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.

9 Reasons why MS Publisher is a great program for churches to use for print and graphic creation

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Why MS Publisher is recommended for Church Com teams
MS Publisher is a fantastic program to create not only publications, but graphics for print and web. At the end of this article, you can download this FREE PDF.

When I first encountered MS Publisher in the early days of creating communications with the computer, I would have never imaged I’d be recommending it as the program of choice for churches—and not only so you can create complex print layouts, but also graphics for print and the web.

At that time, if you wanted to create professional-looking publications, you chose Aldus Pagemaker.  Pagemaker gave you layout options and type-setting control, necessary for credible communications for churches, while Publisher’s main claim to fame was the ability to quickly create a moderately tacky-looking postcard quickly. [Read more...]

ebook: Financial Communications, special edition free for ECC MEMBERS

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This special ebook contains 32 pages of great samples of Financial Communications and is a free version for Members of Effective Church Communications. Some wonderful examples of fund-raising materials and motivation are included. The link for an immediate download of the book is below. For membership information and to sign up, click here.

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CLICK HERE to download the ebook on Financial Communications Special Edition for Effective Church Communication Members.

How do you communicate a budget shortfall to your church?

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We live in challenging times and though our churches are about good news in Jesus, sometimes we have to communicate bad news and currently many churches have to communicate that the budget is not being met.

I recently got the email below from a church communicator asking how to do that. Below her question I’ll give some answers and I’d like to invite you to add your comments in the comment section. If you’ve never commented on an article before, please give it  a try we all value your input!

Yvon,

Our church budget is experiencing a large shortfall. Is there anything on your website about how to/how not to communicate such information?

I dislike posting the information in the Sunday bulletin as I feel it is a real turnoff to visitors. Any advice or leads would be appreciated!

Name protected

Suggestions on how to communicate budget shortfalls in the church

There are a number of communication issues in this question.

First, let’s discuss guideline suggestions for communicating about financial matters on an ongoing basis and then how to deal with a situation where members have not been informed.

Every church needs a way to keep members updated on the church finances.

Just like every family needs to be continuously aware of where they stand in relationship to the family budget, the church family needs to understand finances.

In most churches this means some sort of announcement in the bulletin. Though it is totally understandable that you do not want to present finances in a way that is a turn-off to visitors, a discrete notice, a sort of box score can be put in each week in a very subtle way, without comment. Many churches have something like this:

Last week’s offering:              $XXX.XX
Weekly budget goal:               $XXX.XX
Year-to-date total offerings:   $XXX.XX
Year-to-date budget:              $XXX.XX

With something like this, the congregation is informed and the Lord can speak to them about their response. When the congregation has no idea week-to-week if the church is slipping behind and suddenly they get a letter that the financial situation is desperate, that will cause far more problems.

What visitors dislike is a big emphasis on money, but everyone knows churches need money to operate. I’ll never forget an example (this is true) of one church bulletin I saw. Across the front it  said in HUGE LETTERS:

THE DEBT is 3.5 MILLION!

HAVE YOU MADE A PLEDGE YET?

Now that would most likely be a turn-off to visitors.  A little weekly box. . . . .I wouldn’t worry about that.

In fact, that is what our church has done for years. Members like it and we have never received any complaints about it. We are challenged right now, but as we go up and down, because the congregation knows each week what is happening, when the pastors do mention finances or present a gentle challenge, it is not a huge issue or surprise.

Suggestions for your current situation

  • If your people are not up to date, no matter what form you take to inform them, here are some questions you need to consider in the content of your communication:
  • Is there a reason for the shortfall that your congregation needs to be reminded of? Did a factory close or similar challenge in your area? Has your membership dropped significantly?
  • How big is the shortfall? Is the church in danger of having to lay-off staff or make other very drastic cuts? Do you have a proposed plan to deal with the consequences if the money does not come in? You need to decide what you will do and present clear options and consequences.
  • How long has it been since the church was updated on the financial status? If it has been a long time and the shortfall is serious, you must include reasons why the congregation is just now finding out about it.
  • Present specific steps people can take to bring the situation to what it needs to be. Remind people of the current weekly needs. Tell them how much additional money needs to come in to meet the shortfall. Challenge people to give a certain amount for a period of time to meet the shortfall.
  • Tell them exactly how the staff is handling the situation and what they will be doing.
  • All of these facts would be good to clearly put down on paper (and later on the website) prior to informing your people.

How to inform your people

If you are in the habit of quarterly or other regularly scheduled letters to the congregation, one with the above information would be good to send. You would not want to go into all that detail in the bulletin and it would not be appropriate for visitors. This is a family matter and should stay in the family.

There are times however when a shortfall is too significant to be handled in a letter. In these difficult situations, few things are more painful, but more productive than face-to-face communication. If the shortfall is significant, people will have questions. To keep peace, you must communicate in a way that they can get answers to their questions. A church meeting can do that and will prevent numerous phone calls answering the same questions.

Many churches do this with a congregational meeting after church. You can take a 10 minute break, visitors leave and then the members of the church return for an update. At that time, you would present your situation, answering all the concerns above, PLUS providing your suggestions for a solution on paper. You need to do this even though you’ll verbally communicate it because some dear folks may not hear, they will be tired, hungry and ready for lunch. Some will be upset. But to not meet with folks can cause many problems with gossip and misinformation.

Suggestions on what to do at an after-church meeting

  1. Begin with prayer.
  2. Hand-out the printed information.
  3. Apologize—for not keeping more current in your updates if you need to do that and so defuse that issue.
  4. Present the situation and solutions.
  5. Ask for questions in a calm and Christ-honoring, peaceful way.
  6. Tell the congregation what you will do next, what you want them to do, and how you will update them.
  7. Provide email, phone, contact person for further questions.
  8. Ask for prayer; end in prayer.

Our church has done a similar thing at times where challenging information needed to be shared and it has always been much more peaceful and productive than first feared. We press ahead by God’s grace.

Those are my suggestions.

PLEASE add your comments, suggestions, or experiences below and thank you for participating!

 

 

 

 

Webinar VIDEO & PDF handouts: You can do it! You can create all of the communications materials you need, inexpensively, at your church, and by your people

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Today everyone is concerned about the costs and the ability of their church to do all the communication they need to do. I firmly believe that every church has the people and ability they need and can afford the necessary training to do all their church needs to do.

This video will give you a flying overview of some of the programs and training that will help your church accomplish its goals. WARNING: it may be frustrating because in many of the areas you'll want me to stop and show you how to use the software or program in depth--that is not the purpose of this video and there is either training on this website in the various areas or there will be. This Webinar/Video was created to show you what is possible.

Here are the PDFs of the handouts for the video.

Handouts for Video There will be a number of additional training materials posted on this site that go into the topics here in more depth. Please be sure you are signed up on our mailing list to receive them.

Church Directories How-to, ideas from church communications

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Church Directory Tips
Church directories are great tools for helping people get to know each other in the church--here are some ideas how to create them.

Recently I received this question about pictorial directories and after the question are responses that were sent in and below them is a suggestion of a commercial product that I’ve had a number of folks in my past seminars tell me they really liked. Please put any additional comments or ideas that you have in the comment section below the article.

Question: Do you have any samples or ideas on how to put together an in-house pictorial directory?

We don’t like the traditional 8×10 size like Olan Mills for example prints. We’d prefer the 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 size or 4 1/4 x 11. We want to use photos, names, addresses, phone numbers (home & cell), emails, birthday & anniversaries of each person. All this information is preferred in the same area with the photo, not seperate. But where you can find ALL the information in one spot, but have it large enough to be read.

Looking for ideas. Any you have would be appreciated.

Thanks for all you hard work in making this such a fabulous informative website for church secretaries!

Connie

Idea #1:

Lord of Love has a membership-managing software program, Servant Keeper, which offers formatting for regular & pictorial directories.

I'm not able to export that information to send to you, since it is copywrite-protected, but basically, you can lay out the page with 3 large pictures on the right, with the families' information to the left & horizontal lines separating the 3, or lay out 10 to the page with smaller pictures, photo to the right, info to the left, basically making 4 columns on the page (info, phot, info, photo L - R) with horizontal bars separating each pair of families from the ones above & below.

I've even heard the suggestion that in a smaller church, each family can have its own page & add a short autobiography & candid snapshots. It would really take a small church to get all this information gathered in a timely manner!

Judy Rauscher,Secretary

Idea #2:

Hi Yvon,
We put out a pictorial directory in-house about three years ago, but unless some technology changes, I won't be doing another one again any time soon, at least not a printed version. The reasons are below:

1) Printing issues: To effectively print them on a color copier (our color copier was brand new at the time), we would have had to photoshop every single picture because photos output much darker on the color copier than they do on a color laser printer or ink jet. In the end, I couldn't get some of the photos light enough to render the people in them recognizable, so I ended up printing them all on a color laser printer.

2) Cost: The color laser printer I have is about twice the cost of printing on the color copier. When it was all added up, the cost PER DIRECTORY was almost $6. (It was 40 pages, 8.5x5.5 booklet format, with approx. 120 families.) We printed about 150 directories, one for every family, plus extra copies for staff and to give to newcomers, for a total cost of nearly $900.

3) Time cost: I had to spend literally HOURS gathering, cropping, sizing, tweaking and importing photos, not to mention the normal updating, merging, etc. of the data itself. It was way more work than we usually do to put out a directory.

Now, for a positive take:

1) If one has a church management system (CMS), where the congregation can log in and upload their own photo, and update their own info, then there is usually provision for printing a photo directory, and it would be somewhat easier, though still costly to print.

2) Taking it a step further: If we were to do it again, I would convert it to a PDF document and hand out CDs, then each individual family could absorb the printing cost if they even want to print it out at all. In this day of iPads and smart phones, I can see PDF being the preferred format at some point. I have a smart phone, and I think it would be great to be able to access it wherever I am. (Until we have a secure, member-only section on our website, I can't put it online for download.)

Blessings!
Rona Heenk, office manager
East Renton Community Church

Yvon's note on this:

Though I understand the value and impact of color, the most important thing about the directory is to simply see and identify the people and black and white might work nicely to do that. I recently saw a demonstration of a newer digital duplicator from the RICOH corporation and I was astounded at the quality of  the photos. Check it out if you get the chance, it would be interesting to see how that might work out, especially if you didn't do something really formal, but maybe a more casual one.

Idea #3:

Utilizing a local photographer or one in your congregation to take the family photos, you could then use a publisher such as Creative Memories or Blurb.com to produce an incredible book in whichever size you’d like. Blurb will even offer you the ability to have members purchase the books directly through their website, rather than ordering them in bulk. The downside, is that anyone would be able to see said directory. Once you find a good solution, please let me know. We are planning to do this on our next go round as well.

PS, last year we had our church photographers take photos of each family on Easter Sunday, just as a fun service to them. That may be a great time to catch most of your members dressed in their Easter best!

In Christ's Love,
Chaundra Ward
Administrative Secretary  | Clear Lake Baptist Church

Idea #4:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/publisher-help/create-catalogs-or-directories-RZ001078363.aspx?CTT=1&origin=EC001023015

Hi Yvon,
The above link is from Microsoft. I didn't take the "course" as I'm off to work in a few minutes but it looks like you can sit back and watch it or you can keep clicking Next at the bottom and it walks you step by step thru a Catalogue Merge.
If they create a data file (excel, access) with the information that they want to appear in the directory, they essentially do a mail merge with Publisher... except, Publisher lets you merge photos in too... so as long as they sorted their data on last names, and saved their photos by last name, so they would merge in. So as long as they sorted their data on last names, and saved their photos by last name, so they would merge in the right order, it would be (hopefully) fairly simple to do.

Laura
Secretary - Dundas St Centre United Church
Communications Committee Chair - East London Anglican Ministries

Idea from Yvon

In the past I have gotten some very good feedback about this product:

http://www.instantchurchdirectory.com/

They are the same people who make the clip art resources for churches, Communication Resources.

I'd love to hear from any of you that have used it, good or bad--just put your comments in the comment section below the article.

Here is the link to their latest version:
https://www.comresources.com/directory/

And an updated description of what it does:

The new 2011 version of Instant Church Directory offers you all the same ease of use as the 2008, but now with five brand-new features.  Now you can provide your congregation with an updated photo-directory every year – or as often as you like – without dealing with a photo-directory company.

You can do it yourself, right in your church office, with the equipment you already have. And you’ll see the results in hours … not months!

All you need to do is recruit a few members with digital cameras to stand near the doors on a few Sundays and take “head-shots” of families and individuals as they arrive or leave. The Instant Church Directory™ software will walk you through the process from there.

Instant Church Directory™ automatically prints your members’ photos and roster in alphabetical order.

Once the directory is on your computer, it’s a snap to make changes and keep it current. Simply print out updated copies anytime on request – as many or as few as you need (Instant Church Directory™ is designed to print on 8 1/2 X 11 portrait format only).

It’s like having a professional photo-directory without the hassles of a directory company. Or without obligating your members to buy expensive portraits.

And just like a professional photo-directory, Instant Church Directory™ will help your members get to know one another better, help build a sense of community, and strengthen member care.

Don’t expect your members to tolerate an outdated directory or loose supplements. Put an updated photo-directory into their hands that they’ll appreciate … and you’ll be proud of!

Instant Church Directory™ is also great for producing photo-directories for your Youth Groups, Choirs, Sunday School Classes, Pre-school, Women’s, & Men’s Organizations, Fellowship Groups, and other ministries of your church.

New Features for 2011!

New! Birthday Page - Quickly add birthdays to any member.  The ALL-NEW birthday page displays member birthdays by month.
New! Custom Pages - Insert any PDF page right into the directory.
New! Custom Information Fields - Two new custom fields allow you to add any special information.
New! Reorder Pages - Now you can tell the software which order to print your pages.
New! High-Quality PDF Directory - A high resolution image quality option for printing

_________________________________

Below are the websites of the companies that produce the professional directories.

I am not crazy about either of these companies, but I included them as something to check out for ideas or to compare options. Any directory is better than no directory at all and they do provide a useful service for busy church staffs.

http://www.lifetouch.com/

http://olanmillschurch.com/

Please add your comments, ideas, input and information in the comment section here. Thanks so much!