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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One Mother’s Prayer, free sample and for ECC Members the text and download link

24 April, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

One Mother's Prayer
This piece has challenged and changed lives--CLICK on the image to download your copy.

This short piece, One Mother's Prayer, has probably been impacted more people than anything else I've written. It is the simple, but true story of a young man whose life was going very wrong, whose Mother prayed and his life changed.

It was first published in Today's Christian Woman magazine. It was repeated in their Best of Ten Years of writings, it has been reprinted and republished all over the world, and it continues to bring tears to the eyes of any group I read it to. You are free to use it any way you want and share it however you want.

It is useful for Mother's Day, for Moms in Touch and other prayer ministries and to give out in Children's ministries.

This sample PDF if free to download.You can click here or on the image to download it.

ECC Members will get the all of the additional PDF formats: 2 more 8 1/2 by 11 plus 4 other versions on half sheet size plus the jpgs of the larger files and an MS Word text file if you want to create your own publication. The text file and the link to all the other downloads is after the images below. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Mother's Day, Women's Ministry Tagged With: Mom's in touch prayer, Mother's Day, Mothers Day Church celebration, Mothers praying, One Mothers Prayer, Prayers for Children

Bulletin Inserts: Back-to-School Backpack Ministry, ways to involve your congregation

4 August, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Backpack Image 1
Back-to-school, Backpack Ministries are a fantastic way to care for the children of your community. This article and the one linked to it provide ideas for church bulletin inserts that will communicate your message to the congregation.

Back to School was always a wonderful time of year for me, but for many kids, it can be a time of sadness if they don't have what they need. This is a simple, but powerful ministry your church can do. Below is the introduction to the church bulletins:

Back-to-School Backpack
Ministry
—an opportunity to bring joy to needy kids

School is about to start and it’s a time of excitement, fun, and discovery for many children. But for some children, it means showing up at school without crayons or pencils, notebooks or glue, without the supplies they need. Sadly today, many parents can’t pay for them and schools are unable to provide them.

But the body of Christ can. Our church has a ministry where we provide filled backpacks to little kids who need them.

We have four ways you can help:
......and the inserts go on to give specific advice

Last year's bulletin inserts are free CLICK HERE to go to them.

For a personal article on the meaning of this ministry to me, CLICK HERE.

This year, samples for inspiration and editable files

The samples on this page are new versions of the Bulletin Inserts. At the bottom of this page is a link to a ZIP FILE.

The ZIP FILE contains:

  • PDF ready-to-print files of the inserts
  • MS Publisher editable files
  • MS Word text file if you want to create your own
  • PNG low-res images if you want to promote them on your website
  • JPG hi-res images if you want to print them

Below is the Free ZIP FILE --simply click on it, save on your hard drive, click to open and use as you will!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE ZIP FILE

Last year's bulletin inserts are free CLICK HERE to go to them.

For a personal article on the meaning of this ministry to me, CLICK HERE.

For the bulletin inserts in the video on Sales Tips for Children's Shoe Box, CLICK HERE.

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Church Bulletins, Missionary or support communications Tagged With: back to shool ministry, backpack ministry, Backpack outreach, Children's ministry, church bulletin inserts

Back-to-School Backpack Ministry, church communication resources to motivate your congregation

29 July, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 3 Comments

Back-to-School  is a time with great outreach potential. Backpack Ministry, where your church assembles and gives children backpacks filled with school supplies, now more than ever, is a greatly needed ministry. Children in homeless shelters, kids whose parents have lost their jobs, or whose jobs have been cut back, many of them face a sad and embarrassing time—to be forced to go to school without the required supplies their parents can't pay for and the schools don't provide.

To keep that from happening to any little child in your community, below are PDFs of bulletin inserts (two styles, same content) you can download and print up for your church with the specific details for your church on the backside. First are some links for websites that will give you additional ideas not only on Backpack Ministries for this time of year, but year-round for needy children.

Many families need help on a continuing basis. These backpacks aren’t filled with school supplies, but with food for children who may not eat on the weekend without help. Check out churches in your area who may do this and if none do, consider starting that ministry at your church.

May the Lord burn into our hearts the needs of children and make us motivated to meet those needs. May the Lord give you, the church communicator, the passion, power and prayers to create communications that will link needs with resources.

You may freely download, copy, share, use the following inserts in any way you want.

Backpack Ministry Bulletin Insert, click here to download PDF

 

 

For another set of designs, PLUS a downloadable ZIP FILE of editable MS Publisher files of the new designs, jpg, png and a text file of the content CLICK HERE

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Filed Under: Back-to-School, Children's ministry, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: back-to-school, backpack ministry, Children's ministry, church outreach, Communications, yvon prehn

Newsletters: from boring and bragging to outstanding outreach

31 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Whether you create your church newsletter on paper, in electronic format or both, periodically, take time to restructure it in ways that turn it from an often dreaded publication chore into one of your most powerful outreach tools. You can do this by evaluating your mission and then identifying your niche ministry targets and creating newsletters specifically for them.

Evaluate your mission

Creating and producing newsletters is extremely costly both in terms of people hours and the money it takes to create, reproduce and send them out. With this in mind it is important to take time to evaluate why you are producing your ministry newsletters.

That “WHY” comes out loud and clear in every issue you produce whether you intend to or not.

For ineffective church newsletters the biggest WHY that often comes out is that the church is doing the newsletter for what I call “family bragamony” purposes. These are publications that only make sense to you if you are part of the current church family. They are primarily focused on how great the people are who are already attending the church and have the effect of saying (even though this is never intended) “this is an insider group, newcomers aren’t welcome.”

If you doubt that is true, look at your newsletter. Do you have contact phone numbers or emails by every event? Do you have announcements like these:  “Men’s Bible study at our usual location.”  “Youth Group, same time, same place!” “The Pot Luck will be great as always—ya’ll come!”

A newcomer has no idea what you are talking about.

While reporting on church family news and giving updates is important, we might want to add evangelism and outreach as additional reasons WHY we do the publication.

This isn’t difficult to do. We can add an outreach emphasis simply by adding an invitation to newcomers. For example, just add something like:

All events of  Our Church are open to EVERYONE!

Please join us if you are new or perhaps have been around a long time, but mostly just attended Sunday mornings.

Each event has a contact phone number and email address and we welcome your questions and would love to tell you more.

One powerful outreach tool— be sure each activity from children’s and youth events to home Bible studies has a contact phone number and email for more information. It’s simple, but essential and sadly, so often left out.

Identify your niche targets and create publications specifically for them

One of the most exciting trends I have seen as I travel around North America teaching communication and marketing seminars to churches is the creation of niche newsletters.

All successful marketing theory tells us that the more narrowly we can niche (divide, segment) our audience into parts interested in the same thing, the more successful our marketing will be. The way this translates into the church is that it can be helpful in addition to doing an overall church newsletter to decide what more narrow audience you want to focus on and reach in your community. Then do a newsletter specifically for them.

Examples of niche newsletters

I have seen some great examples of this in especially in niche newsletters designed for PARENTS of teenagers and children. Note I said PARENTS, not the kids themselves. You still need newsletter to tell the youth group what’s going on, but most churches do something like that. These are a separate publication because the churches who do them  realize that parents need lots of help today. The best ones target a specific age area: parents of grade school kids, high schoolers, etc.

The church creates a newsletter that reaches out to parents, encourages them, gives them helpful tips and ideas. In addition the church also offers resources from the church to help them: youth and children’s programs, mom’s morning out, whatever. It clearly invites everyone in the community to take advantage of these programs.

Another great niche newsletter I saw recently at a large church conference I was teaching at was a newsletter for married professional couples. It was full of chatty tips on how to find time for romance, how to communicate when both of you have a crazy schedule, etc. To be honest the graphics, the layout, the whole “design” of the publication was pretty bad if I was evaluating it from a “design” standpoint. Did I care? NO! I snatched one right up and read every word.

These sorts of publications can be incredibly powerful outreach tools. They position the church as a resource for help; the pastors as resource people and they provide solutions to real-life problems. Which is easier to invite someone to church or to say, “I really found this article helpful with my kids. I think you’ll enjoy it”?

Think through the niche groups in your church—parents of  kids and teens and married couples at all sorts of life stages, seniors—then find some of the spiritually mature folks in that group and ask them to put together a newsletter to help others. Don’t worry about layout (though Microsoft Publisher has great newsletter templates that are easy to use), the content and heart in the publication is what is most important.

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Church Newsletters Tagged With: church newsletter, church newsletters, church outreach, Communications, Email newsletters, niche newsletters, yvon prehn

The importance of involving Children in Easter outreach (don’t just entertain them)

7 March, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Strategy for Children's events at Easter might consist of simple publications, but these simple publications can have far-reaching results in how they bring people to your Easter church service and how many return on an ongoing basis. Many people today will come to a church they feel is good for their children. They might not personally be interested but they want something wholesome for their kids. As many churches know this is often a wonderful way to eventually get the entire family involved.

To start, children's invitations to Easter events can and should be very different from the ones you send out to your community and that you give to adults. Many churches have wonderful activities for children at this time of year and children are never too young to learn how to be inviters.

The invitations here offer tools to help them do that.

Both invitations are one-quarter page size and are ready to print PDFs. They would work well-printed on light-weight card stock. A heavy paper would also work well. Make up lots of them and give them out to the children in your church.

Along with giving out the invitations, this is a great time to teach children that church events are not just times to enjoy for themselves. Church events are opportunities to introduce their friends to the church and to Jesus.

Join us for Easter Fun InvitationWhen children invite their friends, when they see families come who have never been to church, when they see the people at your church welcome and enfold visitors and when they see their friends come to know Jesus—these experiences will teach them the joy of evangelism in a practical, experiential way.

No matter how wonderful your children's program for Easter, you don't want people to experience one Sunday and never come back.

You need to give them something as they leave your church or children's program that lets them know what else you have going on and invites them to return. No matter how impressed they were or how much the like you, you need to give them the concrete details that will actually link them to your church events.

Bunny Return Invitation
A Bulletin insert or giveaway to remind people to come back to your children's program after Easter.

This ready-to-print PDF can be personalized on the back with information specific to your church. Please be sure to include your website and be sure that on it you have detailed information about your children's program and contact information if people need more information.

Intentional work will result in eternal life-changes

It is a lot of work to do all that needs to be done in your children's ministry at Easter, but taking the time to intentionally involve the children in inviting and to intentionally create complete follow-up materials will result in eternal life-changes for the people who respond to Jesus through your hard work.

In closing I want to emphasize how important it is that you involve the children of your church in the inviting process. It is so easy for kids to think that Easter is all about the goodies that they are going to get and it is so easy for parent's to expect the church to offer a good time for their children. That attitude misses the point of Easter. Please take the time to teach your children to give as Jesus gave and to take the time to invite their friends to Easter events at your church.

All of these are available in ready-to-print PDFs.

Below is the link to it.

Book Cover For Easter PDFs
This booklet has 40 pages of ready-to-print Easter communications. It is free for ECC MEMBERS.

To download the PDF collection (the kids stuff is near the end), click on the following link: #1 Easter 2010 PDFs COMPLETE

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Easter Tagged With: Children's ministry, Communications, Easter, Easter bulletin insert, Easter for children, Easter invitation, yvon prehn

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Link to Easter Templates of all sorts

Seasonal Templates

  • OVERVIEW of TEMPLATES for Church Communicators, please read first
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Misc. Church Communications Templates

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FREE Bible Verses and Sayings in both print and social media format at Bible805Images.com
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