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.

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? Or other seasonal outreach times? Try this Biblical alternative!

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Equip your people --free Easter invitations
You may not want to be this obvious, but when your people believe this and want to tell their friends, it's the most effective form of church outreach you can do.

Ed. note: This is a repeat of what I did last year, but it is incredibly important--because YOUR people are always the most important outreach tool you have. Though you can use every available tool you have and can afford to reach out to people, you don't need to do anything more than encourage and inspire YOUR congregation. 

The Podcast:

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? No sending out of postcards purchased from some national company that end up looking like the several other churches produce.

Hi I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

Today we'll talk about alternatives that you can do in-house--by your people that can accomplish much more.

As I mentioned in the intro—Far too often,  when a church is planning a major holiday outreach, a catalog of professionally produced postcards are selected, purchased and mailed out by the church. This can cost a lot of money, but sometimes a smaller church desperately wants to try something that might result in growth, so they spend money, that perhaps could have been used for other things and try it.  Statistically, as the companies will tell you a certain number ought to respond and though we rejoice if even one new person comes and ultimately comes to know Jesus as Savior because of that process, let me suggest another strategy that is more biblical, more successful, and that will probably save your church some money also.

A new strategy—Involve the whole church in seasonal communication

Everyone in the church needs to be involved for holiday and special events to be successful. Everyone needs to be part of and feel responsible for the outreach and growth of your church. When Jesus 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. 28:18-20)

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

He did not qualify these commands by saying:

"The command to be my witness and to reach your world is only for pastors and for the communication director of the church.”

No—outreach, witnessing, sharing your faith is every believer's task and seasonal celebrations and special events are a great way to be obedient to Jesus' command to be his witness and reach our world. The tools of technology available to us in ministry today make it possible for everyone in the church to have a significant part in the outreach of the entire church. [Read more...]

Summer Postcards to encourage church attendance

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Summer postcard to encourage people to attend church
Here is a FREE set of summer postcards to remind people to keep coming to church.

Here is a set of cards you can print to remind people to come to church during the summer.

The all the images were created as 1/4 page postcards in MS Publisher. I then made PDFs of them that are ready to print. I intentionally left a white margin around the images so if you print them in the church office and are a little off in your cutting them apart, you'll still be OK. If you get them professionally printed you might want to add run the image all the way to the edge of the template size the online companies provide. Below is a ZIP file with additional cards that contains:

[Read more...]

Church connection and prayer request cards—the foundation of all other church communications

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Connection Card book by Yvon Prehn
Prayer request cards and connection cards are a great way to connect with visitors and the needs of your congregation.

In church communications, we are often like Elijah-we expect God to speak through the thunder and storm. But what God often uses is similar to how he ultimately spoke to Elijah—through a still small voice.

The place of connection cards and prayer request cards in your church communication ministry is similar. They appear tiny and unimportant in the great scheme of multi-media communications available, but if you don't use them correctly, your church will probably not connect with visitors as well as you could if you used them.

Yes, there are lots of things churches do and communications churches create that connect with visitors, but helpful as most of them are, they fall short in one area. Churches have visitor centers, visitor pads, friendly people but......

Their short-coming is that all of them require the person to reach out to you.

You can't reach out to many visitors because you won't even know they are there. The ability for people to reach back to you, to share their contact information, their needs and questions is the function of  connection cards. The book Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people goes into detail on how to make the most of these essential ministry tool,  but this article will give you a good starting overview of their usefulness.

The purpose of these connection and prayer request cards

We don't create these cards to wow people with great graphic design or to give something for kids to scribble on during the church service. They are created to make a connection and connecting people to God and each other is what the church is all about. We must keep this importance in mind, because having people fill out connection cards is often viewed as an unnecessary interruption to the Sunday morning service and recording and dealing with them is often a bother on Monday. In contrast to these attitudes, if used properly, connection cards and prayer request cards can:

  • have a HUGE impact on growing your church
  • connect people to the life of your church
  • care for and address spiritual needs in practical ways
  • and help your people grow to spiritual maturity

You must move past looking at these cards as merely ministry routine paperwork and see them as essential tools to grow your church and change lives, if you are to make the most of them.

Why this is so important

[Read more...]

Why church business cards still work in the digital age, and the ministry benefit of anonymous cards

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Church Business Invitation Cards
Church Business and Ministry Invitation Cards can be powerful tools for outreach.

The values of business cards for churches and ministries is simply a reflection of their value in the world outside the church. Contrary to the opinions of some, social media and exchanging information via cell phone are not the most effective ways to reach out or connect.

This isn't simply my opinion, though I did feel a measure of irritation when I asked a potential business resource for their contact information and had to wait while she rummaged through a huge purse, found her phone and tapped her information to me.

Later, I couldn't find it as my recent calls had several numbers I didn't recognize and no idea which one was from her. How much easier it would have been to connect if she had given me a business card.

My bad attitude aside, following are excerpts from business sources of the continuing value of business cards. To make it relate to your work in the church I have some comments interspersed in the articles surrounded by [brackets like this] and I have some concluding comments at the end of the excerpts, plus links to FREE TEMPLATES for you to modify for your own church and ministry invitation cards.

Business cards put a face to business….business cards never have downtime, are always accessible, never have dead zones or Internet outages

Business cards still matter because our memory is bad, [I took out a harsher word] How many times have you met someone, spent most of the conversation thinking of what to say so you don't sound stupid, then promptly forget their name when it's all over?......A business card is a road map to opportunity [because it helps you remember what you weren't listening to because you were thinking about yourself. We do this in the best of situations.]

Shaun Caldwell explains on his LinkedIn blog that cards have certain perks:

Business cards never have downtime. They're always accessible, and never have dead zones or Internet outages. Your business card can be viewed no matter where you are located, and even times when cell phones and other devices must be turned off, such as on an airplane ride or in a hospital. Your business card is always working for you.

Writer Sarah Brooks at Successful Blog explains that it gives them something physical to refer to later should they decide they want your product or service:

Business cards put a face to a business – When meeting someone new, handing them your business card (preferably with your photo on it) will help keep your business in the back of their minds. Though they may not need your product or services today, there may come a time when they do, and hopefully they will be able to pull out your business card and call versus trying to remember your company name and searching.

From: https://lifehacker.com/why-business-cards-still-matter-and-how-to-effectively-1651222760

[Read more...]