Challenges, commentary, and free templates to help churches create communications that help people come to know Jesus as Savior and grow to mature disciples.

In other words, to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Effective Church Communications

Timeless training from Yvon Prehn to help churches create communications that will enable them to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

For GIVING TUESDAY—my gift to YOU—dozens of FREE CHRISTMAS Templates!!!!! No strings attached…..really FREE

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Free Christmas Templates
Just one of the dozens of free Christmas Templates for you to download and use.

Giving Tuesday was created when two organizations, the 92nd Street Y and the United Nations Foundation came together in 2012, about a month before that year's Thanksgiving. Their intention was to set aside a day that was all about celebrating the generosity of giving, a great American tradition.

I do love the idea and the motivation behind it, but I must admit many of the ministry requests for giving to various organizations that I support that came in the midst of the crush of demands for Black Friday often felt like one more case of financial badgering. I know that isn't true. I'm glad many ministries I support double donations on Giving Tuesday.

I understand the need to raise funds whenever possible.  When I was senior editor at both Compassion International and Young Life, I wrote many of those fund-raising appeals myself.

I thought about doing a plea for support for the Effective Church Communications Ministry.

But I just couldn't. Then I realized......

This is an opportunity for me to GIVE to YOU!

It isn't anything new really, just a reminder of the many TEMPLATES and especially the Christmas ones I have for all of you for FREE!

Some of you have discovered these, but many of you are new to the site. We've had lots of new sign-ups recently (WELCOME!) and I thought I'd sent out this post telling you about them. They are totally FREE. They are not a situation of, "try this one and then here is the real cost." No, these are truly FREE.

We have lots of different ones from some of the cards illustrated earlier on this page, to this one, which is my favorite. It can be used as a postcard or bulletin insert or shared through social media. It reminds us that Jesus is the reason for the Season by citing the words of the Nicene Creed.

More than just pretty templates—Templates with a ministry purpose

The templates from Effective Church Communications aren't only designed to look good and be useful, but they are templates with a well-defined ministry purpose. For example, the collection of Christmas Templates are designed to take people from outside the church to welcome them to a Christmas activity, to invite them back, and enable them to consider Jesus (that's in the template set "Because He didn't stay a baby")

To expand and illustrate more what I mean by the templates having a ministry purpose, I created a VIDEO that explains why ECC Templates are unique and how they can help you.

VIDEO: ECC TEMPLATES and an overview of FREE CHRISTMAS TEMPLATES

PLEASE Share these resources

The Templates, Christmas and otherwise really are free and very easy to use. They are in PDF and MS Publisher format and can all be printed either in your church or using online or other printers. Please pass them on to any and all churches who could benefit from them.

Just CLICK HERE to go to them.

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For Giving Tuesday itself, here is a source for free images about it: Free images for Giving Tuesday

 

 

Don’t let August vacations include times away from church–FREE POSTCARD reminders to help

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Summer postcard
A little reminder may be all someone needs to get them to return to church instead of taking a vacation from it!

August is the last month of vacation for many and in many churches the time when attendance drops to an all-time low.

Though understandable, sometimes all people need is a reminder that God doesn't take a vacation and neither does the church. The set of postcards here are part of a FREE ZIP file (link below the images) that you could send out to people who perhaps have been sporadic in their attendance during the summer. The cards are upbeat and encouraging and an easy way to let people know you are thinking about them.

You could also make up extra cards for members of the congregation to address and send to friends that they know may have missed church in the summer.

The FREE ZIP file below the images has ready-to-print PDFs of the cards, an editable MS Publisher file, and images of the cards you could use on your website or email newsletters.

Click the following link to download the cards above: SUMMER POSTCARDS church reminder

Colorful, fun church reminder postcards for Summer

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Summer church reminder postcards
Remind people in fun ways about what is going on at church this summer with these cards.

A light touch, a gentle reminder is often all that is needed to let people know what is going on at church during the summer and to help you do that, I revised some summer postcards I made with www.tagxedo.com, a fun site you can use to create word cloud images that you can then place into any publication you are working on.

The cards below were designed as reminders or notes that you can send out to remind people of what is going on at the church. Make them up for Sunday School Teachers, Small Group Leaders and Pastors to write a few notes a day to various church members. Summer is time for fun, but the best of times are often with our church families and these cards can remind people of that.

Below the illustration of the cards is a downloadable ZIP file that has ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

To download the ZIP file for the images above, click the following link: Fun Summer postcards

 

Print and Digital—More Powerful Together! videos and studies to show you why

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Print and Digital E-book, more powerful together! by Yvon Prehn
If your want people to respond to your communications, use every tool you can!

People are busy, stressed, and time-starved—what is the best way to reach them? Many voices would answer "SOCIAL MEDIA!"

But if that is the answer, why aren't our churches filled and every event well-attended, when social media costs almost nothing to produce and we can push it out to the world?

Part of the problem could be that we have confused the popularity of social media with effectiveness (source for this idea in the video below). We assume social media is the way most people communicate today, and though that idea is wildly incorrect for many congregations, even among those who do live glued to a Twitter feed, don't necessarily take action on what they see on social media.

What follows isn't about bashing social media

Far from it--keep tweeting, Facebooking, Pinning and Instagramming, as the Apostle Paul said, "we need to become all things to all people to win some" (1 Cor 9:22).

But consider re-introducing PRINT into a more significant place in your church communication mix. As you'll see a number of communication and marketing studies show this is the most effective way to get an audience to respond to your message.

Below are 2 videos--one a more lengthy teaching one about the effectiveness of combining print and digital for any non-profit group and the second one is a series of slides with thought provoking quotes and commentary.

Below each of them are handouts of the presentation.

Below both is PDF e-book that has the quotes, studies listed and more.

Why here, now and free to all?

As I've been working on Fall and Christmas communications I've realized that unless you understand some of the key points in the material that follows your fall outreach will not be as successful as it could or should be.

Either one of the videos would make an excellent discussion topic for your next staff meeting because communication ministry is the foundation of the success of many ministries in the church and it is far more difficult today than it was in the past when you only needed to worry about how many times you printed an announcement in the bulletin.

I'm working on a longer class and book on this topic, but I felt it was too important not to get out now what I did have ready.


CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF of NOTES for the video above: Print & Digital More Powerful Together HANDOUTS


CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE PDF of NOTES for the video above: Slide Show of Print and Digital Quotes, HANDOUTS

Print and Digital E-book, more powerful together! by Yvon Prehn
Click on the image to download a copy of this e-book.

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