Effective Church Communications

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators. 

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.

Graduates Resources, video preview, new and updated

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This may be your last chance to meaningfully connect with and influence the graduates at your church. Make the most of it with Resources from Effective Church Communications.

The video below is an overview of them and below the video links to specific resources mentioned in it.

Video on Graduation Preview

eBook of Graduate's ResourceseBook in the Effective Church Communications Library

This eBook is free to subscribers of the ECC Library along with dozens of other eBooks and downloadable training videos. CLICK HERE to go to the ECC Library and sign up for a subscription at the special launch price of only $25 a year.

 

Prayer for graduatesFree Templates for North Star for Graduates and Prayer for Graduates

CLICK HERE to go to this and other free templates for Graduates.

 

 

Printables for Graduates from the Bibleverse Shop

CLICK HERE to go to an incredible resource where you can download and print out many sizes and varieties of printables all at a very low annual subscription price (regularly $36, launch price, $25 a YEAR!). Put them into inexpensive frames from the Dollar Store and you have great gifts for your graduates (and other printables anytime!).


Bibleverse t-shirts and mug shopThe Bibleverse t-Shirts and More Shop

CLICK HERE to go to my shop of t-shirts and more for Bible-centered gifts that will encourage your graduates and help support the ministry of Effective Church Communications.

For Graduates: Celebrate but also challenge

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Free Graduation Prayer
Graduation is a time for celebration, but don't miss out on it as a time to challenge your students.

Warning before reading: this is one of my more cranky blogs, but for what I hope is a good reason. I know that the following challenges to youth programs based primarily on fun and positive messages do not describe all youth programs, and please forgive me if your program takes equipping youth with Biblical values and a passion to serve Jesus seriously. However, in the lives of the teens close to me I see very little of this today. It makes me especially sad because I know it doesn't have to be like that. I was a youth leader for many years and even then I often doubted if I was doing the right thing because my program was not the most fun one around. It was filled with lots of Bible lessons, challenges, active service to the poor, mission awareness, and very high expectations. It was a large group, friends were invited, the church was pleased—all the outward measures of success were there—but I still wondered. The years have passed. My kids have gone on to become pastors, staff in Christian organizations, community and government leaders reflecting Biblical values, I pray their time in the not-always the most fun youth group contributed to that. So with another prayer that this cranky blog prove beneficial, I offer it to you. You have been warned. 

Celebrate, but also challenge your graduates

In preparing for this series of posts and resources on graduation (links at the end here), I searched Google to see what other churches were doing for graduation. Overall, the emphasis was on celebration, honoring the students, remembering all they've done, along with advice on making sure names were pronounced correctly. All fine and good, but for a generation of students who have grown up with constant reminders of how wonderful they are, but I think we do them a disservice by sending them off with one more "you are fantastic and the world loves you" message.

Though we want to take time to celebrate students and their accomplishments, we don't want to miss the opportunity to challenge them to a deeper commitment to their faith. This may be one of our last opportunities to do it.

Particularly for high school students, graduation is the start of serious spiritual challenges. Many churches rightly bemoan students drifting from their faith after high school, but if we've spent years telling them life is a big party and Christianity is lots of fun (or how else would we get them to come to youth group?), we shouldn't be surprised. [Read more...]

ECC PODCAST: Father’s Day—Beyond celebration—how to make the ministry most of it to grow Dads spiritually

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It's easy to look at Father's Day as just another holiday to do up a special bulletin and social media for and to say a few nice things about Dads during the church service. But did you know you can do so much more as communicators for Jesus?

We need to constantly remind ourselves in the crush of trivia and distraction that our job is not to be a holy version of Hallmark where our goal is to have the most appealing Father's Day social media and PowerPoint ever, but that our primary job in communications, as in all of life if we are followers of Jesus, is to grow as his disciples and to share his message of salvation—in other words, to fully fulfill the Great Commission. Below is our podcast where we explain how Father's Day can be used to grow men in their faith and following the podcast are notes from it and links to the resources mentioned in it.

You might wonder why a church communication article starts out by reminding you of the importance of discipleship, but as followers of Jesus that is the most important aspect of our lives and our work as church communicators is simply the arena in which we carry it out.

Ephesians 5:16-17 reminds us of this and challenges us in this way:

So be careful how you act; these are difficult days. Don’t be fools; be wise: make the most of every opportunity you have for doing good. Don’t act thoughtlessly, but try to find out and do whatever the Lord wants you to.

At Effective Church Communications, my goal is to remind you to "make the most of every opportunity for doing good" and to give you practical opportunities to do that. [Read more...]

A challenge for Graduates—choose your North Star wisely

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What we choose as our North Star, the guiding principle of our lives will have tremendous impact on us and our world. Encourage the graduates in your life to choose wisely.

Graduation seems like freedom—no more school or rules! And though it is a time to celebrate, we also want to challenge the graduates in our lives with the responsibility that comes along with the freedom.

One of the most important decisions they need to make is what will be the North Star of their life? What is the one fixed point around which all else revolves? What you choose for a North Star can determine the direction of your life, whether it will be one with focus and meaning or an endless drifting through unsatisfied dreams and desires.

At the risk of being a buzz-kill at this happy time I wrote a short piece to challenge graduates to consider carefully the focus of their lives.

I created a short piece that challenges graduates to carefully consider this. Below is the text. I also created two half-page sheets in PDF and MS Publisher format you can easily print out and use as a bulletin insert or on the back of a program or whatever you want. One has a colored background like the image to the left and one is blank.

CLICK the link that follows to download a ZIP file that contains them: Graduation Challenges half page

Use the text below any way you want with my permission, however if you reprint it, please do not change the text, use it as a whole.

Choose your North Star wisely

Just as the time-lapse image above shows how all the stars revolve around the fixed point of the North Star, in all our lives we revolve around certain fixed points of belief. That belief will then determine our everyday choices, actions, and the consequences of them.

If we believe that we are the most important person in the world, that the world owes us love and success, our lives will move in directions that will spin a petty, small world with us at the center.

If we believe money is the way to happiness and fulfilment, if we believe our job or hobby or even a person we care for is the most important thing, our lives will revolve narrowly around that.

If we think the most important thing in life is having fun we’ll either spin out of control or move in ever more meaningless directions.

At your graduation, consider that there is only one North Star worthy of the focus of your life now and forever. That is the North Star of knowing Jesus as your Savior and living in obedience to his Word. When you know his Word well your life will have direction, focus, and fulfilment, even though it may be
difficult at times.

When you live like that you play to an audience of One, the Lord Jesus. Though at first it may seem hard, it is ultimately relaxing and fulfilling because only Jesus loves you totally, always helps you make wise decisions, and will always be with you in every moment of life, death, and forever.

Graduation is a great time to make life decisions. Choose your North Star wisely. The direction, fulfilment, and joy of your life and eternity depend on it.

 

Other Graduation resources: click on the link following the title

Free Challenging Instagram graphics for GRADUATION, download and use
https://wp.me/pDky9-7Xt

For Graduates: Celebrate but also challenge
https://wp.me/pDky9-7XV

A Prayer for Graduates, Free flyer, bulletin insert
https://wp.me/pDky9-7Yt

A Prayer for Graduates, Free flyer, bulletin insert

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Christian prayer for graduates
This is part of set of flyers you can download for your graduates.

The most important thing we can give the graduates at our church is our prayers and I created a set of half-page flyers, bulletin inserts, or however you want to use them for your graduates.

I took the first letter of GRADUATE and used them as a prayer, along with verses. Below is a gallery of them and below that the ZIP file that contains PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

Please know my love and prayers go with all of you as you use this prayer. May the Lord grant us a generation of graduates who will represent Him well and be a joy to their families, communities, and churches.

CLICK on the following link to download the ZIP File: Prayer for Graduates half page

Other Graduation resources: click on the link following the title

Free Challenging Instagram graphics for GRADUATION, download and use
https://wp.me/pDky9-7Xt

A challenge for Graduates—choose your North Star wisely
https://wp.me/pDky9-7XR

For Graduates: Celebrate but also challenge
https://wp.me/pDky9-7XV