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.

Canva Training Video: 3 BIG mistakes in creating Bible verse graphics and how to correct them

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In our recent survey of church communicators, one of the biggest requests was that people wanted help in creating materials in Canva.

Following is a video that Lord willing, I plan to be the first of many on Canva.

It is a simple topic, but a challenge I see all the time where people create Bible verses with graphics on them and with the best of intentions I'm sure, they violate the most basic rules of typography in using poor contrast, hard to read typefaces, and incorrect sizing for the type vs. the image. In this short video I'll show you how to correct all the mistakes and make a verse graphic where the Bible verse, the reason for doing it all is clear.

 

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Results of the Church Communications Survey and Commentary on it PODCAST AND TEXT

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Effective Church Communications PodcastHi, I’m Yvon Prehn, and welcome to the Effective Church Communications podcast. A few weeks ago, I did a survey to find out more about what church communicators are using currently and what they need to do their work more effectively.

In today’s podcast, I’ll talk about  the Results of the Church Communications Survey Summary and Commentary on it

Below is the podcast and following that a copy of the notes/transcript of it.

So let’s get started…..

               As I begin, I’d like to ask you, if you feel as I did … [Read more...]

Notes available for first video on Desktop Publishing in the Church, How to Use Your Computer to Create Better Newsletters, Bulletins, and More! by Yvon Prehn

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Cover of How to use your computer to Create Better Bulletins, Newsletters, and More!
The cover of my book on desktop publishing in the church. I found the printed notes that go with the video series (done 27 years ago), scanned them and you can download them. The video is available on YouTube. A link to it is in the article.

Several months ago, I posted the first video I did on desktop publishing in the church, How to Use Your Computer to Create Better Newsletters, Bulletins, and More! 

I uploaded CDs of it that had been created from the original VHS tapes. The quality is not what we expect today, but it was and is interesting to me how the basic principles of good design and communication haven't changed in almost 30 years from when I first wrote the book. Nor have the needs of churches and the still too frequent challenges they have in creating effective church communications. This book was based on Tap the Power of Desktop Publishing which was the first book out on desktop publishing for churches and as far as I know on doing communications with the computer for churches.

The first version of the book was published by David C. Cook and the second edition by Gospel Light. Though both books seemed to do OK, the second one did well enough for the company to do this video series, both companies told me they decided to not continue printing it because they didn't see a future for the computer to be used to create communications in the church. In fact, Gospel Light said they didn't see technology as a whole had any future use in the church.

Well, that was a miscalculation.

But I wasn't deterred--I made photocopies of the book at Kinkos and they sold well at the seminars I taught all over North America for many years.

It wasn't until recently I found the CDs of the seminar and put them on my YouTube Channel .  The link will take you to the first video.

I was frustrated because I couldn't find the notes that went with the videos though I thought I looked all over for them. However, recently, as often happens in my messy office, I was looking for something entirely different and there were the notes, misfiled.

I scanned them and made them into a PDF, which you can download HERE

The book it was based on is out of print, but I retained the rights to it and scanned most of it, and turned it into an ebook. I left out the chapters on computers and software as they were outdated and no longer useful. I renamedCover of Back to Basics, foundational skills for church communicators by Yvon Prehn the book, Back to Basics, essential foundational skills for church communicators. It's part of the soon-to-be-released Effective Church Communications Library, but I wanted to give you a free copy of it to go with the notes. Here is the link to a download of it: https://payhip.com/b/RK9hW
[Read more...]

25 years ago Gospel Light produced my first Desktop Publishing Training Video–I just found it and am sharing it

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How some things change and how others stay the same! Below are two training videos from around 3 hours of training in creating communications with the computer which was a very NEW thing when I did the videos. I recently found them and decided to share them because it amazes me how the need for BASIC Training in church communication skills and the inspiration and motivation for why we do it in the church continues to be needed.

Below are the two videos and below them are the descriptions I put on the YouTube site. I know they are lengthy, but I do think they will be well worth your time to watch.

YouTube descriptions and background of the videos

This video, How to Use Your Computer to Make Better Newsletters, Bulletins, and More was made 25 years ago but the basic design principles in it are still useful. The description that follows is the same for both PART ONE and PART TWO of the video.

I recently (August 2021) found a copy of this video set in my files and though there is some outdated content and I have no idea what I did to get my hair to look like it does in the video, the majority of the video content is extremely useful. In addition, basic skills training like what is presented here is very hard to find for church communicators.

For training, you can find lots on the latest social media channel you should be using. How to write in a way that reaches busy people, basic design principles for any media, how to manage and stay strong spiritually in this challenging work is much harder to find. All this and much more is in the two videos. [Read more...]

21 FREE image resource sites and a course to help you make the most of them

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Previews of 21 Image Sites
There are thousands of FREE image sites out there today. This course will help you make the most of them!

It's a great time to be creating communications today because thousands of images are available to you for FREE! And this course that was just posted to our Church Communications Training School will preview 21 websites of FREE IMAGES and give you tips to make the most of them!

No matter what some paid sites may tell you, everything you need to create great-looking communications in print and online can be found without spending any money. This course not only will give you a list of sites that will give you what you need, but it will give you video tours of all the sites so you can decide if that source is useful for you before you waste time checking it out.

There are five videos previewing sites

The first one of large overview sites is the longest at about 14 minutes and the others are 5 or 6 minutes.  You can download either the PDF of the course PowerPoint that lists the sites or a PDF list of the sites to make notes on what might be most useful to you. This is one of the best things about the course because instead of getting a random list of sites that may or may not be useful, you can sit back, relax, and have me preview the sites for you.

(Personal note here.....I had NO idea how long this would take to put together. What I thought would be a few hours ended up a few weeks. I've always hated the lists of sites for any recommendation of free this or that or recommended this or that and found that checking them out was always such a huge waste of time because half were useless and obviously nobody pre-screened them. Now I understand why; it'a a lot of work! But I'm committed to doing this for you and the ministry and I trust you'll find it useful.)

In addition to showing you sources for thousands of useful images, this course also has:

Introductory TIPS on images

Images are very important, but they are not THE most important thing in church communications. We'll briefly discuss why, what is most important and how to use images most effectively.

You'll also learn why captions for your images are critical and how without them images have no inherent meaning.

Guidelines and cautions

There is an overwhelming amount of fine print on image sites today. Not only is it very confusing, but as a church communicator you want to do things legally and it's hard to take time to sort through all the rights, usage agreements, and licenses involved.

This course has done all that work for you and all the sites shown are free, copyright free, attribution free, and can be used for commercial purposes (if you create a t-shirt and sell it, that's commercial).

Bonus--quick edit ideas in PicMonkey

Sometimes you want a little more from an image. You may want a different size, focal point, or color. You may wish it had a different mood or effect. A great program that can do that is PicMonkey and the overview of images ends with a short video from Pic Monkey showing how you can very quickly make changes like the ones below. The first image is the original off the site and following are is a less-than a minute change. The video has additional changes of this picture and another one.

This course is part of our All-Access Membership- for the Church Communications Training School, which is a ministry of the Effective Church Communications Site-sign up today and have easy access to thousands of FREE IMAGES for every communication project you can imagine.