Effective Church Communications

Recipe for Greek Easter Bread, an outreach treat for Easter guests

20 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

This delicious Easter bread recipe is a fun way to invite people to attend your Easter events.

Which would you rather get to encourage you to come to church for Easter? A postcard that tells you how wonderful the church is or a really great recipe? Of course churches are going to talk about how wonderful they are at Easter time, but a great recipe for free—that's different and might get attention in a way something else won't.

Everybody loves recipes and this Greek Easter Bread is exceptionally delicious. It's my version of a recipe given to me years ago by a very dear Greek friend. It's a sweet yeast bread (not a coffee cake) and bakes up beautifully. In addition to serving the main version for Easter, I came up with an alternate version to serve with soup, especially something like tortilla soup, any time of the year. In this variation, you add jalapeno peppers and cheddar cheese--it is sooooooooooo good. The regular version makes great French Toast and the Cheddar/Jalapeno version is fantastic oven-toasted. Either way, it's something everyone would love.

Below are finished cards for the recipe that you can personalize on the back and below I included a print of the recipe. The link to the ZIP file for them is at the end of this article.

Here are some ways you can use the recipe for Easter Outreach:

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RISO ComColor Printers—an incredible print production system for your church

15 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

How a RISO ComColor Inkjet Printer can help your church — Many churches have no idea how this machine can help their church print more effectively. This video and booklet will help explain it. CLICK on the image to download a free copy of this booklet.

Editorial note: Many churches have no idea how this machine can help their church print more effectively. The intro and then the video and downloadable booklet will help explain it. Please pass this on to whoever makes office equipment decisions for your church.

—Why it’s so important to share this information with you

I’ve been helping churches create effective communications for over 20 years, but the last few years I’ve watched a bothersome trend develop. I saw it first-hand in a church I was helping create some materials to advertise an important ministry when the people doing the ministry were told, “I’m sorry, but it isn’t in the budget for us to create the bulletin inserts and flyers you want.”

Then we worked on an overview brochure that described the upcoming adult education classes in the church (a new program, lots of classes, exciting ministry changes) and were told that a limited number could be printed and only one time because that was all the budget allowed.

This was not a good situation.

No matter how useful the web and social media may be for people to connect with ministries and attend them regularly, many people in the church still need printed schedules, explanatory brochures, and flyers to remind them of basic information: the when, where, why, and how to attend. If a church cuts down on printed support materials for ministries, the ministry attendance will inevitably decline in numbers.

Churches see that happening in every area, but often fail to connect falling attendance with the falling number of communications created and printed to get people to attend events.

Even the coveted by churches younger families with kids appreciate a calendar they can post on the refrigerator to remind them of family activities. For churches with large Baby Boomer members, print is a preferred communication channel and in these churches, the Baby Boomers are often the most faithful in giving to support the church. It helps if they know what is going on in the church and they probably aren’t going to find it out from Snapchat or Twitter.

But churches say they can’t afford to print. What is going on?

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GIS: 2 Lenten Calendars, a focus on giving and a focus on prayer

11 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lenten Calendar of Giving ideas — Just click on the PDF to download a full-size image. This is a wonderful inspirational entry to our Great Idea Swap. PLEASE send us your ideas so we can share them with other church communicators.

Lenten Calendars that can be printed out and posted on the refrigerator are a great way to focus the thoughts of your congregation during Lent. Here are two FREE samples for your from our Great Idea Swap.

A Lenten focus on Giving

Though there are many wonderful lessons we can learn from self-denial during Lent, the danger is always there that we can become excessively self-focused in our self-denial. This wonderful Lenten Calendar came in as a contribution to our Great Idea Swap and it is a fantastic way to encourage your people to give of themselves everyday during Lent. Click on the image to the left to download a PDF and be inspired to create your own.

Here is how Linda Watson, the church communicator who sent it in, describes it:

The attached calendar is included on the back page of our Lenten/Easter Newsletter every year. It was an idea started many years ago to increase the donations to our local Community Care program. We have an ongoing collection of staples for the less fortunate in our community, but the response to this calendar has been phenomenal! We update the calendar and promote this, every year, as a way of “giving” instead of “giving up” during Lent.

Linda Watson
St. Columba Church

Lenten Calendar with a Focus on prayer

Lenten Calendar with an emphasis on prayer — This beautifully done calendar is another way to inspire your congregation to life change during Lent.

This Calendar is from a few years ago in our Great Idea Swap, but it has always been one of my favorites. Not only does it have a very attractive layout and nice combination of text and images, but the suggested prayers and actions would be life-changing for any church.

Click on the image to the left to download a PDF and be inspired to create your own.

Please share your ideas!

Please CLICK HERE to find out more about this fantastic way to share and how to send in your materials.

Templates—New and Easier Access to save time and your sanity!

8 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Church Communications Templates are a great resource and one of the best benefits of membership in Effective Church Communications. Check out these videos to be able to access them.

Templates are one of the most useful resources we offer because the all these things are done for you: communication concept, selection of artwork, typeface, layout and the ministry text. They have been the most popular part of Effective Church Communications for years but once people downloaded them initially, it was difficult to find them again.

That was my fault because though I knew you could access them through looking up the category they were under, even if you remembered that, it still took searching through articles to find the template link if all you wanted was to just grab some invitation cards or connection cards for a particular holiday. That has all changed!

I finally came up with a process where I have a system for you to easily find and download Templates.

The video below explains it. Following this short video is a longer one that shows you how Templates work, how to modify them and where to find them.

Two of the most useful things about the Effective Church Communication Templates are:

You do not need Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign to modify them. They are primarily in MS Publisher, which is an easy-to-use program found in most church offices.

You can DOWNLOAD the Templates, you don't have to work on-line. That makes it easy to take them home and work anywhere without relying on the internet.

Check out the videos below. If you are not a member of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE--this is one of the best benefits and our very reasonable membership cost will more than pay for the time you save!

Templates, New & Easier Access!

Templates, an Overview

Templates: 1 Corinthians 13 Bulletin Inserts, true love defined

2 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

1 Cor 13 Bulletin Insert — This bulletin insert shares not only how we should love, but reminds us of how God loves us.

First Corinthians 13 is the love chapter of the Bible. Not only does it challenge us with how we should love, but we often forget that the perfect love in this chapter describes how God loves us. Take a minute away from your work to think about that and praise God for its truth.

With those reminders in mind, following are Bulletin inserts (or postcards or however else you want to use them) that quote 1 Corinthians 13 that you can use for Valentine's season or any other time people need a reminder of God's love. On the back of the cards you can put links, lessons, or activities your church has to teach people about God's love.

Below the images of inserts is the ZIP file for Effective Church Communications Members to download both PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. If you aren't a member you won't be able to see the links. For more information and to join Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE.