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; Effective Church Communications can help.

Church Communication tools to help people grow to Christian Maturity, a key goal for the New Year

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We need to do more in our church communications than reach out to people to get them to church the first time. You probably had lots of people visit for the first time during the holidays, but you don't want them to come week after week and leave with only nice feelings about the Christian faith.

We need to give them enough information to make an informed decision about the Christian faith and after they become a Christian we need to keep helping them learn about the faith until they grow to mature disciples.

People grow in the Christian faith by learning about God and His guidelines for living as they are taught in the Bible. To grow your people you need to get them into the Bible and to get the Bible into them. Below are some simple communication tools that can help do that.

Bible reading plans

Everything is easier with a plan. Give your people a plan to read through the Bible in a year. To make it more manageable and enjoyable print up the schedule a month or quarter at a time and turn it into an attractive bookmark that people can keep in their Bible and check off for each day they do their reading. You could also provide a link to a read-through-the-Bible –in-a year program on the web.

There are many free Bible downloads or podcasts on the web for people who might prefer to listen rather than read their Bibles. Don’t think for a minute that listening to the Bible is inferior to reading it. For most of human history, the majority of believers have not had their own Bibles to read—join the saints of the past and listen to the Word of God.

This year the adult discipleship ministry at our church that my pastor husband and I lead will be be going through the Bible in a year in chronological order. We are using the reading plan at: www.bibleplan.org. The plan we are using is the Chronological, read in a year. This site has a number of useful features

  • They will send the daily reading to you via email.
  • You can then read it online.
  • Or you can click on the link to the Bible Gateway and listen to it.

Memory verse cards

In many ministries we’ve worked in we’ve used business-card size verse cards to help our people memorize verses. These are so easy to create with any desktop publishing software, such as MS Publisher and the pre-perforated business card stock you can get at office supply stores. Do these up for Sunday School classes, small groups, and for all of the various teaching ministries of your church. For special occasions, you can turn the verse card into a refrigerator magnet. We’ve frequently done that for key verses for ministries or as a holiday gift to ministry groups.

Web site support

For  the Bible reading plans, refer people to a place on your web site where you have additional background on the books of the Bible, the history of the books, profiles of the key characters, how that book of the Bible is part of the overall story of salvation. Add links to other Bible study sites and you have a great tool to encourage your people to get into the Bible more deeply. A good site to start with is www.blueletterbible.org.

Another great site that has both lots of help on Bible studies, yearly Bible reading plans and one of my favorites, the links to classic Bible commentaries is: http://www.ewordtoday.com/  Be sure to go to the bottom of the page because at the end of the page are links to some excellent sites--be sure you go to: http://www.ewordtoday.com/comments/

A key to successful outreach and growth in the Christian faith is not for church leaders to do it all, but for them to equip their people to do the work of the ministry. Technology is a great tool that gives us new ways to equip the saints to do work of eternal value.

Why you shouldn’t plan too far ahead in church communications

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Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so cautiously.
Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so with wisdom and prayer.

At the start of the year, it's natural to want to do some planning, but planning can be both a positive and a negative thing. It's always challenging as I was reminded when several churches have asked how to create a communication plan for the next five to seven years. Each of them has mentioned that new technology can be costly and they want to be prepared, in their budgeting and for training. Though I admire their desire to be good stewards, planning ahead for five years in church communications, especially when it involves trying to figure out technology needs, is futile.

Could you have envisioned your communication world today five years ago?

Think about it. Five years ago, could you:

  • Have  imagined or planned for the iPhone and iPad?
  • Known texting would be a major way your youth group would communicate and your youth pastor would need a high-end mobile phone?
  • Have known that skill with Facebook  would be useful, if not essential, when you hire a church secretary?
  • Imagined that Tweeting would be a skill your senior Pastor might want to learn? Even known the meaning of Tweeting or that social media in any form would be able to overturn governments and raise millions for charity? [Read more...]

Christmas church bulletin example

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After sending out the Hark the Herald Angels gospel presentation, I just got this example of how one of the ECC Members used it and wanted to share it.

It is a wonderful example of how to put together a very clear and complete presentation of how to come to know Jesus personally at Christmas. Following is a picture of the bulletin--click on the images to download the PDF.

For the original file with the Hark the Herald Angels Sing files, CLICK HERE.

Hark Bulletin Example front

How to modify templates for A paper sizes

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I created this brief video in answer to a question from Australia about what to do when the Effective Church communication files are in PDF format sized for American paper sizes, but these sizes are not the standard paper sizes for Australia.

This short video shows how to modify the communications in MS Publisher and MS Word to the "A" paper sizes, which is what most of the world uses. Being able to modify the templates is one of the benefits of Effective Church Communication Membership and this video shows how easy it is to do this.

Business or Invitation cards for Christmas or outreach, gifts, PR, invitations to come back to church, whatever you can think of

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Christmas business and invitation cards wide #1Christmas business and invitation cards wide #3

 

 

 

Business and invitation cards can be used for so many things during the Christmas season: invitations, gift enclosures, links to website explanations about your church or Facebook or Twitter encouragements, cards to encourage people to come back to church, gift tags, or whatever else you can think of. [Read more...]