Effective Church Communications

How to use Mother’s Day to Grow your church, evangelize, and disciple

28 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Mother's Day gets the third highest attendance at church right behind Christmas and Easter. What churches often forget is that the large increase in people does not come from more Mothers attending--they are there every week! It comes from the unchurched children and spouses who show up to make mom happy on her special day.

Churches that recognize this and use church communications in a way that makes the most of it can make it a day truly worth celebrating for Mom's because nothing is more wonderful to a Mother than for her child to come to know Jesus.

Our Church Communications Training School has a short video course: How to use Mother's Day to Grow Your Church, Evangelize, and Disciple—and it will totally change how you approach Mother's Day!

Below are the sets of communication Templates shown in the video with preview images. Click on the title to go to the set you want.

Click on any image to enlarge and see more detailed previews. Click on the link below the images to download the Templates to your computer.

[Read more...]

PODCAST: Connection Cards—What really works best to get people back to your church after Easter is one of the least impressive things you do

2 April, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Easter Connection Cards — This is one of a downloadable set of Connection Cards for Easter. They are one of the most effective tools to make sure people come back after a special service.

Following is a text version of the PODCAST

Many churches go all out for Easter celebrations: special music, drama, free food, an Easter egg hunt or petting zoo for the kids. Though all these things are fun and may impress visitors with the ability of your church to put on a special event, there is one thing they probably won't do—get people to return to church the next Sunday. Almost every church experiences disappointment the Sunday after Easter because few of the visitors return.

It doesn't have to be this way. Following are 3 Reasons why big, special, Easter events won't get people back next Sunday. That's the bad news. The good news is that one of the least impressive things you do, the lowly communication tool of a Connection Card, can do what the big events can't. The big events might get people there on ONE Sunday, but it's the quiet link the Connect Card provides that will help them come back.

What follows is a little bit brutal, but done to shake us from our complacency. We have an opportunity to change the eternal destiny of people who visit our churches on Easter Sunday and we need to be honest with ourselves why they often don't come back.

Reason #1: Your special activities weren't very special to your unchurched audience

A painful reality check is necessary here. In the days when many people lived on farms and TV options (if you had a set) were limited to three choices, the music and special events put on by the church were a big deal in the community. In the days when no one had attended a live concert or watched a streaming one, the Living Nativity Scene (complete with animals) at church was awe-inspiring and the Easter Musical was magical. Not so much today. [Read more...]

Free Church Bunny Easter Invitation to encourage children to be inviters

23 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Easter Church Bunny Invitation for kids to invite friends for Easter — An invitation like this can encourage kids to invite their friends for Easter.

Not only is Easter a wonderful time to host events for children, but it's a great time to train children to invite their friends to church. Seasonal celebrations are not only a time where you can grow your church in numbers, but you can also intentionally use it as a time to grow your people in discipleship when you provide tools for them to invite their friends.

In addition to the invitations, you can encourage them to pray for unchurched friends, offer to pick them up for Easter events, and invite them back in the following weeks. Not only adults, but children can be part of this and you can work on instilling life-long habits in them of inviting, praying for, and involving friends in church.

To help you do that, here is a FREE Church Bunny Easter invitation. If you click on it, you not only get the ready-to-print PDF as we've done with FREE church communications in the past, but you get a ZIP file that has the PDF and the editable MS Publisher file. CLICK HERE or on the image to go to it.

More choices available for the children at your church

In addition to the FREE Church Bunny Invitation above, there are additional free options below. To see a larger version of the invitation, click on any of them and you'll see an enlarged slide show.

Click on the link following to download the Church Bunny Easter Invitations above: Church Bunny Invitations

FREE Easter Jelly Bean Prayer for Children’s Ministry

23 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

By using the colors of Jelly Beans, this prayer is a visual way to share the gospel message to children—and to the adults with the children—sometimes candy isn't nearly as intimidating as a sermon.

It is useful at Easter to enclose in goodie bags, to use as an invitation, use as an illustration during a lesson or children's sermon.

The one to the right is an easy download for everyone, just CLICK HERE or on the image to download a ready-to-print PDF of it. Additional designs are illustrated below.

Additional Jelly Bean Prayer Designs

To see the images larger, click on the first one and a slide show will come up.

To download the Jelly Bean Prayer file, click the following link: Jelly Bean Prayer

At the end of this article is the text for the Jelly Bean Prayer that you can use to create materials for Easter for Children. [Read more...]

New and FREE set of 11 Easter Invitation Cards—equip your people for Easter Outreach and inviting!

10 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Free Easter Invitation Cards — Your people inviting their friends is your BEST method of outreach for Easter. This business card size invitation with your church's specifics on the back will work well.

In a recent podcast and blog, I strongly encouraged you to focus on the people in your church as your primary way to reach out to your community at Easter (and for every other seasonal celebration).

In doing this you will help your people be obedient to the Great Commission—to go into all the world and share their faith. This is a natural method of evangelism and helping your people grow as disciples when they pray for, ask, perhaps take to church, and go out to brunch their unchurched friends. It's a tremendously effective, Biblical alternative to buying an anonymous mailing and sending it out to strangers.

(SIDE NOTE: there is nothing wrong with mailings or postcards—I've got a lot of free designs for you and they can be very effective. It is the anonymous part that is bothersome. If you create your own postcards and YOUR PEOPLE mail them out or give them away with a personal note, and best of all follow up on the sent invitation, they can be very effective.)

Though we have many free templates for the holidays and there will be more new ones for Easter in the coming weeks, I just finished a set of business-card-size invitation cards. Below are pictures of them and below that a ZIP file of the cards you can download, modify, and use. The cards are in ready-to-print PDF format and in editable MS Publisher files. All the artwork is copyright free and legal to use and the designs are mine and I freely grant the rights for you to do with them whatever you want.

When putting together these cards, take time to make sure the website and social media you link to is up-to-date and welcoming. Even better would be to have links to sites or blogs or videos from people at your church that explain the Christian faith and why Easter is so important. Be sure you have a contact person (or a team) who will answer the phone, text messages, or emails if people have questions.

This is a fantastic opportunity and time to equip your people for Easter Outreach—be sure you make the most of it!