Effective Church Communications

21 FREE image resource sites and a course to help you make the most of them

4 February, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Previews of 21 Image Sites — There are thousands of FREE image sites out there today. This course will help you make the most of them!

It's a great time to be creating communications today because thousands of images are available to you for FREE! And this course that was just posted to our Church Communications Training School will preview 21 websites of FREE IMAGES and give you tips to make the most of them!

No matter what some paid sites may tell you, everything you need to create great-looking communications in print and online can be found without spending any money. This course not only will give you a list of sites that will give you what you need, but it will give you video tours of all the sites so you can decide if that source is useful for you before you waste time checking it out.

There are five videos previewing sites

The first one of large overview sites is the longest at about 14 minutes and the others are 5 or 6 minutes. You can download either the PDF of the course PowerPoint that lists the sites or a PDF list of the sites to make notes on what might be most useful to you. This is one of the best things about the course because instead of getting a random list of sites that may or may not be useful, you can sit back, relax, and have me preview the sites for you.

(Personal note here.....I had NO idea how long this would take to put together. What I thought would be a few hours ended up a few weeks. I've always hated the lists of sites for any recommendation of free this or that or recommended this or that and found that checking them out was always such a huge waste of time because half were useless and obviously nobody pre-screened them. Now I understand why; it'a a lot of work! But I'm committed to doing this for you and the ministry and I trust you'll find it useful.)

In addition to showing you sources for thousands of useful images, this course also has:

Introductory TIPS on images

Images are very important, but they are not THE most important thing in church communications. We'll briefly discuss why, what is most important and how to use images most effectively.

You'll also learn why captions for your images are critical and how without them images have no inherent meaning.

Guidelines and cautions

There is an overwhelming amount of fine print on image sites today. Not only is it very confusing, but as a church communicator you want to do things legally and it's hard to take time to sort through all the rights, usage agreements, and licenses involved.

This course has done all that work for you and all the sites shown are free, copyright free, attribution free, and can be used for commercial purposes (if you create a t-shirt and sell it, that's commercial).

Bonus--quick edit ideas in PicMonkey

Sometimes you want a little more from an image. You may want a different size, focal point, or color. You may wish it had a different mood or effect. A great program that can do that is PicMonkey and the overview of images ends with a short video from Pic Monkey showing how you can very quickly make changes like the ones below. The first image is the original off the site and following are is a less-than a minute change. The video has additional changes of this picture and another one.

This course is part of our All-Access Membership- for the Church Communications Training School, which is a ministry of the Effective Church Communications Site-sign up today and have easy access to thousands of FREE IMAGES for every communication project you can imagine.

Three Channels of Effective Church Communications

4 February, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

3 channels of effective Church Communications — As you consider what channels to communicate in, here are some options.

In this challenging time of multi-channel church communications, to make this situation manageable for practical application I’ve divided the many communication channels into three overall groups. It is much more difficult to communicate in all three channels, but I trust this section will encourage you and give you some strategic ideas how to be more effective as you work.

The three channels of effective church communication

Channel #1: Print

This channel consists of printed bulletins, newsletters, postcards, invitation cards, connection cards, instruction materials, printed matter of all kinds, sizes, and quality that we create in the church. Print, in color, black and white, and all its forms is still one of the primary and most important ways we communicate with people today and will be for some time. Almost everyone has access to this channel.

Channel #2: Digital

This channel is the latest tool we have to communicate the gospel message and we use it in PowerPoint® presentations, the internet, our website, email newsletters, cell phone and small screen communications, and anything else that makes up the newest, latest, and greatest communication technology. This channel is still emerging, developing in new systems and tools, and is expanding constantly. Not everyone has access to this channel and speed of adaptation varies tremendously with age and socioeconomic groups. [Read more...]

Intro to Strategy #3: Create multi-channel communications

4 February, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Multi-media challenges for church communicators — What is the best way to communicate your message today? We help you sort that out.

A key strategic question for any church any church today is what to do about all the channels of communication available? What material should go on the web? Stay in print? Be in both channels? What about social media?

If we look at secular communications, we see an explosion of options. USA Today's publisher Larry Kramer shared his strategy to provide content in a variety of channels when he took the job by saying, "The paper will build 'closer relationships with our readers' through new uses of technologies. . . . . We're going to give people what they want, when they want it, where they want it. You want it on your watch; I'll give it to you. Or inside of your sunglasses. "

Those sounds great—give people all the content they want in any channel they want it in, but realistically in the church, we don't have the time or money to do all this. Most churches are not looking for additional work in communications. Many are overwhelmed by the option of the print and the web and thinking about other channels seems impossible. We naturally want to simplify our communication workload in a ministry setting because we don't have time to do all the work we need to do. Most churches are not looking for ways to increase, but to consolidate their communication efforts. Following are typical questions I've received for help in doing that:

"What is the best way to communicate with people today?"

"What is the way to reach people best: the web, email, or social media?"

"Do we still need to print?"

"What is a communication channel? Which communication channel works best to reach people outside and inside the church?"

These questions reflect the concern, confusion, and frustration over the communication channels available to us today, which include print, web, email, postal mail, telephone, texting, social media, digital projection systems, voice, and people. When overwhelmed with channel choices and having limited time to implement them, it is natural to want to narrow our church communications down to one or two that will be effective. Because of that, I always feel bad as I answer people's questions about what to use because I know people want me 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. [Read more...]

Let’s get honest in our evaluation of the effectiveness of our church communications

3 February, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

How to measure church communications — We must measure the success of our church communications to be sure they are fulfilling the ministry of the church.

Effective church communication involves much more than who thinks they are right and who doesn't. It matters much more than who likes what or who is not wanting to change a way they've "always done" something. It also means you don't change things or do away with something because somebody went to a big church conference and that big church that did this or that and to be like that big church you think you need to do exactly the same thing.

Don't look at another church or trend or internet article to know what to change or modify in the communication program in your church. To see what to do for communication in your church, you need to first look at your church.

You look at lives.
You look at behavior.

Are these changing or not as a result of your communications? Are the changes you see helping people come to know Jesus or grow in their faith? That is the measure of success.

Keeping score starts by simple counting

This is not rocket science. You create events or ministries to introduce people to the Christian faith or to help people grow in their Christian lives. They have to get there for that to happen. Therefore effectiveness in church communications is determined first by attendance, the simple numbers of people who respond (or didn't) after you created and distributed your communications to market, inform, and get people to the event. This is how you start the evaluation process of what works and what doesn't in church communications. Like success in a game, you take score.

The score is determined by asking questions such as these and recording your response: [Read more...]

Templates: Valentine’s Day Outreach Postcard with room for Church Info

31 January, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The following set of Templates was inspired by the article by Gayle Hilligoss and the postcards she created for Valentine's Day outreach for her church. The ones I created prior to seeing her wonderful creations filled the entire front of the card and assumed you would personalize them on the back. I loved her idea of having all the information on the front (much easier to print, etc.) and so I created some templates for you to modify and use in your church.

You could use these as postcards or hand-out invitations. The church office can print them and then put in 5 in each bulletin on Sunday. From the pulpit encourage the congregation to pray and send or hand them out. If you have a special Valentine's Day event (dessert buffet of chocolate is what we did one year, it was a big hit), give the details of that on the back.

Below are images of the cards and below them is the ZIP File to download and modify for your churches.