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.

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? Or other seasonal outreach times? Try this Biblical alternative!

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Equip your people --free Easter invitations
You may not want to be this obvious, but when your people believe this and want to tell their friends, it's the most effective form of church outreach you can do.

Ed. note: This is a repeat of what I did last year, but it is incredibly important--because YOUR people are always the most important outreach tool you have. Though you can use every available tool you have and can afford to reach out to people, you don't need to do anything more than encourage and inspire YOUR congregation. 

The Podcast:

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? No sending out of postcards purchased from some national company that end up looking like the several other churches produce.

Hi I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

Today we'll talk about alternatives that you can do in-house--by your people that can accomplish much more.

As I mentioned in the intro—Far too often,  when a church is planning a major holiday outreach, a catalog of professionally produced postcards are selected, purchased and mailed out by the church. This can cost a lot of money, but sometimes a smaller church desperately wants to try something that might result in growth, so they spend money, that perhaps could have been used for other things and try it.  Statistically, as the companies will tell you a certain number ought to respond and though we rejoice if even one new person comes and ultimately comes to know Jesus as Savior because of that process, let me suggest another strategy that is more biblical, more successful, and that will probably save your church some money also.

A new strategy—Involve the whole church in seasonal communication

Everyone in the church needs to be involved for holiday and special events to be successful. Everyone needs to be part of and feel responsible for the outreach and growth of your church. When Jesus said:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

He did not qualify these commands by saying:

"The command to be my witness and to reach your world is only for pastors and for the communication director of the church.”

No—outreach, witnessing, sharing your faith is every believer's task and seasonal celebrations and special events are a great way to be obedient to Jesus' command to be his witness and reach our world. The tools of technology available to us in ministry today make it possible for everyone in the church to have a significant part in the outreach of the entire church. [Read more...]

Resurrection Cookies, a Free recipe that will teach children and parents about Easter, and it’s something you can do at home now

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Res Cookie Bunny Verstion
Resurrection Cookies are a wonderful way to remind both children and parents of the real meaning of Easter--the Resurrection of Jesus. Plus it's a fun and yummy project!

For a great strategy to teach children about Easter, involve parents, and provide an outreach tool, NOTHING beats Resurrection Cookies.

When you make the cookies, you visually illustrate Jesus suffering, burial, death and resurrection. Because you are doing it with cookies, it is much less intimidating for people who don't go to church to be involved with it.

In other years you can do this with friends and neighbors. This year with everyone staying home it is a wonderful activity for a family.

Below are pictures of a variety of designs for the Recipe. To see larger images of the pages, click on the first image and a larger slide show will come up. The file below them has both PDFs and MS Publisher files for you to download.

Various designs for Resurrection Cookies:

To download the Resurrection Cookie File, click the following link: Church Bunny Resurrection Cookie Files

Later in this article is the text for the handouts, including the introduction, recipe, and Bible verses if you choose to create your own verses of the handouts or if you want to put the material on your website or in a church newsletter. You have my permission to use it freely. The text is the same for all of them—choose a style that suits you best or use the text below to create your own version. [Read more...]

Free Instagram Valentines for sharing Jesus love and challenges to consider it

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Instagram Valentine
Share God's forever love this Valentine's day with these free images.

Everyone is looking for love or wishing they had love, or celebrating the love they have for Valentines Day.

But beyond the joys of human love is the love Jesus has for us that is incredibly more than we can imagine and will last forever. Here is a selection of Instagram images free for you to download and share however you want.

You can share them as they are or you can use them to link to an event, a study, a series, coffee time, or study in which you share more about the love of Jesus.

They are Instagram size, but of course, you can use them in any other way you want to share the love of Jesus.

CLICK on the following link to download your free images: Valentines Day Instagram images

 

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

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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...]

Summer Postcards to encourage church attendance

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Summer postcard to encourage people to attend church
Here is a FREE set of summer postcards to remind people to keep coming to church.

Here is a set of cards you can print to remind people to come to church during the summer.

The all the images were created as 1/4 page postcards in MS Publisher. I then made PDFs of them that are ready to print. I intentionally left a white margin around the images so if you print them in the church office and are a little off in your cutting them apart, you'll still be OK. If you get them professionally printed you might want to add run the image all the way to the edge of the template size the online companies provide. Below is a ZIP file with additional cards that contains:

[Read more...]