Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission

Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and a Biblical Perspective to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. Our tools constantly change; our task doesn’t; we can help.

How Yvon Prehn creates teaching videos for Sunday School classes and this website

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Video on how Yvon Prehn creates teaching videos
You can use the same process I use to create training videos for this site to create videos for your Sunday School classes.

I've been asked how I create the videos that I do for this site and the videos I create for my Sunday School website. To answer I created the following video. This video does not show you how to use all the programs and software I use to create the videos, but it does show the process from start to finish.

It is a very simple process anyone can do. It does not require expensive cameras or equipment. This is easiest way to do videos if your primary purpose is to simply teach something or get a message across.

Below the video, as a bonus for Effective Church Communication Members, are added notes about the process, each program illustrated, and how I use them.

For the companion video, Yvon Prehn advice on how to shoot videos when you talk to the camera, that goes along with this one, CLICK HERE.

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How to download a Free Image editing program, paint.net

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How to download Paint.net
Paint.net is one of the best FREE image editing programs--here is how to download it.

This is one of my favorite image editing programs--much easier to use than Photoshop and best of all FREE! Even though it is very easy to use, it is extremely powerful and lots of fun to play around with. It doesn't get a lot of PR, (maybe because it is free), but it is a program that I think every church should have a copy of.

Below is the video on how to get it--here is a link to a series of videos I did that are on YouTube that show you how to use it: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6709E3C376551C36

On this video I demonstrate how to download it. The link for the download is: http://download.cnet.com/Paint-NET/3000-2192_4-10338146.html

3 reasons why you need to “put the long term ahead of another quick fix” in church communications

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Keep eternity in mind as you create your communications
The communications you create in church have eternal consequences.

The advice above to "put the long-term ahead of another quick fix" comes from an editorial in USA Today and, as you might assume, applied to the U.S. economy.

While the merits of that advice, or any other, when it comes to economic policy in any country, can be endlessly debated, the wisdom of that statement when it comes to creating effective church communications is beyond doubt. Following are three reasons why we should consider the long-term effects over quick fixes: [Read more...]

Why words are more important than images in church communications

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Words are the primary carriers of meaning in our church communications.
Words, not images, are what clarify meaning in our church communications.

No matter what tools we use to create our message; no matter what channels we use to share it, the one thing that never changes is our core content. Our content, permeated with the truth of the entire Bible and culminating with a call to salvation and discipleship in Jesus, must be the anchor of every communication piece we produce.

The obvious question then is: what is the best way to communicate our content?

Here is one of the greatest errors, challenges, controversies, problems—it's hard to pick just one word—confronting church communicators today and that is the mistaken priority use of images over carefully crafted words to communicate our content. It doesn't matter what technology channel we use, the issues of the communication value of words vs. images is the same.

Words are the primary carriers of content, of clear propositional truth. Words however, are difficult to wrangle into meaning. It takes work, thought, planning, and editing to even approximate clear communication. [Read more...]