCAST: Strategy for Summer Communications

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Summer Communications
The summer communications from our churches should be clear and kind and this podcast will give you some tips on how to make them more effective.

Whoever wrote that song, "Summertime and the livin' is easy" did not work in church communications.

The pace and type of activities change in the summer, but with Bible camps and special events, there is a lot of work to be done.

Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast.

In our podcast today I'll give you some tips for more effective summer communications. CLICK HERE for FREE TEMPLATES of communications that you can use for effective outreach this summer.

For the original article that forms the basis of this podcast, go to: https://wp.me/pDky9-7pK

Strategy for summer communications, remember visitors, delete hidden jargon, don’t host a money-divided event

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Summer Image
Your church will have visitors this summer, be sure your communications make sense to them.

LINK to FREE Summer Templates is at the end of this article

This summer your church will get lots of visitors, some of whom are friends of church members who might not regularly go to church, others may be from the surrounding community, and we can't forget out-of-town visitors. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out with the gospel and the love of Jesus and here are some strategic tips to help your communications make the most of this opportunity and some strong cautions about what not to do.

Do you know What is the meaning of the word Selah in the Bible? You will be surprise about the message that the bible has for you.

Jargon watch

We know we shouldn’t use church jargon terms like justification and sanctification in our church bulletin, web, or social media when we are writing for people visiting our church, but so much of our church jargon we don’t even see. Using acronyms we don't explain, talking about events that we do year after year and assume everyone knows about, insider jokes, assuming people know times and locations—all these things are confusing and unkind to someone visiting. We don't want our language to keep someone with a free night in our city to miss out on an opportunity to learn about Jesus.

What should we do? Awareness is a good first step. Look at your bulletin, web, and social media and ask the Lord to help you see them as a visitor would. Take the time to explain what you know is confusing, even if it benefits only one person. To go further, show your communications to a friend who doesn't go to the church and ask them to tell you what you said. If they have trouble explaining exactly what you are referring to, how to get there, and why they should bother to come you may want to make some changes.

Not for summer only: the above tip is useful to do at least once a year in your church. It becomes impossible for us to see if our communications make sense to anyone outside the church. You have to get that feedback regularly to be sure you are communicating with the people you want to reach.

Ask yourself what would make you feel welcome if you were visiting? 

For local visitors:

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Colorful, fun church reminder postcards for Summer

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Summer church reminder postcards
Remind people in fun ways about what is going on at church this summer with these cards.

A light touch, a gentle reminder is often all that is needed to let people know what is going on at church during the summer and to help you do that, I revised some summer postcards I made with www.tagxedo.com, a fun site you can use to create word cloud images that you can then place into any publication you are working on.

The cards below were designed as reminders or notes that you can send out to remind people of what is going on at the church. Make them up for Sunday School Teachers, Small Group Leaders and Pastors to write a few notes a day to various church members. Summer is time for fun, but the best of times are often with our church families and these cards can remind people of that.

Below the illustration of the cards is a downloadable ZIP file that has ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

To download the ZIP file for the images above, click the following link: Fun Summer postcards

 

What do your church communications say about the priorities of your church, especially in the summer?

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Summer communications
Because we have the opportunity to do different things in the summer, what we choose and communicate about reveals the true priorities of our church.

Jesus told us that "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, (Luke 6:45)" and we know that's true. If we are angry with someone, it always comes out. Maybe in nasty, little snide comments, maybe in screaming. If we love someone, we can't help but smile when we are with them or thinking about them.

We may want to hide either emotion, but it seldom works. No matter what we say, "I'm not angry, just frustrated" or "No, he's really just a friend" our words and actions will always show what is in our hearts.

It's the same with your church. You can have the most biblical, Great Commission-centered mission statement ever. Your leadership board can decide that this year the focus will be on outreach and discipleship and the congregation can agree those are great goals.

But are these truly at the heart of your church? Do you honestly care about reaching unchurched people with the good news of Jesus and growing your current members into mature disciples? Do these convictions result in action?

It doesn't matter what you say in staff meetings. What does the voice of your church, your communications, say are your priorities?

This is very easy to evaluate. Look at the recent communications—your social media, newsletter, church bulletin. What are they about? As I write this, it's summer and I had the opportunity to compare two sets of church communications from two churches where they talk about their communications. The defining details are changed so as not to embarrass any member of the Body of Christ, but here is a summary of each one from an overview of their summer communications.

I selected summer as a time to evaluate because we tend to be very intentional about this time. Churches have incredible opportunities to either make a great impact for the Kingdom of God or to be selfishly inward-focused. The following are true stories.

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Summer Postcards to encourage church attendance

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Summer postcard to encourage people to attend church
Here is a FREE set of summer postcards to remind people to keep coming to church.

Here is a set of cards you can print to remind people to come to church during the summer.

The all the images were created as 1/4 page postcards in MS Publisher. I then made PDFs of them that are ready to print. I intentionally left a white margin around the images so if you print them in the church office and are a little off in your cutting them apart, you'll still be OK. If you get them professionally printed you might want to add run the image all the way to the edge of the template size the online companies provide. Below is a ZIP file with additional cards that contains:

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