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.

How bad will it get? What headlines reveal about the compassion of your soul

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Hunger ImageFront page headline in USAToday on Monday, Aug. 8, 2011: "How bad will it get?"

What exactly was the "bad" under discussion? Was it the 29,000 children who have already died in Africa (U.S. Gov. statistic, released Aug. 4, 2011) because of the current drought? Was it about the women who carry dying children, sometimes for weeks, in the feeble hope that the in camps they will find help? Was it the children who die daily because of lack of clean water? Was it the thousands of women who live in unimaginable horror because of sex slavery?

The subhead in USAToday clarified the headline: "As the USA's lowered credit rating takes the air out of the stock market, bad economic news ripples around the globe."

Another headline in USAToday, from the Associated Press on Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2011. This headline was on page 5A, lower left corner (for whatever it is worth, the page placement that gets the lowest readership of any area on the page). This headline said: "Famine threatens Somali children"

Threatens? Threatens? 29,000 already dead and the headline mitigates the horror by using the totally misleading verb "threatens." [Read more...]

“More Than 1 in 5 American Children Live at Risk of Hunger” statistics and fact sites to help us communicate about hunger

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depression-poverty
This image may be from the depression, but the reality of hungry children hasn't changed. Our responsibility as Christian communicators to share the truth and do something about it hasn't changed also.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:7

Communicating information on hunger and challenging people to alter their lives and give sacrificially or to even give at all is often not one of the most fun communication projects. But caring for the poor is very important to our Lord.

In addition, it has to break our hearts that one in five children is hungry in our land of abundance.

We can't do everything to solve all hunger problems, but we can do something. One of the most important things we can do is to tell the truth and to constantly keep the reality of hunger before our people.

We need true facts to create communications to teach our people

These three sources provide statistics and information on hunger that can help you prepare teaching, PowerPoints or fact-sheets.

Three great resources sites follow

[Read more...]

Social media advice from Proverbs

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Social boom book cover
This isn't a specifically "Christian" book, but church communications will find much useful advice in it on how to use social media.

QUOTE:

Those who work their land will have abundant food,
but those who chase fantasies have no sense.
Proverbs 12:11, NIV

COMMENTARY:

As I read this verse in my morning devotionals, I thought about my current ministry strategy in social media, especially in Facebook and Twitter. I've tried to be more consistent in these communication methods because I finally have a motivation for it that makes sense to me, here's how that came about:

In many ways I am a very private person and the public sharing about daily activities done by many in these communication channels, especially on Twitter (Facebook is more social and chatty, fine for personal family and friend interaction, that's understandable), did not appeal to me. I do not really care when a person that I follow for his or her ministry advice gets an ice cream cone or has problems with air travel. We all eat and move from place to place--not exactly news flash events. In addition, having to wade through them to find useful information is, it seems to me, a waste of time.

Facebook is more social and chatty, fine for personal family and friend interaction, that's understandable. On Facebook also, you can separate personal, family updates from ministry or professional ones.

I prefer Twitter and Facebook when I can read them as more of a news feed--a running commentary of  useful updates and information coming from a person, business, or ministry rather than as an online diary.

What changed how I now use social media

The above opinions were floating unfocused in my head until I read a little book, Social Boom by Jeffery Gitomer. It is not a Christian book, but a book on sales and marketing, but it totally changed and inspired me for how I use social media. [Read more...]

Effective church communications is not easy, but help is always available

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Church communicators have been entrusted with the words of eternal life. What we do in our communications, can and does, literally change the eternal destiny of the people with whom we communicate.

Contrary to what some current marketing  and church communication companies and blogs would have you think with their snappy, snarky articles and catchy images and advice, to create communications that have eternal value is not easy. It takes work; it takes prayer. It takes time; it takes discernment.

Fortunately, help is available if you pursue it.

Proverbs gives us a pattern of the work involved when seeking God's ways of doing things in our lives including our church communications work. Consider the passage below. I have added the emphasis to works that [Read more...]

Our communications should build, give vision, provide tools for change

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QUOTE:

Though al-Qaeda could destroy, however, it could not build. In its unwillingness and inability to offer anything resembling a constructive vision for change, al-Qaeda gradually descended back into irrelevance.

from: "Al-Queda losing relevance" by Shadi Hamid, USA Today, Wednesday, May 4, 2011

COMMENTARY:

Destruction has its uses.

It is powerful; it can accomplish powerful goals. As church communicators we need to be aware of its power, but at the same time be very careful how, or if we ever use it.

Fear of destruction accomplished a lot for me. I confess, I was scared into becoming a Christian. My mother read Bible stories to my sister and me every night and I loved them, but what really pushed me over the line was I didn't want to go to hell. Our preacher at church convinced me that hell and eternal destruction was the fate of the unsaved.

When I found out that Jesus made it possible for me to go to heaven when I died and not hell and destruction, I wanted that. I asked Jesus to come into my life. [Read more...]