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.

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses

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Share your faith Snappa graphic
What an encouragement something like this can be when it comes across our social media. Snappa is a super easy way to create them.

Images with verses on them that fill our screens and phones can be wonderful moments of encouragement and refreshment. If we want to create them to share with others, Snappa is a fantastic program to use because it is so easy to create them. Though there are many programs you can use to do this, I like Snappa because it has more flexibility in placement of images and texts.

In addition, you can very quickly resize images in Snappa to fit any social media or print graphics format you want. Following is a short video I did to show how easy this is to do.

One quick reminder, Effective Church Communications does not take any affiliate advertising—I'm telling you about this because I personally love and use it all the time.

More videos about Snappa, click on the link below the title

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
https://wp.me/pDky9-8il

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics
https://wp.me/pDky9-8hw

Snappa: How to create a side-bar ad
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mB

 

Snappa: Super quick and easy, how to create a side-bar ad with it

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Side bar ad example--read through the Bible Chronologically
This and every other sidebar ad you see on this site was created very quickly and easily in Snappa. The video here shows you how to do it.

Snappa has removed a huge source of frustration for me because I never seem to manage my creative time as well as I start the day hoping I will. I'll work hard on project (like the one for this sidebar ad on Reading through the Bible in Chronological Order), and after the work is done on the project I realize I need to create a graphic to tell people about what I'm doing.

I panic. But then I remember I have Snappa, so I take a deep breath and usually less than 5 minutes later I have a graphic—polished, done, and ready-to-use.

Below the short video shows you how to do it.

I can't recommend Snappa enough—even if you are better at time management than I am, it's a super quick and easy way to create any kind of digital graphic you need.

 

For more videos on Snappa, click on the links that follow the title:

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
https://wp.me/pDky9-8il

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics
https://wp.me/pDky9-8hw

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mw

 

TWO of FIVE TRENDS that will reshape media in 2019

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2019 a new time to try new things
The start of the year is a great time to challenge assumptions and do new things!

MarketingWeek.com, a marketing group from England just published an article on their Five Trends that they believe will reshape media in the coming year.  Amid rather obvious ones like e-commerce will grow, so will video, and Instagram is becoming more useful than Facebook for marketing, were two interesting quotes with implications for church communications and marketing in the coming year. Below are the quotes, my comments, and implication and ideas for church communications that were inspired by them:

First QUOTE:

Consumers will call brands out if they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.

Darren Campbell, Dr Martens

IMPLICATIONS & IDEAS:

When a church uses social media in their outreach, how does it come across to people outside the church (assuming they see it)?

This quote got me wondering how much of what churches put out there comes across as simply selling something— “Come to this event!, Bring your Kids HERE!!, Don’t miss out on this!!!

We may protest that we aren’t asking them to spend money (not yet, they must become more involved to be approached with that), but we are asking them to spend time and attention in exchange for our message. We want them to buy into what we are selling.

The bottom line is that is what we want, for them to buy into what we are selling—we want them to come to know Jesus as Savior, have their sins forgiven and live a life serving him. But what if our audience has no idea this is of benefit to them? Or why they should even come to a place that has a pre-packaged life-plan for them to accept?

What is the alternative?

[Read more...]

Pantone’s Color of the year–a vibrant, hopeful, lively Coral

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Pantone's Color of the year 2019
Pantone's Color of the year is a vibrant, beautiful coral--use and enjoy!

Well, this is different. After a murky green in 2017 and a vibrant, but somewhat depressing purple last year, Pantone's color of the year for 2019 is a vibrant, hopeful, and lively coral.

After the sad and contentious year, we've had it seems like the perfect color choice—somewhere between sunrise and sherbet. Here is a short video on it:

Pantone's color selections they say are done like this:

The Color of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s color experts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world looking for new color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, playstyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention.

Maybe. But maybe the committee or whoever this year just wanted to inject a bit of hope into the world.

Regardless of the reason—use the color!

It reminds me that Easter is coming, but even before then, use the color and put a bit of life and joy into your communications.

The MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do this year—read through the Bible in Chronological order—and I’d like to help you do it

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Reading through the Bible in chronological order will change your life! I'd like to invite you to join me as I teach through it in Sunday School class and in a podcast in the coming year.

This falls under the category of putting your own oxygen mask on first before you help someone else.

YOU have to be spiritually strong if you are going to successfully serve in the ministry of Church Communications in the coming year. To do that, you need to be strong in God's Word and I know from many years of experience that the BEST way to do this is to read through the Bible Chronologically. I've done it this way for many years and this year I'm not only encouraging you to do it, but I started a podcast, Bible 805 that is available on iTunes and many other sources that will guide you through the readings.

The podcast initially has a foundation series of Podcasts, "Truth and History" series that goes through why we can trust the Bible by showing how it is based on historical truth.

Then there is a podcast on the Six Benefits of Reading through the Bible in Chronological Order, I also have a copy of the text below that you can use however you'd like (be sure to read it through yourself) and finally, starting next week (after you've done a week of readings) I'll do a podcast from the Sunday School class I'm teaching on this. I plan to do a weekly podcast on this every week this year (pray for me....).

To also help you and if you want to encourage your congregations, I've created two schedules for this way of reading through the Bible that you can download below, one is a full-year, one page schedule and one is a bookmark I'm doing for my church (but I took my church info off it) that I'll do monthly and pass on as I go.

The PDFs of both are below, click on either image to download the file: [Read more...]