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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Strategy for summer communications, remember visitors, delete hidden jargon, don’t host a money-divided event

15 June, 2024 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Summer Image
Your church will have visitors this summer, be sure your communications make sense to them.

LINK to FREE Summer Templates is at the end of this article

Looking ahead to planning summer communications, this summer your church will get lots of visitors, some of whom are friends of church members who might not regularly go to church, others may be from the surrounding community, and we can't forget out-of-town visitors. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out with the gospel and the love of Jesus and here are some strategic tips to help your communications make the most of this opportunity and some strong cautions about what not to do.

Jargon watch

We know we shouldn’t use church jargon terms like justification and sanctification in our church bulletin, web, or social media when we are writing for people visiting our church, but so much of our church jargon we don’t even see. Using acronyms we don't explain, talking about events that we do year after year and assume everyone knows about, insider jokes, assuming people know times and locations—all these things are confusing and unkind to someone visiting. We don't want our language to keep someone with a free night in our city to miss out on an opportunity to learn about Jesus.

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Blog, Fourth of July & Summer celebrations, Outreach Samples, Strategy, Strategy #2: Make the most of seasonal events—grow your church in numbers AND your people in discipleship Tagged With: communicate with visitors, summer communications, visitor friendly church communications

A Christmas letter you can use to share Jesus with your church, friends, and family

11 December, 2021 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

8.5 x 11 size Christmas Evangelism PDFs images_Page_2
A Christmas letter that explains the true meaning of Christmas is an essential outreach tool for your Christmas events.

We want our people to share their faith and this communication gives them an easy and non-threatening way to do it. One year, I posted the material below on our Adult Sunday School Class website and gave out a sample to our adult class. I printed the black and white image on a blue parchment-type paper. I encouraged them to go to the website and print it out for their Christmas letters and to share with friends. You are welcome to copy any or all of it and you can put them on your church or class website for your people to share.

Below the sample that I shared with my class are some color versions, spot-color separations, and versions that are in a tri-fold brochure format. All of these are available in two ZIP files at the end of this article. This letter/brochure or any other piece that clearly explains the reason for Christmas and the meaning of salvation in Jesus is essential for your church to share at all your holiday outreach events. Jesus came to save us from our sins, not to give us reasons to buy stuff or even so we can have wonderful family celebrations. We need to be clear about the true Christmas message to people who may only come to our church at this time of year--this piece gives you an easy and effective way to do it. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Christmas, Church Outreach and Marketing, Outreach Samples Tagged With: Christmas evangelism, Christmas letter copy, Christmas outreach

How to motivate your people to invite their friends to come to Christmas church events

1 November, 2021 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

You need to motivate your people
Our outreach at Christmas can literally change the eternal destiny of someone. This piece will motivate your people to be inviters.

NO printed or created invitation will do what a person can do. A friend inviting a friend is the most effective invitation. In addition, they can offer to bring their friend to the event, they can introduce them to people at church, and follow up later to invite them back.

Most of us would agree with all the previous statements, but how do we motivate our congregation to do that inviting? This flyer will help you do just that!

In addition to the motivation, the back of it has a place where people can write down a prayer list of the people they want to invite.

This church communication, which can take the form of a printed flyer or bulletin insert or text for a newsletter or email, is a reminder that:

  • Life is scary
  • People are lonely
  • Everyone needs a purpose
  • We're all going to live forever—with a clear message that what we decide about Jesus matters in our personal eternal destiny

The format you get out the message in, digital or on paper isn't important the most important thing. What is most important is that you motivate your congregation to make the most of this opportunity.

Having just said the format isn't the most important, one encouragement to PRINT this piece is that you could make it a bulletin insert and during the service have people take it out because on the backside of the motivational material is a place for a PRAYER LIST for people to list those they want to invite. Take a minute to have people write down, while there in the church service, one or two names of people they want to invite. Tell them to take the list home and either post it on the refrigerator or put in it their Bible where they will be continuously reminded of it.

To emphasize the importance of this, you could later send out an email with the same text reminding them to keep praying and inviting. By using both the print AND digital channel you have a much greater chance that your people will take this challenge seriously and follow through on it.

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Christmas, Outreach Samples Tagged With: Christmas bulletin inserts, Christmas evangelism motivation, Christmas outreach

An incredible example of speaking to YOUR audience, of tailoring a message to a specific group

19 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Focus on YOUR people when creating communications
We need to get our audience in focus and clearly see them before we can successfully create communications for them.

One piece of advice I frequently give church communicators when creating their materials is to always keep in mind their specific church, location, audience. Templates can be useful, and this also includes the templates I create for you, but no matter what the design, if it does fit for your people, either modify it or use something else.

I know my templates won't fit for every church and though I try to do things in a variety of styles, for some churches I'll totally miss the mark. For others, they will be exactly what they need.

With the strategy of always designing your communications with YOUR audience in mind as background, on one of the church communication groups, I'm part of had one of the BEST examples of designing with a particular audience inside that I've ever seen and I wanted to share it with you.

Without further babbling on my part, here it is:

The question to the group was to share an example of church advertising. Here is one reply:

Michael Tuszynski Here in Utah, there's a church that runs roadside billboards (yes, they still work if they are done right). The two ads simply read:
"church with coffee?" - picture of someone with a coffee
{church website}
"church without a tie?" - someone in a dress shirt, sans tie
{church website}
For context, in Utah the dominant religion is Mormonism. They don't drink coffee, and they wear ties to their services every Sunday.
Both of the ads do SUPER well for that church and it doesn't say much of anything. However, because of its simplicity, it was brilliant.

It was brilliant because it cut to the heart of issues near and dear to its intended audience.

The challenge to all of us

What is it that we can do that will speak to the HEART of our audience?

The deeper question, of course, is how well do we know our audience? If we want to invite or minister to a particular group of people, how well do we know them, their needs, fears, wants?

What style will appeal to them or repulse them? What media channels do they frequent?

Before you answer, be sure you aren't simply designing in a style or in media channels YOU feel most comfortable using.

It might be a little uncomfortable to be honest in your outreach. We might think the above example is brilliant, but I imagine it was somewhat scary to put that out there the first time.

Brainstorm, pray, ask someone in the group you want to reach how they react to your creations.

If you come up with something unique to a particular group, please share it with us. Send it to me at yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

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Filed Under: Blog, Church Outreach and Marketing, Outreach Samples Tagged With: church outreach, design for your audience, example of advertising, personalized outreach

Back-to-church invite cards for late summer events–Free Templates and PDFs

5 August, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Summer Back to Church Invitation Card
If you are holding a summer community outreach event, these cards are essential to bring visitors back to your church.

Many churches hold end-of-the-summer events. Ours ours does a Lemon Festival with a free community BBQ and a huge lemon dessert contest. We are a neighborhood church that was built in a former lemon grove and the festival is a fun and fitting way to invite the community to the church one more time.

If your church is doing something like that, make the most of the event by giving everyone an invitation card that invites them back to church. If you are truly reaching out to people who don't normally attend church, they have no idea what else you do or when you do it.

A card that gives details and links to your website and social media can make all the difference.

Below are some FREE templates for you to use to make business-card size back-to-church reminder cards and you can personalize them by putting your information on the back. The ZIP File for them has a ready-to-print PDF, plus editable MS Publisher files and image files in hi and low resolutions.

To download the ZIP file that contains the cards above, click this link: Back to church invite cards for summer events

Please take a few minutes to make up something like this for your end-of-summer events, it can make all the difference for a guest who needs to find the Lord.

*****

For more SUMMER Templates: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/templates/summer-themed-templates/

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Filed Under: Church Business Cards, Fourth of July & Summer celebrations, Outreach Samples Tagged With: back to church invitation cards, Free business invitation cards for churches, Free summer outreach communication, Summer church outreach

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