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

5 September, 2016 By Yvon Prehn

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: [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, Church Outreach and Marketing, Strategy #7: Always be marketing—outside the church and inside the church Tagged With: church leadership, church marketing, Communications, how to increase attendance at church, retain church members, yvon prehn

What makes the Five Steps different than any other approach to church communications

28 June, 2016 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

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.

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. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, The Five Steps of Effective Church Com & Marketing, Yvon Prehn books Tagged With: Effective Church Communications, The Five Steps of Effective Church Communication, Yvon Prehn books

Foundation of The Five Steps: Disciple-making

19 April, 2016 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

The importance of discipleship for church growthWe all know we should obey Great Commission and that the Great Commission commands we make disciples, but beyond the personal  spiritual significance of that command, it’s easy to forget the practical power of disciple-making in church growth. Building disciples isn’t only what we are supposed to be doing, it’s how to grow people and churches.

Discipleship ministry at first appears to take excessive time to develop a few people when aggressive outreach marketing seems to reach many more people much faster. But first appearances can be deceiving as this article will show you.

It’s important to read this article before getting into the practical nuts and bolts of creating church communications. The purpose of The Five Steps is to fully fulfill the Great Commission and that means to make disciples. If discipleship is your goal, if fully fulfilling the Great Commission is the measure of success in your church communication process, you will approach your communication ministry much differently than if success is measured by how many people you get in the door on Sunday or how impressed visitors are with your website.

Why discipleship is essential for the church to survive —and why your communications are essential to develop disciples

Today we have aggressive atheists who are the darlings of the popular press. When men like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris slander and malign the Christian faith in a way that is not only false, but nasty and vicious, their mockery is quoted and promoted without question throughout the internet and across the globe.

Church leaders who are exposed to public scandal are reported in the in press and individuals Christians don’t fare much better. Studies frequently show Christians behave no differently than non-Christians in morality and that many people who call themselves Christian have little or no understanding of what the Bible says and how it teaches them to act (which is probably why their behavior is no different than that of their unbelieving friends).

I could bore you with reams of studies and statistics, but you know in the quietness of the your heart and the turmoil of your mind that the Christian church is losing ground, so let’s skip the statistics and get to solutions. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, YP Foundational Tagged With: Christian maturity, church building, church communication basics, church growth, Communications, discipleship, Discipleship and church communications, yvon prehn

The One Goal of Effective Church Communications

19 March, 2016 By Yvon Prehn

5 Steps of Effective Church ComThere is one goal and one foundational purpose in all we do in church communications and that is to make disciples.

Then Jesus came to them and 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." Matt: 28:18

These verses are our marching orders, what we are supposed to be about as representatives of Jesus here on earth-that seems obvious. The actions required by these verses also seems obvious-go, baptize, teach-with the end result of making disciples.

Why discipleship is essential for the church to survive—and why your communications are essential to develop disciples

What is  painfully obvious in America today (and most of North America) is that as a whole, we aren't doing a very good job [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, Misc. Advice and Articles, YP Foundational Tagged With: Bible commentary, church leadership, Communications, discipleship, evangelism, yvon prehn

Online Video, Foundation: The Uniqueness of Church Communications

12 June, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Welcome to the Video: Foundation: The Uniqueness of Church Communications, including the Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing and why marketing is not evil

If you are serious about wanting to create communications that will not only look professional, but will make a significant impact on growing your church in numbers and your people in spiritual maturity, this video and the other videos on this site will enable you to do that. It is not quick or easy, but it will be effective. This video sets up the important foundation for what we do and why we do church communications.

Below the video is a PDF of notes and one for more resources.

PDF of the Notes

Click on the image to download the PDF

Foundation Handouts PDF

Welcome to the first of our Online Video, Foundation:  The Uniqueness of Church Communications, including the Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing and why marketing is not evil

If you are serious about wanting to create communications that will not only look professional, but will make a significant impact on growing your church in numbers and your people in spiritual maturity, this video training series will enable you to do that. It is not quick or easy, but it will be effective. This video sets up the important foundation for what we do and why we do church communication

PDF of Additional Resources

Click on the image to download the PDF

Additional Resources Sheet PDF

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, Basic Church Communications Training, Church Outreach and Marketing Tagged With: church communications foundation, church communications training, church marketing, Communications, yvon prehn video

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