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.
  • Home
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES

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

Another version of a Senior's Newsletter for churches, plus why it is so important to create these.

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

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Senior's Ministry Tagged With: church and seniors, Newsletter template in MS Publisher, senior ministry in church, Seniors ministry newsletters

Easy, 2-Page Senior Newsletter Template in MS Publisher

8 June, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.
This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.

In expanding our TEMPLATE section, I found this very useful template for a 2-page Senior Newsletter in our archives. Below is the template, plus a short video on how I put it together. The video is several years old and uses an older version of MS Publisher. I opened the template in MS Publisher 2016 and saved it in that version and that worked great.

Many senior adults in churches still prefer print and creating a newsletter for them is not difficult to do. Many seniors today are fit and active and can contribute a lot to the church if they know what is going on. A print newsletter can greatly help.

This newsletter template has typeface size, line-spacing, line length and boxed materials all optimized for seniors. Though the layout here is designed for seniors, it could work well for many other types of newsletters. When designing publications for seniors, a few small changes can make it much more readable and is very easy to do, as the video shows.

Following are the two pages of the Template, then a video that shows how and why it was created and below them the link to download the Template.

The video below shows an older version of MS Publisher, but the basic tasks are the same.

To download the Template for a Newsletter for Seniors, click the following link: MS Pub Template for Senior Newsletter

For a revised and updated version of this template: CLICK HERE

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Senior's Ministry Tagged With: Church newsletter for seniors, MS Publisher newsletter for seniors, print newsletter for seniors, Seniors newsletter for churches

Why and how to create a newsletter for Seniors

16 July, 2013 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Senior communication
Seniors are a vital part of your church--give them communications that challenge them!

Answering the questions you are asking is one of my primary purposes in creating the content for this website and the article here and the video linked to it were prompted both by the question below that deals strictly with newsletters for seniors and several questions I've had lately about typography.

The Question:

What is the best way to send at least a monthly newsletter out to an older congregation when some don't think it is worth the expense, and others complain that we are not communicating with all our members, but only those that show up in a given week? Not everyone uses email, or texts because of the age of the congregation.

There are really several questions intertwined here, which is what makes it difficult to answer. The first part is somewhat simple and straight forward. The second part is a little more challenging.

Let me reword each part slightly to be able to handle them clearly.

Part # 1 of the question:  What is the best way to send out a monthly newsletter to an older congregation when not all of them use email or text?

This part is easy to answer, though it can be challenging to carry out, because there is no one best way. We live in a time of both/and, not either/or in all of our communications. Though it would make our church communication lives so much easier if we could create communications for any one group, one way, it doesn't work that way anymore.

To communicate effectively to an older congregation with a newsletter (which is an excellent communication tool) the best way to do it is to do one version in print and then another online. Again, that is probably not what most people want to hear, because it seems like extra work, but if you do it in the way suggested below it doesn't need to be difficult. Here are some tips on that: [Read more...]

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Senior's Ministry Tagged With: how to communicate to seniors, senior newsletter, senior publications

Template for Senior Newsletter

16 July, 2013 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.
This newsletter in a MS Publisher template for a newsletter for Seniors.

When designing publications for seniors, a few small changes can make it much more readable.

This newsletter template has typeface size, line-spacing, line length and boxed materials all optimized for seniors. Though the layout here is designed for seniors, it could work well for many other types of newsletters.

It it available as an MS Publisher template for Effective Church Communication Members. You must have MS Publisher to open and use it.

[mepr-show if="rule: 23971"]

 

CLICK HERE to download it.

[/mepr-show]

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Senior's Ministry Tagged With: church communications for seniors, newsletter for seniors, senior communications, template for senior newsletter

Don't be too quick to do away with your TV ministry

8 November, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Recently I heard about a church that wanted to discontinue its television ministry. Though they acknowledged it was watched primarily by the elderly and shut-in, they did not feel it was cost-effective any longer. They wanted to direct all the funds to their internet ministry.  The situation prompted me to remember....

More than a lifetime ago for my nephew who is grown, married, and has a son of his own, I was religion reporter for the Colorado Springs SUN newspaper. In this Vatican of America, home to over 100 Christian organizations, reporting on religion involved much more than retelling stories about the variety of pies at the local church supper. Sometimes I got to interview interesting people in the Christian world and one week my assignment was to interview Robert Schuller.

I was ready for it, with what in my mind were insightful questions that would confirm my pre-determined opinion and expose what a disgrace he was to the Christian faith. I had earlier come to that conclusion as a reader of the Wittenberg Door, a sort of counter-culture Christian magazine of the 1970's, that had recently featured an article on the financial excesses of the building of the Crystal Cathedral. Social justice for the poor was important to me and the article detailed how many hungry kids each pane of glass would feed and similar statistics on the equivalent mission's work that each part of the structure could fund.

{+}

I felt so self-righteous as I drove to the interview. Schuller started his church in a drive-in theater for goodness sakes. What kind of a pastor was that, I thought in the passionate judgementalism that comes from inexperience in real-world evangelism and the arrogant, ignorant authority of youth.

My editor told me I had to go to a bookstore where he was signing books and I could interview him when he was finished with the book signing. I got there and was directed to a chair near his book signing table and told I could wait there until he was finished. I'd called ahead, he had been signing books for hours already, it was late in the day, and I timed my arrival for what I assumed would be close to the time he'd finish. I was highly irritated and impatient when I saw the line out the door and around the block of people waiting to see him. This was going to take hours I grumbled, not quite quietly. Schuller must be tired, he'd been at it all day. I thought maybe he'd close it up. He had every right to big, mega-star preacher that he was.

He didn't. For almost three hours more I watched him sign books. His daughter was helping him. She would open the book and pass it to him. He didn't simply sign the book and push it to the waiting person. While his daughter got the new book, opened it and passed it over, he was totally focused on the people coming to him. For each one, he would pause, look  at the person, ask their name, chat a bit, sign the book. This is going to take forever at this rate, I realized.

Most of the people were not well-dressed. Many were senior citizens.

Again and again people would say, "You are my pastor, I don't know what I would do without you."

"I can't get to church," another would say, "But you encourage me."

Schuller would tell them it was his privilege to be their pastor. Sometimes he would stand up and give an elderly lady a hug. More than a few wanted their picture taken with him and he gladly obliged.

He never rushed anyone.  He would hold a trembling, older hand and pray. He prayed as if there was no one else in the room, except for that person in front of the book-signing table and the Lord. A large Latino family came up to the table and the father said something I couldn't hear to Schuller. Schuller stood up, walked around the table, laid his hands on the heads of the children and prayed.  He was blessing the children. He was their pastor. He took that responsibility very seriously.

I was trying very hard not to dissolve in tears. My assumptions melted. When it finally came time for our interview, I babbled and could only ask in a rather inane way why he did some of the seemingly outrageous things he did. He laughed and said, "People don't understand, I'm very conservative at heart, but the drive-in theater, the Crystal Cathedral,  is what the people need in Southern California. I'm their pastor. I do what I need to do to reach them for Jesus."

That's what we are all trying to do I realized then and now, simply trying to reach people for Jesus whether it's with a crystal cathedral or streaming video and podcasts. And though I'm all for technology (this is a blog after all), I think it would be a sad ministry mistake if the church that asked about about dropping their TV ministry (or any other church so enamored with current technology it forgets the older folks who don't even know the meaning of the term podcast) does drop its TV program. Yes, the web is a lot cheaper, a lot less trouble, but there are lots of folks who can't afford a computer with high speed access.

Sadly, cost-cutting probably means some churches will drop TV ministries. They will make self-justifying noises about how they will perhaps help the older folks, the poorer folks learn how to use the computer. May they will follow up and do it, maybe not.

But if they drop their TV service, I hope they tell their home-bound folks about Robert Schuller. He's still on TV, and I'm certain, still ready to be their pastor.

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications, Senior's Ministry Tagged With: church leadership, Multi-media, yvon prehn

Link to Easter Templates of all sorts

Seasonal Templates

  • OVERVIEW of TEMPLATES for Church Communicators, please read first
  • Valentine’s Day Templates
  • Lenten Templates
  • Easter Templates
  • Mother’s Day Templates
  • Father’s Day and Men’s Ministry Templates
  • Graduation Templates
  • Summer-related Templates
  • 4th of July, Canada Day, and GRACE for All Nations
  • See You At the Pole
  • Harvest Festival and Halloween Templates
  • Christmas Templates

Recent Posts

  • Social media images for Easter with challenging messages
  • From our vault: Everything you need for Easter: Templates, strategy, inspiration and encouragement for all your Easter communications
  • Why just “Come to Easter at Our Church” isn’t enough–FREE invitations with short, but powerful messages
  • ESSENTIAL Christmas Communication advice and free tools to implement it
  • A Free Template of the Christmas Story and short gospel presentation based on “Hark the Herald Angels Sing!”

Most read posts

  • Bulletin inserts or social media content for Father's Day; poetry, challenges, encouragements
  • A Prayer for Graduates, Free flyer, bulletin insert
  • An important reminder for Father’s Day that not all the men in your church are married Dads or Dads at all
  • Father's Day and Men's Ministry Templates
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES
  • Summer-related Templates
  • Q&A: How to report church financials in the weekly bulletin

Misc. Church Communications Templates

  • Church Connection Cards
  • Business/Invitation Card Templates
  • Back to Church for Kids in the Fall Templates
  • Church Bulletin Template
  • Volunteer and Encouragement Templates
  • 2-page Senior Adult Print Newsletter Template
  • Misc. Church Templates
FREE Bible Verses and Sayings in both print and social media format at Bible805Images.com
FREE Bible Verses and Sayings in both print and social media format at Bible805Images.com
  • Home
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in