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.

Christian Post interviews Yvon Prehn about How to get people to come back to church after Christmas and Easter

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How to get people back to church
Lots of people attend church for holiday events--here is advice to get them to come back on a continuing basis.

How to get the people who come to church on Christmas and Easter to return and to begin to attend on a regular basis is one of the biggest challenges for churches. The holidays offer great opportunities for people visit the church, but attending church twice a year seldom results in any significant spiritual decision or life-change.

For ideas on how to change that with suggestions from Ed Setzer of LifeWay and Yvon Prehn of Effective Church Communications, check out this article:

How to Keep the 'Chreasters' Coming: Experts Say Preparedness and Follow-Up Are Key

Read the full article at http://www.christianpost.com/news/how-to-keep-the-chreasters-coming-experts-say-preparedness-and-follow-up-are-key-92773/#y7QhYTt0IoGqsdbA.99

Your people, your church greeters–your most important communication tool

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Negative visitor card
This is a copy of a very negative visitor card--this is not how we want visitors to respond. Chris Walker's site will help your church avoid comments like this.

Sometimes we work so hard on our printed and digital connections we forget about the most important one of all--our people. Chris Walker, aka, the Evangelism Coach has a great article here about people who were so upset with the rudeness of church greeters, they wrote it down on a response card. Studies show that for every complaint someone actually takes the time to write about, there are many more upset people, who don't take the time to write.

Check out the article here as well as many resources on Chris' site.  He has excellent training and resources for church hospitality and evangelism. In addition, he's a thoughtful, insightful writer--I highly recommend his material.

CLICK HERE to go to this site: http://www.evangelismcoach.org

Connection Cards for Mother’s Day–essential tools for follow-up

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Mother's Day Connection Card, free card
Click on the image to download a free, ready-to-print PDF of this card.

Connection Cards are vitally important for your Mother's Day outreach success, because if visitors don't give you their contact information, you won't be able to follow-up with them. You might have a huge attendance on Mother's Day, but if the next Sunday is back to your usual numbers, you've missed a great opportunity to connect.

If you give church visitors an opportunity to share a question or a prayer request, you will be amazed at how many people will share with you. If you follow-up promptly and compassionately, you will make a significant connection.

To save you time in this important task, I've created some cards that are ready for you to print and use. The files below are part of a ZIP file below.  For each of the cards illustrated below it has:

  • A PDF ready-to-print file
  • Editable MS Publisher file
  • PNG image (perhaps you want to add it to a PowerPoint announcement and encourage people to fill it out)

Additional designs of Mother's Day Connection Cards

This file is FREE and the link is at the end if the article.

The additional designs: various styles, clipart, photo images, spot color of the Connection Cards that are in the ZIP FILE:

Mother's Day Connection Card, free card

 

 

FREE DOWNLOAD OF ZIP file:

CLICK HERE to download your file.

Connection Cards for Christmas

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FREE Christmas Connection Card
Click on this image to download the FREE PDF file; all the other images below are part of a file for Effective Church Communication Members.

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  for Christmas are a simple-to-create, but very useful tool. The one to the left is free for everyone, just click to download the PDF, print and use.

At the end of this article is a link to a ZIP FILE that has ready-to-print PDFs of all the images below, including  two versions that can be printed with color separations if you have a digital duplicator.

In addition  the ZIP file contains editable MS Publisher files of all the cards plus hi-res images of them. The ZIP FILE is free also. [Read more...]

Pledge Card/Committment Card Sample that includes more than money and reminds us of our committment to discipleship

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In church we often talk about giving our "time, talent, and treasure," but when it is time for the congregation to give its annual pledge, many churches only ask for money. In this wonderful sample from Gordon M., his church asks for not only a monetary pledge, but asks for very important commitments in all areas of spiritual growth, as shown below. It is only after these areas that the financial part of the card comes in. Here is the sample text, the PDFs and editable files are described below.

Pray for Duncan Memorial at least   ___ Daily  ___Weekly ___Monthly

Worship at Duncan Memorial (or elsewhere) ___Weekly  ___ 2x/Month  ___ Monthly

Discipleship Growth Group participation (Accountability/Bible Study/Prayer/Sunday School, etc.)  ___Yes

Volunteer to help with other Duncan Memorial ministries:  ___Children/Youth Sunday School   ___Serve on Committee

___Meals  ___Office Help  ___Yard Work/Maintenance  ___Visitation  ___Mission  ___ Other ____

Serve the poor at least one hour ___ Weekly  ___ Monthly  ___ Quarterly

Share our faith with others and/or invite others to experience Christ here  ___Yes

On the back of the card is a Tithe Chart.

I like so much about this card because not only does it ask for commitment, but it very strongly reminds church members that being a Christian involves prayer, worship, discipleship, volunteering, helping the poor and sharing our faith. As leaders in the church, we need to remind our people that ALL of these actions are important in our faith and this card is a fantastic reminder.

Below is what the card looks like on the Front and Back.

 Below the images is a link and you can download Two Zip Files:

One is titled "Commitment Cards" and it has a PDF, 3-up of the card, a PNG image if you wanted to put it on PowerPoint or use it for training, plus an editable MS Publisher file so that you can modify the file and make one for your church.

The Second file is titled "Tithe Chart" and it has a PDF of the chart, 3 up, ready for you to print, a PNG image to use on PowerPoint (show it to the congregation and encourage them to look it over and pray about it) and an editable MS Publisher file of the chart. You probably don't want to modify the chart, but you may want to change the header to personalize it for your church.

The files can be accessed below the images.  Again a HUGE thank you to Gordon! You've blessed us all!!!

Committment Card Image

To access the files click on the link, download the ZIP file and SAVE IT to your desktop. Then just click on it to open the files. Remember you do have to have MS Publisher to open the files, but anyone should be able to use the PDFs and the PNG image files.

For the Commitment Card ZIP FILE, click here.

For the Tithe Card ZIP FILE, click here.