Yvon Prehn | Effective Church Communications

Don’t forget the people left behind in the rush to make all things digital

14 April, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Yvon's note: I admit, I was a bit cranky when I wrote this. Well, not so much cranky as sad, but I know I can come across cranky at times when I want to cry but end up yelling (ask my husband). I wanted to acknowledge that and ask for your forgiveness if the following comes across too harshly. I seem to be over-reacting a lot these days or maybe it’s an appropriate reaction to the over-the-top stresses of these days. I’m not sure, but I trust the following gives us thoughtful pause as we work to adapt to changing challenges while serving “the least of these.”

It’s been a wild ride in church communications and it isn’t going to smooth out any time soon as we try to figure out what to keep, what to modify, what new things to try, and what old ways of doing things we can toss out. Much well-deserved emphasis and discussion have been on new ways to conduct worship online and that will continue as churches work to figure out how to juggle the challenges of meeting physically together (while properly social distancing apart) and continuing an online ministry for those who cannot meet together.

While these discussions are going on, I’d like some recent thoughts.

Imagine you are older; imagine your health is compromised in some way and staying home is a necessity. Most likely this has been an extremely fearful time.

If you weren’t entirely comfortable with technology, it might have been a challenge to figure out how to participate in an online Bible study or watch a Sunday service.

Imagine that despite your fears, you are just now starting to feel comfortable taking communion with crackers and juice at home and singing along with the worship team on the computer. But on Sunday you are told this will stop. Well, maybe not stop entirely, the church will try to “stream” the service as they meet back in the building, but they are letting people know ahead of time this might not be the same and they made stop doing the online service. [Read more...]

We are at the half-way point with Lent and here are 40 challenging images for you to use however you want

21 March, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lenten Set of images from Effective Church Communications — This is the first of 40 images for you to download and use during Lent or anytime to help people grow in their walk with Jesus.

Lent isn't just for Lent. What I mean by that is Lent is a specific time when we can focus on denying ourselves so we can live more fully for God.

It is about so much more than giving up chocolate or social media or whatever other external thing we choose during this time. At its best, Lent is a time for quiet self-evaluation so we can grow more deeply to become who God wants us to be.

In that self-evaluation, it's time to add virtues, practices to our lives that will help us become more like Jesus.

What I have for you to inspire you during Lent

To guide you through Lent, I created a set of 40 inspirational images and I then wrote a brief challenge or thought-provoking idea to go with them.

I put the challenges into a free downloadable journal for you, plus they are on daily Instagrams, and in my favorite form, on a daily short YouTube video (less than a minute), where I read them to you along with a challenge and prayer. Please check that out--CLICK HERE to go to the channel. [Read more...]

Why just “Come to Easter at Our Church” isn’t enough–FREE invitations with short, but powerful messages

19 March, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The images in this collection are the least important part of them. Much more important is the message that reminds people why Jesus is the reason for the Easter Season.

I'm part of several church communication discussion groups and recently people have been sharing their outreach ideas for Easter. They all look great, but I am concerned that many of them simply say something like "Easter at whatever the church is." Now there is nothing wrong with that if you go to the church and want your people to know what time your services are being held. But there is a challenge with an invitation like that if you want to use Easter as a time to reach out to your community.

Not everyone knows that Easter has anything to do with anything spiritual

We often talk about how we need to remind people that "Jesus is the reason for the season" at Christmas, but no matter how secular the Christmas celebration, most people still know it had something to do with the birth of Jesus even if they don't think of it as particularly meaningful.

It's not like that for Easter. Biola University quoted a Barna study that shared statistics similar to many other studies:

About two-thirds (67 percent) of Americans surveyed related the holiday as something religious or spiritual. But just two percent said they thought it was about the birth of Christ and another two percent said it was about the rebirth of Jesus. Only 1 percent related it to the second coming of Jesus, while 3 percent just thought it was a celebration of spring or a pagan holiday.

Looking at the non-religious segment, 13 percent of Americans said they were not sure how to describe Easter. Many of their recurring answers were spring break, rebirth, hiding eggs, candy, children and bunnies.

http://chimes.biola.edu/story/2010/mar/23/easter-barna/

Don't do a bait and switch at Easter

If, as the above statistics show (and they are a few years old and I imagine the situation has gotten even worse) few people outside your church have a true idea of what Easter is about, if you send out something that only says something like "Come to Easter Celebrations at our Church" your audience will be thinking chocolate and brunch—not a challenging message and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus from the grave.

To not only give people an idea of what Easter is all about, but to get them thinking, asking questions about life and death and faith, I created some Easter invitations with thought-provoking messages.

There are many ways to use the invitations:

You can print them up as postcards as is or you can use any image you want with whatever message you want. An idea for how to get postcards out to your community without the church paying for postage is below the set of images.
You can use a related image and swap it out on the postcard layout.
If you have your own branded Easter theme, fell free to use the message part with any image you have.
I also have a separate file of just the text. You can use the text message in a newsletter, social media, or any way you would like to get the message out there.

Below the set of images is a ZIP file that has all the invitations in PDF ready-to print format and editable MS Publisher files. PLEASE CLICK on the first image below and it will enlarge to show you the text that goes with the images.

To download the ZIP file of the invitations, CLICK the following link: Easter INVITATIONS 2017

For a FREE file of the text alone that goes with the cards, CLICK HERE.

How to get out Postcards cost-effectively and in a way that will help your congregation grow in their faith

You can print these invitations at your church and then on Sunday put 5 invitations in everyone's bulletin. During the service the pastor can stand and say,

"As you can see you all have 5 Easter invitations in your bulletin. I know you've prayed for friends to invite to our Easter services and here is a tangible way to do it.

You can either mail the invitation or hand-deliver it to your friends. After that continue to pray and follow-up.

Offer to drive your friends to church on Easter and invite them to brunch afterwards to see if they have questions. You can invite them back next week and encourage them to become involved in the church on a continuing basis.

We all know we should be sharing our faith in Jesus and this is an easy and enjoyable way to do it!"

To start the motivation process to get your congregation excited about inviting friends, go to this article: Why it matters if you invite your friends to Easter services

Easter is the most important holiday of the Christian year—let's to all we can to fully involve our congregations and reach out to our community at this time.

Foundational lessons to grow your church in numbers and your people in spiritual maturity

11 March, 2022 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The following lessons can radically change how your church communicates and the results of it. These also form the foundation for much of the teaching from Effective Church Communications which is based on the goal of helping your church create communications that will fully fulfill the Great Commission.

The videos are on the Effective Church Communications YouTube channel and I'll be posting more videos regularly.

Please subscribe and share the resource with other church communicators; they won't get training like this anywhere else.

The 5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

This is a strategic and sequential plan that will take people from outside the church and grow them into mature disciples.

Most churches work hard on communications, but they are often done without direction towards the overall goals of the church. This training will change that and give you a vision and North Star for your communications to all work towards fully fulfilling the Great Commission.

Successful Seasonal Strategies

Churches put on great seasonal events and often get a great turnout.

However, though they expect people will come to the church the following Sunday, that often doesn't happen.

This will teach you how to change that and grow your church in numbers and at the same time grow your people in spiritual maturity.

How the 5 Steps and Successful Seasonal Strategies work together

Both of the strategies, the 5 Steps and Successful Seasonal Strategies work on their own and they work together even better—this lesson will show you how.

You don't have to be familiar with the two other lessons to benefit from this one, in fact, this can be a good overview and then you can watch the other two later.