Effective Church Communications

Effective Church Communicators Toolkits, an Introduction & Overview

27 March, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

To make it easier for you to access the information on this website for your own training and for training others, with or without the computer, I'm organizing the content into ECC TOOLKITS. The TOOLKITS contain instructional webinar/videos, corresponding PowerPoint presentations, PDF notes that go with them, associated e-books, and editable MS Publisher Templates, all focusing on one particular topic in church communications such as: church invitation cards, church visitor or connection cards, church bulletins, church websites, strategy for church communicators, and numerous holiday connected materials.

To access them you have two options:

Option #1: FREE Website TOOLKIT access for ECC MEMBERS

ECC Members have immediate, 24/7 access to all TOOLKIT materials as soon as they are released.

For each topic, all the material we have gathered for that topic will be accessible under the area of TOOLKITS, a tab on the Home Page of www.effectivechurchcom.com. Each topic will be in a separate TOOLKIT.

PLEASE look at the OVERVIEW file for each TOOLKIT as the contents vary and for suggestions on how to make the most of each TOOLKIT. If you are using the videos for training a group directly from the website, any of videos can be enlarged to full screen size and projected. The quality of the videos projected from an internet connection is not as good or reliable as the ones from the CD, but it is possible to view them with a group in this way.

You also have permission to make copies of the e-books PowerPoint handouts, and other print materials, and the templates for your church communications team without purchasing additional memberships.

The TOOLKITS offer some similar materials, but differ in organization from the Free Member's Download section in that the Download section has separate files (templates, jpgs, e-books, PDFs) that you can download and use individually if you want a specific type of resource. The TOOLKITS are organized around a particular topic, holiday, or communication tool and have everything you need in a variety of formats, in one place, on that particular topic.

Option #2: Toolkit CDs from www.lulu.com/yvonprehn, all $19.95

This option is available for anyone, members or not, who would like the material accessible on a CD. This works especially well for the churches or church support organizations that do not have high speed internet access for the videos and some of the larger downloads.

The CDs will contain one TOOLKIT per CD and are very reasonably priced ($19.95 each) to enable individuals, churches, church support and training organizations to collect a library of TOOLKITS useful for all their members. The www.LULU.com company that I use for production and shipping produces excellent quality CDs in hard plastic cases with spine labels—enough packaging to be useful for shelf storage and protection, but not too much with wasted software boxes.

The reproduction rights we give you with the TOOLKITS

Because we retain copyright to all the materials in our TOOLKITS, we can be generous with giving these rights to you. We do this because we want you to use the materials not only for your own learning, but to train others.

If we are to do all the communication for sharing the gospel and growing the Kingdom of God that needs to be done, we need many Great Commission-committed church communicators. We encourage you to not only look at these materials yourself, but use them to train others.

That is why we allow you to make copies of the e-books for staff and volunteers at your church if you either are a member or purchase CDs. That is why we grant you permission not only to use our materials to train volunteers if you are a member (you do need larger church or organizational membership for this) or purchase CDs, but you can charge a reasonable amount for that training and keep it.

We’d rather you didn’t reproduce the CDs. However, we can grant you a special license or provide group pricing if you want to give CDs to folks at a conference or training event. We can also provide wholesale pricing if you would like to sell the CDs and make a profit.

Questions, suggestions, ideas

If you have any questions about ECC TOOLKITS, suggestions for topics you would like to see in a TOOLKIT, or any other ideas on how we might help you become a more effective church communicator, please email: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

My inspiration for creating the TOOLKITS

Inspiration for this organization method came from an unlikely source. Stephen King who, as a little boy, won his first Bible by memorizing verses for Methodist Sunday School and who now makes lots of money writing scary stories, provided a near perfect description of the situation confronting many church communicators today and an inspiration for how to help in his book, On Writing.

In the book King tells a story of when he was eight or nine, he helped his uncle replace a window screen. Though a fairly simple job, requiring only a screwdriver, his uncle carried a huge toolbox to and from the work site. When King asked his uncle why he went to all the work of lugging around the huge toolbox, when it seemed like a simple screwdriver, carried in his uncle’s back pocket, would have been sufficient, his uncle answered:

“Yeah, but Stevie,” he said, bending to grasp the handles. “I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”

King goes on to say:

“I want to suggest that to write to your best abilities [or to create the best church communications, my note] it behooves you to construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the right tool and get immediately to work.”

That’s my purpose in creating these TOOLKITS, so church communicators will have a selection of resources so they can “seize the right tool and get immediately to work” to help their churches create communications that will enable us to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

How to create resizable graphics with MS Publisher, Webinar, On-Demand

2 March, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 3 Comments

Wouldn't it be great to have graphic images you could resize and use both on the web and in print? Wouldn't it be great to use something like that for a unified graphics look for holidays or ministry campaigns? Wouldn't it be great to be able to create something like that inexpensively without using an expensive program like Photoshop?

YOU CAN! With MS Publisher! This video and PDF tutorial will show you how.

Use either one or both to see how to do it--they cover the same process.

How to create customizable graphics with msPub — PDF Tutorial: How to create customizeable graphics with MS Publisher

Summary of the generous reproduction rights you have with a purchase of the ECC TOOLKITS

27 February, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

That is why we allow you to make copies of the e-books for staff and volunteers at your church if you either are a member or purchase CDs. That is why we grant you permission not only to use our materials to train volunteers if you are a member (you do need church or organizational membership for this) or purchase CDs, but you can charge a reasonable amount for that training and keep it.

You have permission to keep the CDs in your library and allow people who are members of your church or organization check them out, put them on their computer, print off e-books and not feel guilty that you are violating a rule about the CD only being able to be used on one computer. We’d rather you didn’t reproduce the CDs. However, we can grant you a special license or provide group pricing if you want to give CDs to folks at a conference or training event. We can also provide wholesale pricing if you would like to sell them and make a profit.

SUMMARY:

With either the purchase of a ECC TOOLKIT CD through www.lulu.com/yvonprehn, or as a MEMBER of this website, you may take the materials in the TOOLKIT sections and:

Make copies of the e-books, PDFs, templates on the computers who need them in your church and your communication volunteers.
Print off copies of the PDFs, e-books, and handouts for the people who need them in your church and for your communication volunteers.
Show the videos at training sessions either for your church and volunteers or for a group you oversee.
You may charge a fee for training and keep the fee (we know it costs to do these things). On your honor, make the fee reasonable and affordable and free to folks if they need it.
You may not reproduce the CD, but you can purchase it at a wholesale discount if you want to distribute it or resell it. Contact yvon@effectivechurchcom.com for information on this.
Be reasonable and fair and don't worry about the letter of the law (my usage laws have very few letters....).

Any additional questions, contact me at yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

Share freely, pray lots, and with enthusiasm train others to be Great Communication Communicators!

The Five Steps Strategy #1: Create multi-channel communication

14 February, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

Multichannel communication is needed in churches — We live in a time of Multichannel communication--a time of both/and not either/or.

In this time of ever-changing options for communicating in our churches, it is easy to be overwhelmed and we naturally want to simplify our communication workload. This is expressed by the question I get frequently in my seminars and through email when people ask me, “What is the best way to communicate with people today? Is it the web, email, or podcasting? Do we still need to do print? What works best to reach the most people?”

People may not realize when they ask, that they are asking for a ranking of communication channels including: print, online, web, small screen, and many more are the communication channels used to communicate today. When overwhelmed with channel choices, it is natural to want to narrow it down to one or two that will be effective.

I always feel bad as I answer because I know people want me to give them a simple answer and to tell them that one channel, especially if it is the one they prefer, is all they need, but I can’t do that. I can’t do that because to be effective in your church communication ministry, to fully fulfill the Great Commission, there is no one way.

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The medium isn’t the message; the message is the message

11 February, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

With all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, referred to by many as the "high priest of pop culture" I believe his dictum, "THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE" has led many communicators, including some in the church, astray in a tendency to focus foremost on the tools they are using to create their messages, rather than the content and results of the message.

I believe he meant the statement as an observation, not a recommendation as to what is most important in communication. Let me explain. In stating the "medium is the message" McLuhan helped us to see that the media used to present a message becomes part of the message itself. For example, a visual image of a rock concert affects the viewer in a vastly different way than a newspaper report of the concert. Stated more correctly, one could say, "the medium influences our perception of the message."

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Not quite as catchy, but I think more accurate. Where things went slightly off track is that somehow this statement in practice turned into "the medium forms the message and gives power to the message."

His statement was popular at the same time many new media in the church appeared: desktop publishing, multimedia projections, the internet. For many churches, it was so hard to learn the new media, (computers, the new software and hardware was not easy), that an unspoken conclusion came about that if we somehow got the message out using these tools, we were communicating.

"We did it with desktop publishing!" "We did it with Adobe Creative Suite!" "We have a new projection system in the church!" "We now have a web site!" And similar affirmations were heard. The subtle, and often unspoken and unanalyzed, shift assumed that if we created the church communication with a high-end desktop publishing program or we created a multimedia project to teach or market a ministry or put it on the web that it would be successful just because we were using these great, cutting-edge tools. The medium made the message. The implication continued, often unevaluated, that the better we got at the medium, the more color, action, white space, flash animations, or whatever the latest and greatest technology we mastered, the more powerful our message would be.

It didn't turn out that way. Over the last almost 20 years, huge numbers of desktop-published pages, multimedia projections, and web pages have been produced. During this time when our tools to communicate are more powerful technologically than they have ever been in the history of the church, church attendance is declining; biblical literacy is at an all time low; and North America is considered "post-Christian."

The message is the message

Obviously the tools and our expertise in them is not the answer. It's the content of the message itself that is important, not the medium used to present it. It's the story itself, not only the grand theme of salvation, but the details of our individual stories: the times, places, and tangible locations where the salvation story is lived out every day in churches that are important.

For example, today, a church can project an awesome youth-themed, PowerPoint background during announcement times before the service, but if parents don't have a bulletin insert or get a postcard during the week giving them the time, location, and how much money is needed for a church event the following weekend that they can post on the refrigerator, the teenagers in the family most likely won't attend.

If a church newsletter has the awesome graphics, an abundance of white space and typography choices that could win awards, but the writing is boring or judgmental, if the topics would interest only the writer's seminary professors and not address the needs of people in the pew this week, it's almost useless, no matter how much it cost to produce.

If a church proclaims on the outside of the building, with professionally produced banners, that PEOPLE MATTER TO US! but once inside, if the church doesn't provide directions on how to find the nursery or the bathrooms and there is no handicapped access to the adult classes, or visitor information center, the unspoken message that they really don't care comes across loud and clear.

The message is the message. Everything else: the medium used to share the message, the tools used to create it, the money spent, how it looks-all these things have a place, but they are not primary. If people aren't coming to your church and staying; if they are not trusting Jesus as Savior and growing in their faith, no matter what your technology media methods, your communication is not successful.

Realizing the message is the message, that the gospel story and details of how to connect your people with how your church is living it out is the core concept to communicate. You do not need to take complex surveys, do up elaborate marketing charts and graphs or spend hundreds of thousands on computers and software to do this. You simply need to get to know the people in your audience (walk the neighborhood, get to know them face-to-face) an d then share with them the gospel story and the stories of your church clearly, completely and frequently with whatever tools you have and in whatever channels they frequently access.

If most churches in America would simply send out a postcard (half of an 8 ½ x 11 sheet) to their members (and the homes surrounding the church ) every week simply listing the seeker friendly events going on in the church with the date, time, (starting and ending), location, if child care is provided, and the cost, along with a paragraph of encouraging words from the pastor in a space on the front, there would most likely be revival in America-or at least increased attendance for events at your church. People are lonely and spiritually searching but I know most homes surrounding churches have no idea what is going on inside the church walls on a weekly basis.

This is not to say that doing our best with the latest and greatest in technology isn't useful. If the postcard above could also direct people to a well-done website with visitor friendly sections, streaming audio and video for those who have the bandwidth for it and interest in it, and perhaps even online chat for those with questions about the Christian faith, it would greatly expand the possibilities for the outreach of the gospel message.

Every additional media channel is useful, but every channel is only that, a channel. If we are tempted to think too highly of ourselves or our tools as we craft the communications of our churches, we need to look outside and remember that Jesus could at any time raise up a stone from the parking lot to communicate his message more eloquently than we can imagine. Being able to serve as his channels, to communicate his message, is not a necessity for him; it is his gift of grace to us.

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.