Effective Church Communications

Updated Senior Newsletter and why you should have a newsletter for the Seniors Ministry in your church

8 June, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

In another article I shared a Senior Ministry Newsletter and here is an updated version of it. But even more important than the additional design are the reasons given below as to why creating a newsletter for Seniors is incredibly important for your church.

Reasons why you should have a newsletter for the Senior Ministry in your church

Not only is it the right thing to do and a Biblical command to care for the older members of our church, but it is also a fact that in most churches the older members are the primary ones who support the church ﬁnancially.
However, they are less likely to give generously if they don’t feel they are a signiﬁcant part of the church. A newsletter like this that not only is useful to create a community for seniors, but it informs them about ministries in the church and invites them to become involved.
You need to print this out because overall, most seniors, even if they have a computer, prefer to read material like newsletters (and bulletins and information from the church) in a print format.
Just because you print this doesn’t mean you ignore technology. You can also create a PDF version of this publication to post online. This particular layout works well online because in PDF format you don’t have to scroll up and down as you do in a multi-column newsletter layout.
This simple layout can be adapted to create newsletters for any ministry in the church— Women’s, Men’s, Children’s, Missions. They are also projects that ministry members can do themselves. Challenge your church ministry leaders to increase their communications and THEY WILL see an increase in involvement. People do not give to, volunteer, or pray for ministries that they know little or nothing about.

Below are images of the two pages of the revised design and following is the link to download the MS Publisher Template file.

To download the ZIP file that has the MS Publisher file for this newsletter, click the following link: Senior Newsletter Revised Design

Newsletter advice: long or short; sermon in them or seeker-friendly?

8 June, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Seeking church communications feedback — Seeking feedback, trying different lengths and contents is all part of ministering to your people with your church communications.

A question came in from a church business administrator: “For our church newsletters, should it contain long articles or short ones, sermons or not, should it be visitor friendly?” It’s a great question and one that should be answered as you plan the content for your church or ministry newsletter. We’ll explore the options for answering it in this article.

(Update note: I wrote this article originally for written newsletters, but the advice following applies equally well to online newsletters, though you may want to start some of the articles in the online newsletter and continue longer material on your website.)

Long articles or short?

The answer to that part of the questions isn’t as obvious as it might seem. I think initially, with our busy schedules today many people would instinctively answer “SHORT!” Almost no one complains that newsletter articles are too short.

But in consideration of length there are a number of factors to consider:

Newsletters contain a variety of material. Some is vision-casting from the senior pastor, some teaching, some history or story-telling, some news, notes and announcements.
More important than setting an arbitrary length, the length of the articles or announcements in your newsletter material should be appropriate to the topic. For example, if the senior pastor is explaining the vision of the church, inspiring members for outreach or missions, setting a new direction or challenging for a building campaign, that piece might need a page or two.
Currently there is a growing popularity of "long-form", meaning simply longer length articles. Particularly when you do an online version of your newsletter, you might add additional information, background, commentary, or links on a topic. Many of the major newspapers today (the New York Times is a primary example) and have found this extremely popular. While waiting, commuting, or tired of playing games, people will often read longer articles on their mobile devices.
Announcements of re-occurring events usually do not need long, lengthy explanations on why people should attend. Short, catchy announcements designed what I call “want-ad style” and that contain the name of the sponsoring person or group, purpose, starting and ending time, full contact information, cost and directions to get there and if child care is provided are what is needed.
At the same time, even more lengthy material that takes a page or two can be made more visually interesting by breaking it into sections with headers, summarizing key facts in a sidebar, pulling out interesting or key quotes and highlighting them, adding a picture and caption. A page or two with these visual elements integrated into the story will be read more easily than a solid page or two of text with no breaks.

Sermons or not in your newsletters? Seeker-Friendly or not?

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SIX TIPS to chose paper wisely for the greatest church communication impact

3 October, 2016 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Paper choices for church communications — It's easy to get buried with paper choices for your church communications, but this article will help you choose what is most effective.

As we go into the holiday season, many churches are tempted to use colored papers to print brochures, flyers, newsletters and other materials. Lots of orange, brown, green and red paper will be used and though these colors might be appropriate to the season, they may not be the best to get across your message and help people show up to your events. Following are SIX TIPS on paper choice for the holiday season and year round to make for more effective church communications.

#1 Remember Readability

The most important aspect of the paper you use is how well it contributes to the readability of your newsletter or other communication. If people can't read your message nothing else really matters.

People don’t judge a holiday communication based on how fancy the paper is, what color it is or if it is slick or not. What matters is how easy is it to read. If a publication is difficult to read, today’s busy, stressed out readers will simply put it aside and won’t read it.

With these comments in mind, let's look in more detail on:

Paper opacity
Paper color
Publication reproduction method

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Great information kiosk—wish more churches had one like it!

15 August, 2016 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Many churches do incredible things to communicate and I saw a fantastic one a few days ago I couldn't wait to share with you--this is a church information kiosk at New Life Community Church In Pismo Beach, CA. My husband and I attended the Global Leadership Summit at that site. To the left is what it looks like.