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.

What is honestly unfortunate—communication channel pride

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7-29-09 the quote below appeared in USA TODAY in the article: “Governments tap into the power of  Twitter.” Tom Watson, a Labor Party, blogger said:

There are some very bright, digitally enabled civil servants who unfortunately have to write these documents for their bosses. . . who still get their secretaries to print off their e-mails so they can read them.

This situation is can be repeated in every office, governmental, educational, religious, in probably every nation in the world. No disagreement there. But here is what does bother me, not only in this instance are some of the unspoken attitudes expressed in this patronizing, snarky blog comment because they sadly sometimes seep into the church. My concerns:

The equating of digital skill with intelligence

It bothers me that the adjective “bright” is paired with “digitally enabled” and the implied contrast that follows with the bosses who, because their secretaries must print off emails, are obviously not bright because they are not digitally savvy.

This equating of intelligence with the ability to use digital equipment, if carried to it's logical conclusion would mean that the robots who assemble auto parts are far brighter and more intelligent, than the human who work in the factories. The robots after all, follow digital commands with complete understanding and without deviation. Humans make mistakes. That conclusion is obviously foolish when pushed to the extreme, but it is equally foolish in lesser degrees.

Equally bothersome is the pride that comes with the mastery of a new skill

Just because a secretary can use Twitter does not mean she has suddenly become “brighter”than her boss. There is a reason the boss is the boss and the skills required extend far beyond tweetability.

A bit of humility is in order. I couldn't help but wonder if the spelling ability, the penmanship ability, the ability to construct clear, lengthy business plans, and the ability to negotiate complex contracts, were also a superior skills of the secretary. I doubt it.

How this applies in the church

Our hearts are desperately wicked and our pride overwhelming. It is so easy to feel superior when we learn a new skill. So tempting to relegate those who don’t know the new skill as out of touch, and truth be told, not very bright.

No matter what the technology, we remain servants of Jesus. No matter what new skill we learn, we are always to consider others better than ourselves.

If we learn a new technology that is useful and others in the church don't know, understand, or use it, we have three choices:

  1. If it is something that might genuinely benefit them, we can offer to help them learn in a fun, upbeat way. I recently helped a young teacher with some online video creation I'd found great fun to do (www.animoto.com). Though I love this program, it isn't the greatest thing for everyone.
  2. If the person is unable because of time constraints, or other reasons, not able to learn or practice it, perhaps we can help them with it as a fellow worker and servant. Answering my husbands email (a bi-vocational pastor who works hard at a handyman job to work for a church for free) is the sort of work that falls into this category.
  3. We can wait, pray, be encouraging and available to engage others in the skill if and when time and interest are expressed.

The greatest commandment remains that to love each other and that involves all the demanding requirements of 1 Cor. 13, including patience, kindness, bearing all things, enduring all, never failing and related skills that are far more difficult to master than the latest computer communication skill. Mastering those character traits is what will make us bright, indeed.

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Note on context of this blog entry: I didn't write the cautions above as a technophobe. I've emailed since the days that email addresses were numbers; you can follow me on Twitter at yvonprehn. I wrote it to smack myself to never be proud of something I learn, but humble and thankful for the opportunity.

PDF:Simple layouts for church business cards

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Logos from examplesHere are some very simple layouts for church business cards.

Please be sure to read the other materials in this category on Church Business and Invitation Cards and watch the video on how to use them.

They may be tiny, but they can be a powerful ministry and outreach tool.

To download this PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

Real 24/7 support

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"Call to me and I will answer you." (Jer. 33:3)

Many computer and software companies promise support 24/7. It sounds good, but in reality that "support" is often an endless series of automatic messages, referrals to canned answers, or a suggestion to go to the web site and there for you to try to figure out the answer. In response you can either keep pushing buttons in frustration, or give up knowing it is almost impossible to talk to a real human being.

In contrast, God's promise of support is personal, immediate, and unconditional. If we call, he answers.

We can call out to him for wisdom. When our work in church communications seems overwhelming and we don't know what to do next, we need wisdom. James 1:5 promises when we ask for wisdom, he will give it to us. Often, we have the skills to do the tasks we need to do, we just can't figure out the order or the process. God can give us that wisdom to put the process in order to successfully complete our projects.

We can call out to him for encouragement. We need it when working with computers. Computers never tire; a computer can work around the clock. People aren't like that, but an odd thing has happened in offices since the advent of the computer. In subtle ways we tend to compare ourselves to the computer. We think we need to be a machine who never wears down or quits or gets discouraged. Sometimes the Lord is the only one who can lift your spirit in an office that, perhaps unconsciously, views people as machines.

We can call out to him for perseverance. Sometimes we think we simply can't learn a new program or figure out one more project. Yet, if we just stay with it an hour or a day longer (praying at the same time for insight and strength) suddenly things become clear.

Train yourself to always call out to God first. So often we ask him for help as a last resort. He is merciful and kind and answers no matter when we remember to ask him, but we could save ourselves a lot of frustration by asking for his help first.

We can call out to him-sometimes not for anything specific at all. Some days it seems like nobody on earth pays attention or cares. That may or may not be true, but no matter. Call out to your God. He cares about you and is ready to listen and help with every concern you have, 24/7.

This devotion is from the heart of church communications, by Yvon Prehn, to download or purchase a copy, go to: www.lulu.com/yvonprehn

Listen now to Yvon Prehn's interview on BlogTalk Radio by Chris Walker, the Evangelism Coach

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I had a great time on my hour-long interview with Chris Walker, aka, The Evangelism Coach, last Thursday.

If you weren't able to listen to it live, you can  listen to the interview by clicking on the link below and from there clicking on the BlogTalk Radio file.

http://www.evangelismcoach.org/2009/how-to-get-church-visitor-contact-information/

While you are there, take some time and look around Chris' website—he has quite a few great resources for evangelism.

He has also written a book on How to Welcome Church Visitors, that has lots of helpful tips in it.

What not to do in connection card ministry, part one

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What not to do with Connection Cards, part 1
PLEASE don't do these things if you really want to connect with visitors!

note: this is an excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

I’ve been teaching church communications for over twenty years and have looked at many communication cards and discussed their use with many church communicators during that time. From my experience, and many years of personally using them in a variety of church settings, I’ve found the following activities and tools don’t contribute to maximum communication success in getting either initial contact or continuing ministry information from people.

I also realize that, though not the most successful, many of the following practices have been done by many churches for a long time and it is difficult to imagine doing things a different way. If that is your situation, please suspend defensiveness or judgment until you’ve finished this entire publication to see the recommendations that might replace these actions.

Change is always challenging and difficult and if your church does some of the things listed below, I appreciate your willingness to consider alternative ideas. After each suggestion of what not to do, I’ll briefly list the alternative action as “A better idea,” and after this section, the alternative actions will be discussed in more detail.

#1 Don’t use “Friendship Pads/Booklets”

In some churches, much more so in the past than today, the procedure for capturing contact information from visitors and members involves a booklet with lined pages inside that is passed down the pew for people to fill in and then passed back down the pew to be collected by ushers.  As it is passed back, the leader often recommends that people “Notice who is a visitor.”

This tends not to work very well for visitors today. There are a number of reasons why, one of the main ones being the current privacy concerns of people. To many, this is simply too public a way to give out personal information.

Perhaps I am more sensitive to this because I work with single adults, but to a ask a single woman who visits your church to write her name, address, phone number, email, and then pass it down a row of strangers, while adding that people make note of new people in the pew beside them—she probably won’t do it.  Most likely you don’t have people in your church who will stalk or take advantage of a single woman alone, but the trust level towards the church or strangers, for many people today, men and women, is quite low.

These “Friendship Pads” may have worked well years ago when the world at least seemed to be a safer and more friendly place, but our world has changed.  In addition to personal safety issues, privacy concerns and concerns about identity theft cause many visitors to pass them on without filling them out.

A better idea: a card that can be filled out, folded over, and personal information handed in without being made visible to others.

#2 Don’t use a tear-off piece

There are several reasons for this—consider them carefully  before discounting my comments, because this method is used in lots of churches and it seems like such a simple and easy way to do things.First of all, if you primarily use connection cards to find out about visitors, keep in mind that study after study shows that visitors do not like to stand out. Being the one person in your row tearing out a piece of paper in an otherwise quiet church service is a rather loud operation and one guaranteed to turn heads in the visitor’s direction. Few people want that to happen.

To avoid that situation, some churches have everyone “tear it off all together.” That seemed like a good solution to me (it’s what is done at the church we now attend) until we brought to church a dear woman who had recently become a believer in her late 60s. As everyone was tearing off their form in church, I was watching her out of the corner of my eye and noticed she was having a rather difficult time grasping the flimsy paper. The arthritis in her hands made it difficult and after several tries, obviously embarrassed, she glanced around and tried to unobtrusively put the bulletin down beside her. Her connection card did not get turned in; no follow-up came from the church, and though she wouldn’t really tell me why, she didn’t want to come there again.

My heart hurt watching her and I thought if it makes one little lady embarrassed, if she can’t communicate to the church her visit, her recent spiritual decision or perhaps a prayer request, perhaps there are better ways to use a connections piece. There are lots of little ladies in our world. People come to know Jesus and visit at church for the first time at many ages and with disabilities of varies types  and we don’t want our method of paper handling to get in the way of connecting with them.

A better idea: a separate connection card made of card stock that does not need to be torn out and that is easy to write on. Specifics on how to create the card are discussed later.

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Church Connection Cards

.......for more read the rest of the book:

This 8 1/2 x 11 book connection cards has 111 pages of instruction, samples and detailed how tos. It is FREE for ECC Members and can be bought for immediate download. CLICK HERE to go to it. To go to the Kindle and paperback versions, CLICK HERE.