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.

Updated Senior Newsletter and why you should have a newsletter for the Seniors Ministry in your church

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Another version of a Senior's Newsletter for churches, plus why it is so important to create these.

In another article I shared a Senior Ministry Newsletter and here is an updated version of it. But even more important than the additional design  are the reasons given below as to why creating a newsletter for Seniors is incredibly important for your church.

Reasons why you should have a newsletter for the Senior Ministry in your church

  • Not only is it the right thing to do and a Biblical command to care for the older members of our church, but it is also a fact that in most churches the older members are the primary ones who support the church financially.
  • However, they are less likely to give generously if they don’t feel they are a significant part of the church. A newsletter like this that not only is useful to create a community for seniors, but it informs them about ministries in the church and invites them to become involved.
  • You need to print this out because overall, most seniors, even if they have a computer, prefer to read material like newsletters (and bulletins and information from the church) in a print format.
  • Just because you print this doesn’t mean you ignore technology. You can also create a PDF version of this publication to post online. This particular layout works well online because in PDF format you don’t have to scroll up and down as you do in a multi-column newsletter layout.
  • This simple layout can be adapted to create newsletters for any ministry in the church— Women’s, Men’s, Children’s, Missions. They are also projects that ministry members can do themselves. Challenge your church ministry leaders to increase their communications and THEY WILL see an increase in involvement. People do not give to, volunteer, or pray for ministries that they know little or nothing about.

Below are images of the two pages of the revised design and following is the link to download the MS Publisher Template file.

To download the ZIP file that has the MS Publisher file for this newsletter, click the following link: Senior Newsletter Revised Design

Newsletter advice: long or short; sermon in them or seeker-friendly?

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Seeking church communications feedback
Seeking feedback, trying different lengths and contents is all part of ministering to your people with your church communications.

A question came in from a church business administrator: “For our church newsletters, should it contain long articles or short ones, sermons or not, should it be visitor friendly?” It’s a great question and one that should be answered as you plan the content for your church or ministry newsletter. We’ll explore the options for answering it in this article.

(Update note: I wrote this article originally for written newsletters, but the advice following applies equally well to online newsletters, though you may want to start some of the articles in the online newsletter and continue longer material on your website.)

Long articles or short?

The answer to that part of the questions isn’t as obvious as it might seem. I think initially, with our busy schedules today many people would instinctively answer “SHORT!”  Almost no one complains that newsletter articles are too short.

But in consideration of length there are a number of factors to consider:

  • Newsletters contain a variety of material. Some is vision-casting from the senior pastor, some teaching, some history or story-telling, some news, notes and announcements.
  • More important than setting an arbitrary length,  the length of the articles or announcements in your newsletter material should be appropriate to the topic. For example, if the senior pastor is explaining the vision of the church, inspiring members for outreach or missions, setting a new direction or challenging for a building campaign, that piece might need a page or two.
  • Currently there is a growing popularity of "long-form", meaning simply longer length articles. Particularly when you do an online version of your newsletter, you might add additional information, background, commentary, or links on a topic. Many of the major newspapers today (the New York Times is a primary example) and have found this extremely popular. While waiting, commuting, or tired of playing games, people will often read longer articles on their mobile devices.
  • Announcements of re-occurring events usually do not need long, lengthy explanations on why people should attend. Short, catchy announcements designed what I call “want-ad style” and that contain the name of the sponsoring person or group, purpose, starting and ending time, full contact information, cost and directions to get there and if child care is provided are what is needed.
  • At the same time, even more lengthy material that takes a page or two can be made more visually interesting by breaking it into sections with headers, summarizing key facts in a sidebar, pulling out interesting or key quotes and highlighting them, adding a picture and caption. A page or two with these visual elements integrated into the story will be read more easily than a solid page or two of text with no breaks.

Sermons or not in your newsletters? Seeker-Friendly or not?

[Read more...]

Easy, 2-Page Senior Newsletter Template in MS Publisher

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This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.
This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.

In expanding our TEMPLATE section, I found this very useful template for a 2-page Senior Newsletter in our archives. Below is the template, plus a short video on how I put it together. The video is several years old and uses an older version of MS Publisher. I opened the template in MS Publisher 2016 and saved it in that version and that worked great.

Many senior adults in churches still prefer print and creating a newsletter for them is not difficult to do. Many seniors today are fit and active and can contribute a lot to the church if they know what is going on. A print newsletter can greatly help.

This newsletter template has typeface size, line-spacing, line length and boxed materials all optimized for seniors. Though the layout here is designed for seniors, it could work well for many other types of newsletters. When designing publications for seniors, a few small changes can make it much more readable and is very easy to do, as the video shows.

Following are the two pages of the Template, then a video that shows how and why it was created and below them the link to download the Template.

The video below shows an older version of MS Publisher, but the basic tasks are the same.

To download the Template for a Newsletter for Seniors, click the following link: MS Pub Template for Senior Newsletter

For a revised and updated version of this template: CLICK HERE

Make the most of your Father’s Day Connection Cards

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Make the most of Father's Day Connection Cards by including options for information on ministries related to men.

The selection of Connection cards that follow for Father's Day includes some cards that not only have the standard information on them, but that give men the opportunity to request information about ministries that may be of interest to them.

These include: Service Projects, Men's Group, Habitat for Humanity Build, and Children's Ministries. Having these on the card is one way of advertising these ministries that men may not even know go on at the church. In addition, asking on a card directed primarily to men on this Father's Day that includes asking for information about children's ministries, lets men know that the church is aware that many men today participate actively in child-rearing. More men than many churches are aware are single dads and greatly appreciate it when a church is aware of this and actively works to minister to them.

Below the gallery of Connection Cards for Father's Day below is a link to download a ZIP file that has ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

To download the ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files, click on the following link: Fathers Day Connection Cards

Men’s Ministry Business Cards you can modify and adapt

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Men's Ministry Business Cards
One of the business cards you can use to launch or advertise your Men's Ministry.

Father's Day is a great time to kick-off or start a Men's Ministry and the following cards may be useful for inspiration if you are just starting or want to try something new.

On the opposite side of the card you can have your meeting times and work or service projects listed. These are business card size and are great for you to make up enough of them to give them to the men of your church to use as invitations to neighbors or the men they work with.

Below are pictures of the cards and below that is a link for a ZIP file that has both ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. CLICK HERE for more about the Templates and to see others available.

To download the ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files, click on the following link: Men's Ministry Business Cards

For a very useful and challenging article on starting a Men's Ministry, please read this: Dos and Don'ts to a successful launch of a men's ministry