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; Effective Church Communications can help.

On a personal note: fires raging very close to us in Ventura, CA

By 4 Comments

At both ends of our town, what I saw when I stepped outside last night and what has continued today.

I'm not one who feels the need to share every little detail of my life in the hopes that my audience will find me so fascinating they will read everything I have to say about church communications.

That's just silly.

But it's the end of an emotionally exhausting day and more as a fellow pilgrim and follower of Jesus, I wanted to share this with you.

Last night, just before bed (I was up working later on some ministry things online), I checked my phone and found a fire had started in Santa Paula, the town next to us. I went outside and you could see the flames in the sky. Scary, but when I turned around my heart started beating audibly.

In the other direction, at the other end of town was an equally red explosion of fire. From miles to the east, to as far as I could see to the west was fire.

Then the power went out. Then the phones went dead.

[Read more...]

TEMPLATES—what makes the ECC church communication templates unique and how to modify them

By Leave a Comment

One of the SQUARE Christmas Business Card size templates available in our Christmas Template set, not only does the video show this one and many others, but how to get it professionally printed.

I may have tried to accomplish too much in one video, but it's hard to express how excited I am about the TEMPLATES we have for Christmas this year. I'm not only excited about all the new designs and templates, but I'm also excited about how they fit together in an overall ministry plan.

That is one of the things that makes the templates from Effective Church Communications unique—they are part of our overall goal of fully fulfilling the Great Commission, of intentionally helping people from outside the church and progressively enabling them become mature disciples. Your communications are a key part of this process and that's why we have templates not only for invitation cards and postcards, but motivational handouts and prayer lists for church members, Christmas letters to print for your congregation, seasonal connection and prayer cards, plus follow-up materials. (you can see a preview of all in the video below)

If you are going to make the most of your seasonal outreach you need to do communications BEFORE, DURING and AFTER your event. We will be highlighting and giving you specific strategies to do this with the various communication pieces, but this video gives you an overview of how it all works.

In addition to an overview and ministry explanation you have two options for how to use the Templates

The Templates from Effective Church Communications are all in PDF format, so you can simply download and print if you need something in a hurry.

In addition, the Templates are in MS Publisher format and are very simple to modify. I chose MS Publisher instead of Photoshop or InDesign or other fancy expensive program because that's what many churches use and it is the easiest and least expensive to use. In addition, you can do great designs with it. It is never the program, but the person who makes a successful, effective communication and if you use this set and the process recommended it will make your Christmas outreach VERY effective.

One more fun thing in the video is I show you how easy it is to get the templates printed with www.overnightprints.com. You can of course print them in the church office, but if you want a full-bleed glossy invitation card or postcard, after checking out a number of the online services, I really like how simple it is to get things done with Overnight Prints and I demonstrate this for you on the video. (I'll be doing others on this process.....like I said, a little too much here, but I was having so much fun with it and it turned out so well, I had to share it!)

One more thing that makes the Templates from Effective Church Communications unique

In addition to the typical templates use of graphics in the Templates, ECC also has TEXT TEMPLATES. There are a number of things I've written, longer pieces that you can use in either the templates as they've been given to you or you can pull them out and use them in your social media, websites, newsletters, whatever you want. Because I wrote them and retain all rights to them, I grant them to you to use however you'd like.

For Christmas, our piece Hark the Herald Angels Sing, but why? is a good example of this. It can be used as a Christmas letter, handout for Christmas events, and in many other ways. CLICK HERE to learn more about it.

Enough talking about the video, here is it:

 

To access all the Templates in the video and many more, you must sign up for Membership in Effective Church Communications. Right now we have a special price of only $59 a year! CLICK HERE to find out more and sign up.

 

 

 

PLEASE READ!!!! BIG revision to Effective Church Communications coming soon; site will be down for a time

By 10 Comments

I love books, but who can find anything in a place like this? I fear this website is in a similar state and drastic measures are called for, so I'll close down for a time to tidy.

Do you have a closet that started out organized and useful and filled with wonderful things, but then after you added this or that or put in one more thing you couldn't bear to part with your lovely closet, seemingly overnight turned into unmanageable chaos where you can't find a thing?

That's how I feel this website has become. Lots of good and useful stuff here, but what a mess.

I can't find things and I wrote them all.

For the last few months in the background I've been trying to reorganize things as we go into the important holiday season. In addition, I've been working on the new Training part of the website and trying to figure out how to integrate that and it's like trying to fit in five more pairs of shoes into that already overflowing closet. Not working well at all.

Drastic measures are needed.

I've spent lots of time praying and planning; researching and experimenting and I think I've come up with a solution. In summary, I'm going to reorganize the site into four areas:

  • Strategy
  • Templates
  • Training
  • Resources

I could go into reams of details for how and why, but I'd rather just wait and show you.

But to do this, I have to take the site off-line for a couple of weeks.

I tried to not do that, but though I'm pretty techie, mocking up a site just doesn't work for me (and I've wasted weeks trying).

We are in-between major holidays and I'll have the site up with lots of new things for Christmas in plenty of time so as of Tuesday, Halloween, Oct. 31, I'll be taking the site off-line.

Please pray LOTS for me for wisdom and that I follow the Lord's will in all. Many of you have prayed for me over the years for the many changes and I believe this is one of the most important ones. In many ways I want to greatly simplify the organization of the material and make it more accessible to church communicators of all levels all over the world.

This is scary. But the Lord knows what He wants me to do to obey His voice and serve His people. Please pray I hear and obey.

********

One more thing: I may be giving updates on the ECC Facebook page.

No promises, but I know I do need to be better on posting on it and while the site itself is down, this would probably be a good time to try.

 

 

FREE for everyone! An invitation to church with your Trick or Treat Candies

By Leave a Comment

Halloween Invite to Church p6
Put an invitation to church with your Halloween treats and see how the Lord might use it!

Hundreds of children will be coming to your doors this Halloween—why not take this opportunity to invite them to church? Below are some cards that can help you do this.

I'm making this file FREE for everyone because it's exciting to think about what might happen if many of you make up hundreds of these cards and give them to the children of all ages who come to your homes on Halloween.

Here is how it works:

  • Below the images is a ZIP file containing the cards.
  • It has PDFs of business-card size invitations back to church. They are fairly generic because I wanted you to not have to do anything, but print them off and on the back side you can create a personalized message for your church.
  • In addition to the PDFs, I also enclosed the editable MS Publisher file so if you want to change the wording or put info about your church on the front you can.

PLEASE share this with friends, other churches, people who go to your church. [Read more...]

Fall Event Registration Cards to make sure people come back to church after your outreach event

By Leave a Comment

Fall Event Registration Card
A registration card like this for a door prize will help you get in touch with people after your Fall Outreach Event.

Fall outreach events typically get large turnouts from your community and here is a tool that will help bring them back to church after the event.

More than a connection card, which people have little reason to fill out at a fun, outreach event, this card is a REGISTRATION for a DOOR PRIZE.

For fall you might fill a big pumpkin with lots of candy and other goodies or a basket of local treats. Do something that is colorful and impressive and have it at a table as people come in, consider using eye-catching table runners, at CV Linens you can find table liners cheap products. Invite them to fill out the card for a drawing. Don't make them have to stay for it if you are doing the drawing at the end of the event and you'll get more cards filled out.

The content on the card is designed for unchurched people and here is what it says:

We are so glad you’re here! Please take a minute to fill out this card so you can be entered into our door-prize drawing and so that we have a record of your attendance and a way to contact you about future events for your family. Be assured this information will not be shared or used outside the church office and you can have your names removed from the list at any time by calling the church office.

It lets them know you will be contacting them again, assures them it is for church use only and lets them know they can have their name removed from your list at any time. At the same time you get all the information you need to follow up with social media or postcards.

Below are a set of designs FREE and are ready to download, print, and use.

The ZIP file below contains a ready-to-print PDFs, editable MS Publisher files and jpeg files of each design. If you aren't a Member of Effective Church Communications, you won't be able to see the download. CLICK HERE for Membership Information or to sign up.

CLICK the link following to download the ZIP FILE for Fall Registration Cards: Fall Event Registration Cards