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 Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing

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What Tesla has to teach the church about advertising
Yes, a Tesla is a great-looking car, but did you know they outsell EVERY other luxury car brand WITHOUT any advertising? The church can learn something from how they do it.

Did you know that Tesla sells more luxury cars than any other company?
I think the challenge of that question is so important, I did both a blog and article on it. Below is the podcast and then the continuation of the blog:

I was surprised when I read that statistic, but even more interested when I read how they did it. Let me share the terlerati.com comment on it, a chart that illustrates their success, and then I'll talk about how this inspired me about discipleship and church marketing. Then I've got some spiritual challenges for you and then at the end of this some practical tools you can use to put into practice to make your seasonal marketing more successful than ever.

Quickly, name one advertisement you’ve seen recently from Tesla Motors themselves? OK, name any advertisement you’ve seen from the company, ever? Tesla’s marketing strategy is as disruptive as its business model. It lets you and I advertise for them, for free. . . . . Tesla does not spend millions of dollars in a traditional ad campaign. They let you and me discuss it, rave about it, hate on it, or rejoice in the spirit of going electric in a Tesla, be the catalyst to a viral and brilliant marketing campaign. At the end of the day, Tesla advertising is free.

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How to involve your congregation in Easter Outreach and why it is so important to do that

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Bulletin insert for Easter
This FREE bulletin insert will motivate your people to invite their friends to come to church this Easter. Just click on the image to download it.

Ed. note: Our most recent podcast, What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing talked about the importance of people who love a product talking about it and how understanding this can help us be more effective in outreach marketing. This updated article will help you with Easter communications that you can use to motivate your congregation.

 

You are no doubt busy planning how you will get a big turnout for your Easter Week activities and that is vitally important work—but you shouldn't have to do it alone.

Why it matters to involve your congregation

It doesn't matter much if you merely think of Easter as a time for chocolate and brunch. It isn't really important if your Easter service is primarily about fun things for kids and a musical extravaganza as uplifting as that might be.

But it does matter tremendously if you believe the message of Easter that Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human died on the cross to pay for the penalty of sin and that He rose bodily from the grave and is our living Savior and coming Lord.

It does matter tremendously if you believe that those who do not trust him as Savior will miss far more than a petting zoo and free candy if they don't attend your church on Easter. The Bible says those who die without Jesus will spend eternity in darkness, pain and conscious regret. Your Easter message can change all that.

We don't like to think about these things in a day when so much of the media message of the Christian faith is about how to entertain people and make them feel good and prosperous. But closing our eyes to eternal realities doesn't make them any less true.

Boldly proclaim the truth of the gospel this Easter and equip your people to invite their friends to hear you.

It isn't only important for you as a church to do this, but by equipping your people and encouraging them to invite their friends, you are helping them grow as disciples of Jesus. You are helping them to evangelism by giving them the tools and coaching to reach out to their friends and you are doing it in a way that is solidly Biblical. One of the best ways for people to come to faith in Jesus is for them to do it in the context of a church family and by introducing friends to the church family through your Easter events they can become part of a group where they can learn about Jesus. [Read more...]

My recommendations for your spiritual preparations for Easter—and for the challenging work you do all year long

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Bible 805, podcast and commentary
To do well as we create church communications we need to know our message well and this Podcast will help you do that.

Creating church communications any time of the year is a challenge, but preparing for Easter is one of the most challenging because there is so much to do for the Easter season, starting with Lent and then all the preparations and finally the celebration of the most important event of the Christian year—the resurrection of our Lord.

For this and for all other times of the year I hope this site encourages you and give you practical tools to do your work effectively, but more important than all those things is that you need to ground yourself in the Word of God. For you to do truly effective work as a church communicator, you must be strong in your faith and the foundational way to do that is to know God's Word.

I often describe myself as a "writer and teacher for Jesus" and long before I started teaching church communications (and that was a LONG time ago) I was teaching Bible classes. In the many years, I've done that, as any teacher knows the more you teach the more you learn and I'm learning so much as I prepare my lessons for Bible 805 the class I do live each week at my church and also my PODCAST: Bible 805.

This last week in the process of teaching through the Bible in Chronological Order (which I think is an essential way to study it if you want to truly understand it) I did a lesson on Typology, where you learn how the types or spiritual truths that were shown in partial form in the Old Testament are fully revealed in the New Testament. For example, the lambs were sacrificed as an atonement (a covering) for sin in the Old Testament, but Jesus came as the perfect lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Imagine what it must have been like for the Jewish audience who followed John the Baptist and who for their entire lives had watched lambs sacrificed in anticipation of the coming Messiah to see him look up at Jesus approaching and to say, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

This is only one of the images we talked about and I got to thinking how much richer will be our experience of Easter if we understand the Old Testament background of it.

To strengthen your heart before Easter and to grow in your relationship to Jesus and knowledge of His Word I'd like to invite you to listen to Bible 805. The lessons and podcasts are posted by each Monday after the Sunday morning lesson. You can jump in at any time as the lessons are self-contained, but I pray many of you will join us in our adventure through the Bible. This is the message we all ultimately work so hard to communicate well. We need to do our best to learn it well.

PODCAST: Don’t default to Magical Thinking when planning your seasonal outreach

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No magical thinking for church events
HARD WORK, not Magical Thinking is what will accomplish the results we pray for in our seasonal outreach events.

PODCAST INTRO:

Easter is fast approaching and as we look at all the work ahead, don't you wish that people would magically appear at your events after one announcement from the pulpit or one notice in the bulletin and in social media?

Not only that, wouldn't it be wonderful if they'd magically come back and start attending the church regularly after one visit?

But we know it probably won't work out like this will it?

Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn and Welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

Today our topic is:  Don't default to Magical Thinking when planning your seasonal outreach

Click below to listen to the podcast or listen on iTunes or any of your favorite podcast channels.

You might protest that you would NEVER count on magic to do anything in the church and mean it. But unfortunately, the communication actions in many churches tell a different story because. . . . .

Magical thinking takes place when you assume that simply by doing certain things, you will get the results you want without actually doing the hard work you need to do to get them

And sadly, churches do this all the time and wonder why they don’t get the results they want from their outreach.

In today’s Podcast we’ll go over FIVE examples of Magical Thinking in church seasonal communications, why they don’t work and what you need to do instead of Magical Thinking to assure the response you want at your church for your seasonal celebrations.

For the FREE TEMPLATES mentioned in the Podcast, CLICK HERE

For an article that has the text of the podcast, notes, and links mentioned, CLICK HERE.

Let’s get real—don’t default to Magical Thinking when planning your seasonal outreach

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We know that nothing happens by magic in the church, but we can unthinkingly fall into magical thinking when we plan for seasonal events, but magical thinking alone won't accomplish the results we pray for.

You might protest you would NEVER count on magic to do anything in the church and mean it. But unfortunately, the communication actions in many churches tell a different story because. . . . .

Magical thinking takes place when you assume that simply by doing certain things, you will get the results you want without actually doing the hard work you need to do to get them.

This often happens in the planning and work that goes into the season or holiday celebrations at your church. Below are FIVE ways Magical Thinking can defeat the fantastic opportunities the holidays give us to invite and get people involved in the church and ultimately to meet Jesus. Holidays work so well as outreach to unchurched people because though few people today respond to the invitation "Want to come to church with me?" few people will turn down an invitation to a FREE party that has food and fun stuff for kids.

Holidays offer churches a great opportunity, but to make the most of them, you need to be aware of and correct the following FIVE destructive ways of Magical Thinking.

Magical Thinking # 1: By hosting your holiday or seasonal event people will think your church is great, wonderful, and cares about the community

Whether it is an Easter-Egg Extravaganza, a Trunk or Treat, Thanksgiving Community Meal, or Christmas Caroling and Chocolate—the first thought of people in your community when they see an advertisement of the event is probably not about your church.

The people in your community care most about themselves and their families. Their thinking when they see or come to your event is something like "Wow, this looks like a fun thing for the kids." "Hey, it's free and looks like fun and our family needs a night out."

They are probably not thinking: "Oh isn't First Church a loving church that cares about community outreach and to show the love of Jesus is the sponsor for this event." Even more than your intended audience not knowing WHY you are doing this, unless you consistently and graciously remind them that your church is putting on the event, chances are they won't even remember that your church was the sponsoring group for the event.  [Read more...]