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.

PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation

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Backpack Ministry PowerPoint Slides
Backpack ministries are essential to help kids be ready for school. These PowerPoint images will remind your congregation to participate.

People usually want to give to worthy causes and making sure that children have adequate supplies for school is a very important one.

However, we all need reminders to do what we ought to do and these FREE PowerPoint Slide images will help you remind your congregation.

Here is a gallery of the images. Just click on the ZIP file below them to download them. 

Click the following link to download the ZIP file of the images: Backpack Ministry PowerPoint Images

Production note: when you place the image into your PowerPoint file, it will be a background and is not editable. You can add your own text over it.

Additional Resources for Backpack Ministry:

***These are all FREE! Please share with other church communicators!

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Back-Pack ministries: https://wp.me/pDky9-7rX

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need: https://wp.me/pDky9-pL

 

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give

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FREE Backpack Ministry Instagram images
It is tremendous fun getting supplies for kids--and even greater fun for the kids who receive them!

There are few projects in the church as much fun as getting supplies for kids when they are heading back to school. To me it's a little like the fun of putting together the Christmas Shoe Boxes—and remember you can buy lots of supplies for them at this time.

To help your congregation remember to do this, or to start to motivate them to think about it, I created a set of FREE Instagram images for you. Below is a gallery of them and below that is the ZIP file you can download to use them. There is also a set of PowerPoint Slides that go with them here: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N

Fun aside, this is such an important ministry to children--please pass on any and all the resources linked to it so that no child in your area or in any mission you are involved with will do without.

Click the following link to download the ZIP file that goes with them: Backpack Ministry Instagram Images

Additional materials on Backpack Ministry:

PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Back-Pack ministries: https://wp.me/pDky9-7rX

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need: https://wp.me/pDky9-pL

 

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Backpack ministries

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Back pack supplies ministry
Getting supplies for children who can't afford them is a wonderful ministry. Help your church do that!

One of the best ministries at this time of year is for churches to assemble backpacks for kids that need them.

Following is an assortment of designs from past years that you can freely reproduce. You can use them as is or modify them to fit your church or community.

At the end of the article are two NEW sets of PowerPoint and Instagram images you can use to remind people and promote your backpack ministry.

You can click on the link below the images to download the ZIP file that has:

  1. PDFs of all the designs
  2. Editable MS Publisher files
  3. The design above in MS Word file
  4. Text for the flyers

****One more important note:

At the same time you recommend that your congregation buy supplies for backpacks, remind them that this is a great time to stock up on great buys on school supplies for Christmas shoe box ministries!

Gallery of the flyers/bulletin inserts

To download the ZIP file containing all the materials above, click the following link: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Backpack-Ministry-Bulletin-Inserts.zip

For additional materials to promote Backpack Ministries:

PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need

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Contribute to back to school ministries.
Few things were more exciting to me as a child than a new box of crayons--and we have opportunities to share that joy with needy kids.

Remember the smell when you opened a new box of crayons? Waxy and warm with a bit of paper mixed in.

Remember what it was like to see all those new crayons? Sometimes there were new colors. The metallic crayons seemed magical. I almost hated to use them, to turn the neat, sharp points into smushy stubs.  But there was always another year to look forward to, another start of school and a new box of crayons.

Crayons were just the start—pencils, notebooks with lines unfilled, sometimes a new lunch box.  Back-to-school was my favorite time of year. I hated summer. I didn't particularly like to play kid's games, especially outside. I wanted to be left alone to read.

We moved every year (my father was in the military and that's what they did then) and the first place I would try to find in any house was some quiet corner to read. My very favorite was at the end of a long closet where there was a window. In front of it were some packing boxes just big enough and at just the right height for an 11-year-old girl to with a book and read and look out the window. Clothes were in front of the boxes, effectively shielding me from the outside world. Still, my mother would find me and make me go out and play. I was obedient, but I didn't like it. [Read more...]

Marketing is not inherently evil–and why content makes all the difference

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You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry
You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry and church activities.

Marketing is not inherently evil any more than talking is inherently evil. The content makes all the difference.

We can talk in a way that exaggerates, misleads, and is obnoxious or we can talk in a way that is gentle, kind, and informative.

This morning I received two emails that illustrated this difference and I want to share them here and then comment on their implications from them ministry marketing in our churches.

Editorial clarification: I published this initially a couple of years ago and just found it again and thought it might be useful as so much marketing on the web continues to be of the overly pushy, loud, in-your-face type. This isn't necessary and we shouldn't copy it. I don't know if the obnoxious site still exists, but Lightstock still does wonderful work, check them out.

Here is a short video of both video links and after the video, my commentary on them. Please remember Effective Church Communications does not take advertising or take part in affiliate programs. If I like or dislike something it is my opinion related to ministry usefulness, not to any monetary agenda. Check out the video below and then read the commentary:

 A tacky and obnoxious marketing example

The link below is an example of the now overly popular squeeze or landing page.  If you are not familiar with these communication tools, here is a good definition:

Landing page is pretty much synonymous with sales letter. It's a hard sell page that pitches a product with several calls to action.

from: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.phpf?857520-Squeeze-page-vs-landing-page

The link here is attempting to sell some software that will automatically link content on your websites to various social media sites. There are many problems with this approach including that though automatic linking to social sites can be useful. I use a tool that links the headlines of the articles on this website I write to my Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/yvonprehn) but that tool is free and bundled in WordPress, the system I use to build my website. Given the skimming nature of Twitter (and I don't check it often and seldom interact through it), I feel like this is an honest representation of the level of involvement I want with it and feel is useful for the ministry at present.

In addition, the basic premise of the pitch for this product is faulty—automatic links, if solely used, come across as phony, automatic links and they often don't make sense.

People aren't stupid and Google isn't stupid. Automatic spamming of anything no matter how efficient, isn't a useful communication tool.

A tasteful and helpful advertisement

This example is from http://www.lightstock.com. I don't have the link to the specific ad because that came to me via email (that's why I did the video above) but here is what I like about this advertisement:

  • No hype, it simply presents what the company has to offer
  • It is beautiful and restful to look at
  • It makes the product offerings clear and links to the products if you want more
  • It both has material that is free and material for sale
  • It respects the viewer—if their product is something the viewer wants, he or she will click-through and buy. If not, they have given the viewer a few minutes of visual inspiration.

If you didn't look at the video, please do visit their site http://www.lightstock.com and take advantage of their free weekly images and video clips.

Ministry communication implications

When you want people to attend an event at your church or take part in any ministry opportunity, don’t feel like you have to pressure them or hard sell them.

Be clear, be concise, be kind, be complete in your message. Do the best you can to tell about the ministry truly and from a Biblical perspective. Having done that, get your message out in as many channels as you can, as many times as you can and trust the Lord to speak to the people He wants to draw to your church.