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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How to offer a fun and functional Church Photo Booth for your members

13 October, 2015 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Photo Booth ideas for Churches
Photo Booths are no only fun for your church, but are a great outreach tool when the photos are shared.

by Katy Dunigan, Guest Writer

Whether it’s a special holiday service or an average Sunday in September, many families attend church together as a unit—perhaps dressed a little nicer than they do on a regular weekday. This creates a wonderful opportunity to capture a meaningful and fun family photo.

Church staff can use this time as an effective way to collect photos of church members when putting together a church directory or a church photo album, but beyond the practical uses, a photo booth can create a powerful ministry opportunity as well.

How many members will share their family photos on social media pages, perhaps send it as their Christmas card, or place it in their office at work? Maybe many! Each photo’s post or placement opens the door to conversations with peers, colleagues and friends about your church, the member’s faith and family, and Christ’s grace and forgiveness.

We might think of it as just a photo opportunity, but it could very well create a witness opportunity as well!

Thinking about putting together a photo booth at your church? Go for it!

Here are some basic How To Photo Booth Tips and Suggestions to get you started.

Form a Volunteer Team

Photo booths offer a great opportunity to involve several members in a fun and worthwhile project.  Make sure you have these team members to help you:

  • a creative
  • an organizer
  • a photographer
  • a processor

Creative Team Member Tasks

Remind this team member that Photo Booths don’t have to be complicated. They can be as simple as a well-placed chair, some flowers, a pretty window, or maybe an attractive outdoor spot. Simply create a nice setting that lets your members capture a special moment, share an important message, or tell a story.

Organizer Team Member Tasks

In the days or weeks prior to the photo booth event, send out notices (in both print and digital formats) to your members, inviting them to participate! Remind them to come early or stay late for a fun photo opportunity!

In most cases, people want to participate and are just waiting for an invitation. Be sure you are clear about the times the booth will be available, suggestions on what to wear, and if they can bring their own props.

Photographer Team Member Tasks

You have choices on how you want to get the photographs, here are the options this team member should have in place:

  • You might prefer that all photos be taken by a photographer, which is fine to do.
  • Some participants might prefer to take their own photos because selfies create fun and original pictures, but not everyone carries smartphones with good cameras in them.
  • Make sure a volunteer photographer with a camera is ready when needed if you primarily do selfies.

Processor Team Member Tasks

To prevent confusion, be sure to put a process in place. The process needs to communicate:

  • Why you are offering a church photo booth
  • Where the line starts at the photo booth
  • How members can get copies of the photos, if they don’t take selfies.
  • Suggestions for posting the pictures on social media & share where the photo was taken. This is a great way to highlight your church and church community.

Have Fun

Remember, you’re building community among your members and making great memories too, be sure to have fun doing both. All of your volunteers are responsible for ensuring this is a fun event, so encourage them to keep a happy, welcoming, relaxed attitude.

If done correctly, your photo booth will be a big hit and your event a big success.

Make a photo booth available as often as you like. Use those opportunities to update photos in your church member directory, but remember to change the themes to fit the seasons and always remember to keep it functional and fun!

For additional photo booth ideas and information, please visit our Pinterest site:

https://www.pinterest.com/CTRNONLINE/church-directory-photo-booth/

Katy Dunigan is the Marketing Coordinator for onlinechurchdirectory.com and serves on several United Methodist leaderships teams in the Southwest Indiana District.  She is also an active member of the #chsocm community on Twitter and Facebook and is a contributing author for several church communication websites, newsletters and books.

 

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Filed Under: Church Outreach and Marketing, Seasonal communication strategies Tagged With: church photo booth, ministry photo booth, photo booths for churches

We all know we should invite our friends to church—here’s how

30 August, 2015 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Every Christian knows they should be sharing their faith. Or at least inviting our friends to church. For many a consistent murmur of guilt is ever-present in the back of your mind, sometimes loudly, sometimes softly.

We can’t escape it. We know the Great Commission wasn’t just written to pastors and missionaries, though we wish it were.

What to do?

A wonderful solution to this spiritual challenge is Back to Church Sunday (in the U.S. September 20, 2015). Though this particular Sunday is a day that has been made a national time to invite people to church with support by various denominations and Outreach.com, http://backtochurch.com/, the ideas and challenges presented aren’t confined to this one day on the calendar.

The summary idea is that this Sunday or any other you choose to emphasize inviting provides provides a focus and tools to motivate people to be obedient to Jesus and to share his love.

Following are a couple of very short motivational videos on Back to Church Sunday and Biblical Encouragements to inspire you to get involved. Following them are links to many more resources on this site that provide the tools to equip your church to participate.

Invitation Cards for Back to Church Sunday

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2014/09/invitation-cards-for-back-to-church-sunday/

The link above goes to the invitation cards pictured in the video.

Come back to church, two videos

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/08/come-back-to-church-two-videos/

PLEASE check this out, it has one of my very favorite videos here on inviting a stranger to church, plus an older video, but still an EXTREMELY important one about Invitation Cards and how essential they are for year-round inviting.

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Filed Under: Church Invitation Cards, Church Outreach and Marketing, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: a season of inviting, back to church Sunday, Church Invitation Cards, church outreach, evangelism tools, free church invitation card

Don’t judge, INVITE! a great video and challenge

7 September, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

I LOVE THIS! We can preach and preach to encourage our people to invite people to church, but sometimes nothing beats a motivational video. One little note . . . . the impact wouldn't have been nearly so powerful had it not ended with one person sharing a piece of paper with an invitation on it!

Check out the video and below it is a link to a resource that will help you create invitations.

Invitation Cards are great tools to have for times like this

Check out the video at this link that will illustrate and train you in how to use invitation cards effectively:

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2010/04/church-invitation-cards/

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Filed Under: Church Invitation Cards, Church Outreach and Marketing

How to create Word Pictures with meaning instead of the banal, trivial, and mostly useless content of most of them

11 June, 2014 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Only one life--live it for Christ
You don't have to pass on useless and trite sayings online--create ones from Scripture or worthy sayings and help people grow in the Lord!

First a rant about the clutter of word images online, and why I created the training videos and images that follow for you to share:

Word pictures, inspirational sayings, wise and funny quotes are all over the internet. I imagine your Facebook feed and every other social media site you visit is full of them. A few from my Facebook feed today.......

I have lost my mind and am making no effort to look for it.

Hey you, yes you. Stop being unhappy with yourself. You are perfect.

Making a hundred friends is not a miracle. The miracle is to make a single friend who will stand by your side even when hundreds are against you.

Though these sentiments may have a tiny modicum of humor or inspiration in them, at best they are dryer dust to the mind--useless fluff that clogs coherent thinking processes. Some are flat-out biblically wrong and dangerous thinking for a Christian who wants to grow in Christ.

For example, the many variations of "We are perfect," constantly come up to assure us it's OK to eat too much, be mean if we feel like it, and continue in whatever other habit we know we ought to change. We aren't perfect. Never will be in this life. Can't hope for it ever without our perfect Savior. And our Savior expects us to work on our sanctification. Even if many of the quotes are not as blatantly false from a biblical perspective, they certainly do not fit into the command to think about "whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. (Phil.4:8, NIV) To compound the challenges, not only do people read this junk, but they comment on it, praise it, and pass it on to others.

Are there no alternatives?

That's the question I asked myself and of course there are, but there needs to be more and I wanted to come up with a way for people to create Word Pictures like these easily and to post worthwhile and true thoughts (many great quotes from Christian writers) and Bible passages. After trying various ways to create these, and there are many, the one I liked the best, is to create them using PicMonkey. I like this program because it has the ability to create good-looking backgrounds and put great-looking type on them easily and cheaply (for free if you don't mind some advertising on the system). Here are some Word Pictures I created using this method. The following slide show will advance itself or you can click-through it more quickly.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

After learning this, I want to pass on the process and the images to you

Three things follow: 1. An intro video about Word Pictures and a challenge for church communications to create ones that are worthwhile 2. A video that shows how to create the Word Pictures using http://www.picmonkey.com, an odd little program with lots of power. 3. A zip file that has all the Word Pictures in the slide show above that can be used in print and online in social media.

Finally to the videos and the downloadable images:

Intro video to How to Create Word Pictures   The following video that shows how to create Word Pictures with Pic Monkey and a downloadable file of the Word Pictures from the slide show above is for Effective Church Communication Members:

Video of How to Create Word Pictures

Word Picture images for you to download

The following images, plus all the others in the gallery above are available in the ZIP file at the end of the article. They are large, hi-res jpg images (they don't look hi-res in the gallery below, but they are) and you can use them in all your print and online creations.

Our God is a Sun & Shield
Our God is a Sun & Shield
Only one life--make it count
Only one life–make it count
The JOY of the Lord is your Strength
The JOY of the Lord is your Strength
Open our eyes!
Open our eyes!

To download the ZIP FILE, CLICK HERE. Save the file to your computer, and click to open. You can use these images in print or digital communications.

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Filed Under: Church Outreach and Marketing Tagged With: Christian Quotes, how to use PicMonkey, Quotable images, Scripture quotes, Word Art, worthy communications

Website links to help visitors explore the Christian faith

7 November, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Search for answers about Christianity
The Christian faith is worth exploring and here are some resources that will help you do it.

This page has links to explain the Christian faith, the person of Jesus, and that help seekers explore what it's all about. In our post-Christian world, we want to make sure that when we challenge people to make a decision to trust Jesus as Savior that they know what it means.

There are many other sites that are very useful in clarifying the Christian faith—check out recommendations from friends and your denominations. PLEASE add any you have found useful in the comments section below.

But whatever resources you use, please use links like this on your website, your bulletins, newsletters and on your outreach communications.

Even if they only make a brief connection with your church at a special event, give seekers opportunities to explore the Christian faith, Links like this could change their eternal destiny.

Websites for exploring the Christian faith: [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Bible & Faith Resources, Christianity defined, Church Outreach and Marketing, Discipleship and Christian Maturity, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: evangelism communications, website links for seekers, what it means to trust Jesus

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