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.

ebook: Back to Basics, writing and design skills for church communicators

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Back to basics cover
This book will teach you the basics of many needed, but often not taught, communication skills in graphics, design, typography, writing, and managing. If you want your church communications to look more professional, you need this book. Available in print and ebook formats.

Most people who work on communication creation in churches have no training in design, layout, typography, and many related skills they need to do a good job. Training material is not easy to find because many of the materials available on communication design and related areas, require the use of expensive, advanced software and teach a secular, image-heavy approach that doesn't always fit the needs of the church audience.

This book provides basic training that can help every church communicator, even those with no previous graphic arts training create, write for, and manage a church communication ministry. This book is not a how-to on a particular software, but about the basic design and communication principles that form the foundation of effective communication creation.

This book is a scanned reprint of Yvon Prehn's earlier book, How to use your computer to create Better Bulletins, Newsletters, and More! All the examples in the book are from church communications and the advice is practical and Bible-inspired.

To be honest, the quality of the scans in the book isn't the greatest, but I felt the content was worth it to make this book available to you.

To buy a paperback version of the book on Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.

If you'd like the book in e-book, PDF format CLICK HERE

Backpack ministry bulletin inserts–a variety of options to publicize this caring ministry

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When the stores start their Back-to-School sales, not only are these great deals for families, but for the family of God, backpack ministries are fantastic ways to share the love of Jesus. You can do fill backpacks for needy kids in your community; you can also do it as part of a missions outreach.

To encourage and inspire the people in your church to take part, Effective Church Communications has links at the end of this article to entries that have church bulletin inserts with a variety of illustration formats that you can either personalize on the back or change in any way you want if you are an ECC Ebook and Template Club member

The first two links are for Backpack Ministry Inserts, the third one encourages people to shop for your Christmas Shoe boxes when the fall sales are on, and finally a personal article on why this ministry is so important to me.

Click on any title to go to the articles:

Back-to-School Backpack Ministry--an opportunity to bring joy to needy kids

A new set of designs with templates for Effective Church Communications

My personal reasons why backpack ministry is so important to me

Bulletin Inserts: Shop for Your Christmas Child Boxes in August--Samaritan's Purse shopping Tips!

Bulletin insert and links to Christian resources about Ramadan

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Ramadan Resources bulletin insert, color image
The image here and the one below illustrate ready-to-print and editable church bulletin inserts for Ramadan that are FREE to members of Effective Church Communications. The downloadable file is at the end of this article.

In trying to practice Christian disciplines, I've fasted at various times in my life for short periods of time and always only from food. It is never easy. From my feeble experiences I am in awe of Muslims who during the month of Ramadan fast from sunrise to sunset not only from food, but from water (and that includes coffee and tea--which to my mind are essentials of life at the computer).

Currently, theological debates rage over the internet as to whether Christians should observe Ramadan, and though I come down on the side of those who believe that a Christian should no more observe Ramadan with a Muslim friend or neighbor any more than we would ask a Muslim to take communion with us--it is a very good time for us to pray FOR our Muslim neighbors and the Muslim world.

It is also a good time to learn and understand the differences between the Muslim faith and Christianity. If you don't understand the differences, you can't knowledgeably share the uniqueness of the Christian faith. In my personal experience as a Sunday School teacher, one of my students came up to me one week and shared a conversation he had with a Muslim student that he and his wife were sponsoring as an exchange student. We'd been sharing life and discussions about the Christian faith with her and he said, "We finally found something in common because Christians and Muslims believe in the same God of the Old Testament and Abraham." I was very concerned, but before I answered, I realized I needed to do quite a bit more study. CLICK HERE for the study that resulted. (Update: it's been over 2 years since that lesson and after much more interaction, many more lessons, discussions and prayers--last weekend our formerly Muslim friend was baptized as a follower of Jesus.)

Following are some resources to help you communicate understand the Muslim faith and pray for Muslims. [Read more...]

Yvon Prehn Interviewed on The Gospel Blog

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"Why bother to do church communications?"

"Who do we do the church bulletin for?"

"What are some of the biggest mistakes people make in church communications?"

"How did you get started in this ministry?" [Read more...]