Challenges, commentary, and free templates to help churches create communications that help people come to know Jesus as Savior and grow to mature disciples.

In other words, to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Effective Church Communications

Timeless training from Yvon Prehn to help churches create communications that will enable them to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Strategy #1: Clarify and commit to your objective—for ECC it is The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

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5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This book will give you a comprehensive plan to use your communications to take people from outside the church and grow them to mature disciples of Jesus Christ.

INTRO note: the following is from the preface of the book on The Five Steps which is an overview of our approach to church communications. We we are different than many other church communications resources in a number of ways and this book is a good explanation of many of them.

In addition to the information in the book, the Effective Church Communications ministry (though the name has changed) is somewhat unique in that it's been around a LONG time—since before the internet and social media were used in the church.

Yes, we were able to communicate back then, amazing as it may seem—but seriously, because of that our training is about much more than how to be great at the latest tech tool currently in vogue. Though we keep up with and encourage the use of every means to help people come to know Jesus, we know that it takes a foundation and a vision beyond current trends to accomplish all we need to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

That is why a biblical strategy is so important. Our tools can and will change, our objective and strategy won't. What follows explains the North Star, our ministry objective we keep our eye on as we create training and resources for you.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

Author’s Preface—the North Star of this book

There are many fine websites and resources today for church communicators and churches benefit greatly from these varied resources. In this mix, it might be helpful to clarify the North Star of Effective Church Communications, the ministry behind his book, and the foundational goal of it which is:

How to create communications that will help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission.

This is the one goal around which everything we do revolves. The time-lapse image above of how all the stars revolve around the North Star instead of every star going in a different direction illustrates what we are trying to do. We want to help churches chose a North Star and intentionally revolve all their communications around it.

Our North Star was chosen in obedience to the Great Commission Jesus gave us in Matt: 28:18-20 when he said:

 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

North Star, to fully fulfill the Great Commission
Just as all the stars revolve around the North Star, so too all our communications should revolve around fully fulfilling the Great Commission. The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing will help you do that.

Fully fulfilling the Great Commission means that in addition to helping people come to know Jesus as Savior, your church helps believers become mature disciples of Jesus. Anything less is incomplete obedience.Continue Reading

The 5 Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing, redone, simplified, essential

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The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This is a way for you to put all your work into a strategic, progressive system of church communications that helps people come to know Jesus as Savior and grow to mature disciples.

Throughout human history, voyagers in the Northern Hemisphere have used the North Star, that one fixed point in the sky, as a reference for navigation. And though in the church office, you don't rely on a physical star and though not all communicators throughout the world can even see it, it remains a good analogy for all of us that we need a fixed point to keep our eyes on so our work accomplishes the goal our Lord wants us to reach.

For church communicators that fixed point, our North Star, is the Great Commission, where Jesus told his followers and says to us today:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20

We can summarize this command by saying we are tasked with:

  1. Helping people come to know Jesus as Savior
  2. Helping them grow into mature disciples

Both are commanded, but unfortunately many churches today stop short of developing their people into mature disciples. That is incomplete obedience.

As a corrective to this, for Effective Church Communications, our North Star and the one strategic and practical goal we have for all church communicators is:

To create communications that will help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission

The key phrase here is fully fulfill. Your communications should not stop at just bringing people into the church and involving them in uplifting worship services. They must help people become disciples.

How to do that?

Through The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

The Five Steps is a progressive way to organize and order your communications to take people from outside the church to mature discipleship. Here they are:

Step #1: Invite

Step #2: Inform

Step #3: Involve

Step #4: Instruct

Step #5: Inspire

The progression in evangelism or discipleship is not always obvious or explicit. An invitational postcard or social media post doesn't say "This is Step 1 and we are inviting you to an event where you can consider Jesus."

A clear podcast and notes on How we got our Bible and why we can trust it doesn't say, "This is Step 4 and you are being instructed in the Christian faith so you will become a mature disciple." But prayerfully progress is being made and lives are changed bit by bit.

I've been working on this system for decades and it has proven to be effective and inspiring to the people who have seen it in books, seminars, and online.

As part of my recent reorganization and updating of the ministry, I simplified the chart that illustrates it and following is the result. Following that is a link to the online class that explains and goes through the chart, though I trust the chart itself will make sense and help you see how you need a progression of church communications created with the goal of continuously moving people to the next step of Christian maturity.

Please download and share the chart. In the coming months I'll be adding additional online articles about it and I am redoing the book on the Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing (still a helpful book as it is, CLICK HERE to get a copy) to reflect the simplified chart.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing Chart

Click on the image to download a copy of it.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing

To learn more about the Five Steps

Our training course that explains The Five Steps, identifies key communications for each step, and gives you tips how to make each one most effective is at our Church Communications Training School.  Click the image below to go to the class.

The Five Steps Course for Church Communicators
This is one of the core, foundational classes in our Church Communicators training school that will help you be a more effective church communicator.

 

Declining church attendance and how your communications can help turn that around

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Stop Declining Church Attendance with Your Church Communications by Yvon Prehn

 

Church attendance is declining both in fewer new people coming to church and current members coming less often—that’s our challenge.

You know that the solution to this challenge isn't going to be solved by a 500-word blog post of bullet points about the latest and greatest tech tool or social media to come along that will solve all your church communication problems and get people flooding back to our churches. You know you won't be able to get people returning to church if you can simply find more contemporary graphics or upgrade to a more cutting-edge look to your website.

But we keep hoping don't we?

What follows is not a quick read filled with magic solutions. It will take time to read, digest, and plan out implementation because the issue of declining church attendance and retention is not an easy issue to understand with easy answers to fix it. There are many parts of church theology, growth, and health that factor in and what follows is not an all-inclusive solution, but one that can make a big difference in reversing this trend.Continue Reading

3,000 on your membership list; 350 on Sunday? It may be a problem with your internal marketing

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Don't forget internal marketing in your church
When creating your outreach plans, remember it's just as important to plan INTERNAL marketing for people already attending your church.

A common challenge for many churches today is that they may have 2,000 to 3,000 people listed on the church rolls, but only a fraction of them show up each week.

Though there are many reasons for this, one key reason for is that many churches do little to no internal marketing. If a business never followed up with customers, but simply greeted them warmly when they came in the door, but never contacted them again, never sent a sale flyer or had any other contact with them, the customer would probably not return. A church is not very different.

Most churches put the majority of their church marketing and communication efforts on getting people outside the church to come to the church. Though this is important, we shouldn't stop there and just like the customer above, if a church doesn't work on communicating with current members, they may not see them often.

We also have more reasons to do internal marketing than the local business. Remember, Jesus commanded us to make disciples, not simply worship and special event attendees. We need to learn to use every tool of technology available to get people involved in the activities and ministries of our churches that will take them to the next step of Christian maturity. To do this we need to plan out our internal marketing and it works best if you have a coordinated approach using both social media and print.

Internal marketing defined

Internal marketing includes all the communications you create for people already attending your church to get them involved in the activities of your church or ministry that will help them grow to maturity in their Christian life. Not only is this important when people come to your church after a special event, but it is important on a continuing basis.

Far too often this aspect of marketing and communications does not take place in the church and if it does, it is done in an often haphazard and spotty way. This lack of attention to this aspect of marketing is seldom intentional. It happens because:

  • The church staff does not see the importance of need to do this kind of marketing because of the unspoken assumption that people will automatically attend small groups, training times and other activities of the church.
  • Because it is important to the staff, they think it is important to the congregation, but this is seldom true.
  • Church staff is too stressed out and overworked to do one more thing in communications and marketing than they are already doing.
  • There is no intentional plan for internal marketing and no way to measure the effectiveness of the program.
  • Internal marketing is only done through one channel—if that's social media primarily (as much is today) this doesn't have a an impact on people who prefer print or don't have access to digital channels.

Following are suggestions on how to begin to remedy this situation:Continue Reading

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