Effective Church Communications

New FREE set of Connection Card Templates available

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One of a set of Free Downloable Connection Cards
This is just one of a set of free, downloadable Connection Cards for your church.

Connection cards are a humble, but one of the most powerful communications your church can produce. With them, you can, of course, respond to visitors and in so doing grow your church, but when you include an invitation to share a prayer request, these cards are also a powerful way to pastor your people.

Below is a set of simple connection cards in two sizes. Yes, you can make them much more complicated and there might be times you want to do that, but similar to how marketers have found that people sign up for email lists more when they are only asked for the most essential information (name and email) than when they need to answer more questions. Below is a free set of forms for simple connection cards. Below them, a link to a FREE KINDLE download of my book on Connection Cards.

To download the Free Template file that includes ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files, CLICK the following link:  2 Sizes Basic Connection Cards

 

Free Kindle Download for Church Connection Card book (and it can be on your computer)

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Church Connection Cards
Connection Cards are an essential step to connecting with visitors, growing your church and pastoring your people. This book is invaluable to help you do that.

I'm in the process of updating a number of the Effective Church Communication books, but while I'm doing that I want you to have access to the useful materials in them.

One of the most helpful books (according to reader feedback) and by far my best seller has been this book on Connection Cards. The current print version does not have good resolution of images, but since I can give you images and templates on this website (CLICK HERE for some Connection Card Templates), the basic content is what is most helpful.

I put that into a FREE KINDLE download--go to the amazon page HERE to get it.

Don't have a Kindle? You can read it with an app for your computer—below are directions on how to get it.

Check out the directions below to download the Kindle app for your computer

VERY IMPORTANT TIP: Get the app for your computer for a great aid in preparing lessons or reading any Kindle book.

When I am preparing a Sunday School lesson or Bible blog (for my www.bible805.com) I like to consult and quote Bible reference books. I have a number of them in the Kindle version. What is handy is when you have it on your computer you can cut and paste into MS Word files—so much easier than typing long quotes.

Triage, a model for responding to connection cards

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Triage your connection cards
In a medical emergency, the first responders immediately triage victims to see who needs immediate care. That's a great examples to follow on processing connection cards.

Ed. intro: When you host a special event or seasonal celebration, you'll have lots of visitors and you'll be collecting lots of visitor cards from them. But you've got to do more than just collect them if you want them to make a difference in your church. You'll learn what to do from this excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

It is critically important to respond to the connection cards received each Sunday and all special occasions, but not every card needs the same timeliness or intensity of response, but how do you decide what needs what? The concept of triage can help.

First, here is the history and definition of TRIAGE from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia:

TRIAGE
The term [triage] comes from battlefield or natural disaster situations. When the wounded are brought in there are three categories in which the wounded are immediately placed:

Red / Immediate
They require immediate surgery or other life-saving intervention, and have first priority for surgical teams or transport to advanced facilities; they “cannot wait” but are likely to survive with immediate treatment.

Yellow / Observation
Their condition is stable for the moment but requires watching by trained persons and frequent re-triage, will need hospital care (and would receive immediate priority care under “normal” circumstances).

Green / Wait (walking wounded)
They will require a doctor’s care in several hours or days but not immediately, may wait for a number of hours or be told to go home and come back the next day (broken bones without compound fractures, many soft tissue injuries).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

How to apply triage to connection cards

Though you aren’t dealing with actual battlefield situations, this model is useful in responding to the connection cards you will receive from those fighting spiritual battles each week. Following are suggestions for how to apply the three levels of triage in how you respond to the people turning in connection cards: [Read more...]

Connection Cards: church service distraction or great ministry tool?

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Connection cards, are they a great tool or church service distraction?
Connection cards, are they a great tool or church service distraction--please share your comments.

I recently received the following email (only slightly edited for privacy) with a practical ministry question about Connection Cards and how to avoid the time filling out the cards and collecting them more than an awkward break in the service. Following the email, I have some advice, but PLEASE add your comments and practices in the comment section that follows.

Question about Connection Cards

I have a question or two concerning having the whole congregation fill out connection cards during the service time. I know you believe this a very important part of the Sunday morning church service. I have read several church leaders that agree.

I am Director of Administration for our church and have approached our Senior Pastor about doing this. He has been the pastor for 25 years so he is a very experienced pastor. When I first mentioned us possibly doing this he said he could not imagine having a break in the service where pretty much everything comes to a standstill while hundreds of people fill out these cards. He said he would think it would be a real "flow" breaker if you know what I mean...however he cares more about doing what is best for the body of our church than not wanting to try something new. So, he is willing to give this a try but I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask you so I will have more information to approach him with...

What would you estimate the time to be to complete these cards? Each service would have around 200 people in it....Would you estimate 2 or 3 minutes or something much shorter like 30 seconds?

Also, when other churches do this do they have something going on at the same time or does everything come to a standstill while they are being filled out?

My answer

[Read more...]

Christmas Strategy—Christmas Connection Cards—effective tools to get people to return after Christmas

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FREE Christmas Connection Card
Click on this image to download the FREE PDF file.

After all your hard work to get people to come to your Christmas events, you want to make sure you make a connection with them so that they will return to your church after the holidays. To do that you need to capture names and contact information.

These Connection Cards and Registration for Christmas are a simple-to-create, but very useful tool.

At the end of this article is a link to a ZIP FILE that has ready-to-print PDFs of all the images below and editable MS Publisher files of all the cards plus hi-res images of them.

The strategy behind the cards

Churches often put on Christmas events as a gift to the community and some have told me that they don't want to be "too pushy" during that event and so they don't do anything to try to get information from their guests.

Though I understand the thoughts behind this thinking, we need to remember that the kindest and the best thing we can do for our Christmas guests (or church guests at any time of year) is to introduce them to Jesus. We may begin that introduction at Christmas, but what is strategically important to remember is that it takes at least SEVEN exposures to any idea for acceptance. For many people in our world today, the idea that Christmas is about Jesus or that he is more than a baby that inspires kind thoughts and lots of parties this time of year is a totally new idea. [Read more...]