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.

Cautions on writing, creating, sharing personally revealing stories AKA testimonies, the possible negative results, and what to do instead

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We all want to share stories, yet we must always be respectful of the person whose story we want to tell and above all, we need to keep primary God's story and God's Word.

Storytelling is very popular currently. Just today I got yet another promotion of a “Learn How to Tell Stories” webinar.

Though storytelling is perennially popular, our Bible is made up of stories, after all, we must also be aware of some cautions when we tell stories—and that’s what this podcast and blog is all about…. The podcast is below and the blog on the same topic follows.

With the current trend of excessive sharing influenced by current media and the public revelations of indiscretions of previous Christian leaders, it seems there is nothing that is off-limits in public discourse.

There truly is no longer shame in what is shared.

The secular news media is one area; the church is another and it's important to set limits for what we share in the church in our written and digital communications and spoken public and digital sharing. This includes written and spoken testimonies and regardless of our reasons for wanting to share them, please consider the following cautions as we do them.

Please consider the following suggestions as both the ignorance of possible consequences of oversharing and the abuse of it can have lasting, though often not intended consequences for the people in our church.

We can never separate the content from the person

Allow me to first share my background on this issue as it comes from years of writing about people in difficult situations when I wrote about people for a number of Christian ministries in Colorado Springs and also was a religion reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

When I was a senior editor and writer with Compassion International and progressed to teaching writing and publication creation to other ministries, one thing I was adamant about was that we never, ever show people who were recipients of our ministry from a victim position either in what we wrote about them or how we photographed them.

No pictures of children with flies on their faces, no women beaten and bruised, and no men slumped in a pile of rags. Regardless of their previous need, I felt we should always treat people with honor. [Read more...]

PODCAST & blog—Your Chaplain of Communications—the unique ways Yvon Prehn and Effective Church Communications can serve you

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Comfort from Chaplains needed in church communications
Chaplains comfort and encourage in many situations and I want to be your Chaplain of Church Communications.

There are many useful resources available online to help you in your work as a church communicator. Considering that I was recently thinking about what makes my ministry of Effective Church Communications useful for you—what to expect from me that is unique or different from what is available from other sources.

Though I’ll break it into practical parts for you shortly, overall, I realized a good label for me would be Your Chaplain of Church Communications. This covers what I do, as a chaplain is defined as one—

  • Who provides spiritual care and resources
  • Is a mentor and a reassuring and trustworthy presence
  • Who assists with the spiritual, religious, and emotional needs

Caring for your spiritual needs and providing resources for you as a church communicator is foundational to what I do for two reasons:

  1. The spiritual importance of who you are as a church communicator.
  2. The unique ways I can help you be more effective based on the spiritual, Biblical foundation of the resources of Effective Church Communications.

Let’s look at these two areas in more detail now either by listening to the podcast or going to the blog that follows.

The spiritual importance of who you are as a church communicator

As a church communicator, you have one of the most critical jobs in the church both in terms of the potential impact of your position and the spiritual warfare involved in it. [Read more...]

“You are One of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize,” an encouragement for all church communicators

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Church Communicators are the GREAT ones in the Kingdom of God
Your work may seem challenging and overwhelming, but church communicators are truly the Great Ones in the Kingdom of God. Heaven will be different because of the work you are doing today.

It's easy to forget the incredible importance of your work with all the hard work it takes to be a church communicator. The devotion below will help you remember.

You are one of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize

Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (Dan. 12:3)

Often when I ask someone who has come to one of my church communication seminars what they do in the church, they often respond by saying something like: “Oh, I’m just the church secretary” or “Oh, I just help work on the church newsletter” and similar self-deprecating statements.

My heart is broken when I hear that because the person who says it (and you may have thought similar things about yourself) has no idea of their true worth. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story from a scene in C. S. Lewis’ book , The Great Divorce. In this scene the main character is being escorted around heaven. He sees a woman coming toward him magnificently clothed and attended to by a great procession. The book goes on: [Read more...]

Canva—a GREAT way to edit MS Word Newsletter Templates!

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Tutorial on how to modify MS Word Templates in Canva
It is incredibly exciting that you can modify an MS Word template, in this case, a newsletter, with Canva. Changes that make it look so much better are SUPER EASY!

I confess, I did not know you could do this!

I was looking up a totally different task and I found a video about using Canva for teachers, and it showed how you could modify an MS Word document in Canva. I tried it, it works fantastically, and I couldn’t wait to share it with you!

I have used MS Word literally since it was invented and though I love it for word processing, to try to do much else with it is an exercise in frustration. Images are a nightmare to try to place, columns do funny things, and any kind of layout with images is a huge challenge.

The “templates” available in MS Word and online might be useful if want to keep something almost exactly the same and only change wording, but sometimes you want to do more than that. When I heard you can open an MS Word template in Canva it seemed almost too good to be true. Then I tried it and was incredibly excited about what you could do!

After a little more experimenting on a newsletter, I created a video to share with you showing how EASY it is to make major design modifications on an MS Word document in Canva.

As always in the Effective Church Communications Canva videos, I’m showing you how to do things with real-world projects, in this case modifying a newsletter, and not simply a demonstration of tools in the program. BE SURE to subscribe and hit the notification bell on the YouTube channel so you'll be notified when I post the new Canva videos as I often get them done a few days before I sent out a newsletter notification.

Check out the video and have fun!

The Teal Pumpkin Project is a great service to kids and families with allergies

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The Teal Pumpkin Project is a great service to kids and families with allergies.

One in 13 kids have a food allergy and for many of them and their parents, what is a fun candy fest for most kids becomes a nightmare of fears about sometimes life-threatening allergic reactions.

In response to this situation and because her son had severe allergies, one mom decided to do something about it. Here's her story from USA TODAY:

Back in 2012, a Tennessee mom named Becky Basalone had an idea: What if Halloween could be made a little less tricky for kids with food allergies?

Her idea became what is now the Teal Pumpkin Project, a nationwide effort to encourage families — whether their own kids have food restrictions or not —  to offer up some non-food treats on Oct. 31. Participation is simple: You just put a teal-colored pumpkin or sign outside your door and offer trick-or-treaters glow sticks, spider rings, Halloween stickers or other non-food goodies, along with or instead of the traditional candies.

Food Allergy Research & Education (FARE), a non-profit advocacy group, first promoted the idea nationwide in 2014, with the help of a viral Facebook post, says Nancy Gregory, senior director of communications. In 2015, about 1 million people visited the group’s website to get information, and about 10,000 of them — probably a fraction of participants —  put their homes on an interactive map showing teal pumpkin sites, she says.

This year, the group is thinking bigger, Gregory says: “Our goal is to have a home on every block in America with a teal pumpkin. We hope that it becomes a new Halloween tradition.”

from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2016/10/23/teal-pumpkin-halloween-food-allergy/92285680/

For more of Becky's story: https://allergicliving.com/2014/10/23/the-origin-of-the-teal-pumpkin-project-interview-with-becky-basalone-facet/

How to participate

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