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; Effective Church Communications can help.

It’s not about your creativity, it’s about serving your congregation with your church bulletin

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Letters need to be organized to communicate.
Letters don't mean anything until your organize them into clear, consistent communications.

Though the church communicator emailing me was asking about another topic, in passing she mentioned that she was going to be taking over the production of the church bulletin and was looking forward to changing it every week so she could express her creativity through it.

Her excitement about the new project and a wish to be creative was commendable, but it isn't a good idea to change the format of the church bulletin (or any other church communication) on a weekly or any other frequent basis and here's why:

People don't read the bulletin because they are looking for creative inspiration, they read it for information.

People access information by means of the structure you give them in your communications. The structure of your bulletin consists of the layout, the type and illustrations that you use, plus how you organize material into sections.

You want to come up with a clear system of how you use these structural tools so that people will not be conscious of the building blocks of your system, but will be able to easily access the information.

Type is one of the most important building blocks. On your church newsletter or bulletin, if someone says, "that was an interesting typeface," it isn't a compliment.

Did you notice the typeface on any blog you read regularly, on Facebook, or your local newspaper? You don't because you should always see through the typeface to the content. If people notice the typeface it can be a distraction to your message. [Read more...]

Use an invitation card to connect outreach guests with your church

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Summer Business Card Invitation vard
An invitation card can turn your outreach event from a nice time to a lasting connection to your church.

A church communicator told me about a church that held a large community outreach. They had free food and fun activities for children and families and they did it all to show the community that the church and Jesus loved them. They had a great turnout, but it didn't result in an increased response in church attendance.

The church communicator became frustrated when she talked to an unchurched friend about it because when she mentioned that her church sponsored it, the friend responded, "Your church did that? I thought the city Parks and Rec department put it on."

We put in a lot of work for events like that and I understood her frustration, but I had to gently ask her if the church gave out any kind of card or flyer to people know who sponsored it and to invite them to the church. She said, "No."

Your guests are not mind-readers

That is a typical response I hear from church leaders who put on outreach events and are disappointed in the long-term results. But, if you don't give people who attend your outreach events information about who is putting on the event and what else goes on at your church they won't know. Without clear communication and a clear invitation to return all your hard work may give people a great time—but will accomplish little in connecting them to the church or introducing them to Jesus. [Read more...]

Create events that are an “easy ask” for your church members

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how to create "easy-ask" events
Do you make it easy for your church members to ask people to events? This article will show you how.

Question: which is easier for you to invite your unchurched friends and neighbors to? Also which one do you think they are more likely to respond to?

The Sunday morning church service.

or

Summer free movies in the park with free popcorn, lemonade, and frozen yogurt, bounce house and face-painting?

The fairly obvious answer is the second one and that answer is more than hypothetical to me as our church just finished sponsoring the second one of three Fun Free Friday Movie nights this summer.  A professional I do business with attended with his daughter. Though we'd talked about church, he was someone who previously was not interested in attending any church events. But not only did he attend this one, he went out of his way to too thank me and tell me what a great time they had.

As I was sharing his response with one of the leaders at our church, she responded by telling me that one of the reasons they did this is because events like this are such an "easy ask." I'd never heard that term before (probably most of the rest of the world has), but I loved it and wanted to share it with you, along with some related ideas on how your church communication ministry can apply them.

What makes an "easy ask" for a church event?

Here are some characteristics:

  • This is an event that you aren't embarrassed to invite an unchurched friend to attend.
  • There is no cost, no obligation to attend.
  • It is sponsored by your church, but not an obviously churchy event.
  • You have something tangible to remind them of the event. We had postcards/invitation cards with the time, date, location and website link on them. For additional information on how to create invitation cards and how you can use them effectively: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/10/church-invitation-cards-why-they-work-so-well-how-to-use-them/
  • The reason this last detail is so important is that it isn't easy to ask someone to something if they don't know how to get there, if there is a cost or not, what is involved. Communications are one of the most important details and one many times forgotten--but remember you can have the greatest event in the world, but if you don't have something tangible (postcard, business card, invitation of any kind) to remind people of the details when they remember it at the last minute, they are not likely to attend.

Why schedule easy-ask events?

In our post-Christian world where few people have a felt need to go to church on Sunday morning, easy-ask events are a wonderful bridge to involvement with your church. You can create these events around any special event (free movies, any fun things for kids and families) or around any holiday or seasonal celebration.

To contact people for further interaction and invitations to your church you can capture names and contact information with sign-ups for free drawings (at our summer events, we have a variety of local business gift cards with the big prize give-away of a $200 Target gift card). There is a lot of additional information on follow-up after special events on this website and one of the most useful articles is: Follow-up after a church holiday outreach event: speed dating or relationship building?

Now it's your turn

You can use any holiday, a fun celebration, or any special event in your community as an "easy-ask" event for your church members.

Please share any ideas or events your church has done in the past in the comment section below--let's make it easy for everyone to invite everyone they know to church!

Why and how to create a newsletter for Seniors

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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...]