Yvon Prehn

PODCAST: What can happen if you work hard on your event, but don’t have time to work communications FOR the event

15 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Will you get the same number of people the Sunday after Easter that you have on Easter Sunday?

We know we won’t, but in Today’s podcast we’ll talk about how you can increase the response by what you do on Easter Sunday.

Today we’ll talk about…….What can happen if you work hard on your event, but don’t have time to work communications FOR the event

This is a true story.

Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it can apply to any event. In addition to applying to any event, we can all identify with the situation here. The challenges of ministry are so huge, it is very easy to get overwhelmed in one area and totally forget another one. May the Lord have mercy and help us all.

In one of my seminars, at the break, a lady literally came running up the aisle to talk to me.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, “Now I understand what went wrong.”Continue Reading

The different preaching styles of Peter and Paul and why it matters for Easter follow-up

14 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

CLICK on the image to download the FREE ZIP file that give you a PDF and an editable MS Publisher file of this handout to help people explore the Christian faith after Easter.

When people come to your church at Easter for some of them it may be the first time they hear that Jesus died on the cross so they could be forgiven of their sins and be at peace with God. This is not an easy message to understand if you have not grown up in the church. That's why using these bulletin inserts that encourage them to continue an exploration of the Christian faith is so important.

The Apostle Paul preached to an audience with much in common with many of the people who will come to your church this Easter. They were part of a world that held many religious beliefs; they may have even heard of Jesus. But again and again you find the same pattern in the book of Acts—Paul would preach a sermon, but then he followed it with extensive discussions as Acts 18: 4 tells us: "every Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue, trying to persuade Jews and Greeks." He didn't just preach and leave, he reasoned, he taught, he got into arguments and debates.

Unlike the Jewish audience where Peter could preach one sermon and because his audience knew who he was talking about and were expecting the Messiah, many would respond immediately as they did at Pentecost when Paul preached it was often to an audience totally unfamiliar with the Old Testament and God's plan of salvation. A positive response took time as this passage in Acts 17 illustrates:

So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. ¹⁸A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

As the passage says, he took time; once again, he reasoned with and debated the people he was preaching to. We don't know how long he did this, but we know he realized one sermon alone would not convince them of the truth of the resurrection of Jesus.

It won't for a first-time visitor to your Easter service either.

Don't take a lack of immediate response at Easter as an insult, but as an opening to a discussion about and further exploration of Jesus and the Christian faith. These bulletin inserts can help you do that. Below are a choice of designs and following that some ideas for what to put on the back to encourage people to continue in their exploration of Jesus. Below them is a ZIP file of ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher Files.

To download the ZIP file of the bulletin inserts/flyers above click the following link: Still have questions

What to put on the back of the handouts to encourage further engagement and exploration of the Christian faith

PODCAST: Was Jesus a Zombie? Consider this question before you finalize your Easter Sermon

10 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

Was Jesus a zombie? Please understand, there is no irreverence or shock value intended with this question. It was an honestly asked question from someone who was totally unfamiliar with church.

After I got over my shock of being asked this question (and a short time later I was asked it from someone else), I did a podcast that coincided with Halloween, but I think it is also appropriate for the Easter Season so I am re-recording it for Effective Church Communications.

The rest of the podcast is primarily directed towards people outside the church, but I'm sharing it with church communicators and I hope with Pastors and those who prepare sermons for Easter to help you remember that if you did a good job on outreach to get unchurched people to come to your church for Easter, you need to think carefully about the audience you'll have. Many more people than those of us who grew up in the church can imagine did not grow up with ANY exposure to the church or the Bible. The implications of that reality are vast. You can't count on them knowing anything about the true story of Jesus, but they will come into the church with many pop culture ideas about life after death. I can't tackle them all, but now I'd like to tackle just one aspect of it—the question of........

Was Jesus a Zombie?

When you think about it calmly, if you are someone who doesn't go to church regularly, it really is a very good question because the only conception many people have today of a person who has come back from the dead is a zombie. So when someone hears Jesus came back from the dead, that's immediately what they think about. Easter is all about Jesus coming back from the dead, but as we'll see in the podcast today, how Jesus came back from the dead is very different from coming back as a zombie.

So what do we know about Jesus coming back from the dead?

PLEASE modify the Templates from Effective Church Communications Resources—an example to show you how!

9 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Poem about Resurrection — This is a creative modification of one of some of the FREE template and text material available to you on this site. You are encouraged to do whatever you'd like with the materials.

The free templates from Effective Church Communications can be used as is—but you can also modify them!

Many ECC Members have done that over the years and I love it when they send me the final result.

The one here (after the link) is by Georgia Bamber from Harvest Assembly in Toronto, Canada. She took the postcard with this text on it, changed the background and put it into her newsletter that she does in MS Publisher.

Not only did she encourage me (and I hope inspire all of you with her shared example), but she called the text "a poem." I hadn't really thought of it as this and a number of similar things I'd written (and make freely available to you) as poems before. I looked up the definitions of prose and poetry and she was right. I ought to have known that; I was an English teacher many years ago. But having that label on them, I hope to be much more intentional about creating them in the future.

Poem or simply "inspiring text" as I called it, is available to you along with the many free templates and other text messages. The links are at the end of this blog.

PLEASE DO send me your creations or modifications along with permission to use them and I will pass them on to inspire others.Continue Reading