Effective Church Communications

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators. 

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.

A tiny response to a time of turmoil–Media Made for You Encouragements from Romans 8; an idea for appropriate images for today; free images in all formats

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FREE Social Media message and a video from Romans 8
We're all getting tired of many things, but God's Word is there to encourage us and give us hope. Here are social media images for you to use PLUS an encouraging video.

There is a lot going on. The pandemic isn't slowing down. We are all getting very tired, but our work continues.

This week I tried something new to perhaps contribute to a less color-prejudiced world. I'm not sure if it worked or not, you'll have to let me know.

I wanted to do something to encourage everyone with God's Word. We sometimes forget that the Apostle Paul was persecuted in large measure because he associated with people who weren't Jews. Contemporary prejudice is nothing new. In his day, he was beaten and imprisoned for associating with the "wrong" people and even suggesting that there was equality before God. That persecution was a constant in his life and so when you read his words in Romans 8 and trust in God, remember what he faced.

You can use the files below in social media, print, make up postcards and send them out, however you'd like

But I didn't want to simply repeat his words, I wanted to try something new in illustrations I share with you. In many churches it is a challenge to represent all God's people. Much church artwork is too white; and some that aren't look forced, for example, five different racial groups in one small group setting or website banner. Forgive my cynicism.

In addition, almost all people are young, thin, and healthy. Where do they get these people I often wonder because nobody at my church looks like them. I digress, but wonder what if we only used pictures of the real people at our church?

A possible solution—posturize!

Below are some images in the current Media Made for You collection I did on encouragements from Romans 8. They are all in greyscale and started out looking very different than the final images.

I hope next week to get done a video showing you how I created these images. I'm still working on the school project and this is part of it. Without a tutorial, what I did with the images of people (and not using recognizable full-faces), is I took each one and then posturized them in greyscale. What this does is blur out any skin color and you simply have highlights and shadows. Here is what I came up with:

I also did a video on the series of verses with me reading them to you. It follows. Below the video are links for your files of the images to use however you'd like. For the ZIP files, download, save and unzip the files to use however you want. Just download and use the PDFS.

JPG Images Romans 8: JPG Meditation on Romans 8

INSTAGRAM Images Romans 8: INSTAGRAM Romans 8

FACEBOOK Images Romans 8: FACEBOOK Romans 8

PINTEREST Images Romans 8: PINTEREST Romans 8

MS Publisher and PDF Images Romans 8: MS PUBLISHER & PDF FILES Romans 8

POWERPOINT size PDFs Romans 8: POWERPOINT Romans 8

Changes in image usage—the “free” sites may not be what they seem and what you need to do about it

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What to do when disappointed with image usage rules
What it feels like when you are excited about images you think you can use and then you find out the rules changed and you can't. What do about it is what this article is about.

Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing, but as disciples of Jesus, we must try.

As I’ve been working on getting lots of material ready for launching the Bibleverse collection of related ministries some guidelines have come to my attention about the “free images” on sites such as Canva, PicMonkey, and Snappa, where you can use the images they have, plus the free images sites themselves such as Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and that many of us (me included) use to create social media and templates. What follows does not apply to sites in which you pay for a membership. But since many churches and organizations make use of free sites, it's important you understand the changing rules.

The take-away conclusions from my research and limitations to the use of "free" images

I won’t bore you with listing the number of articles I’ve read recently, but following is the distilled research and application takeaways both for how it applies to you as a church and how you use things and for the Effective Church Communications ministry.

Overall, as a church creating communications that you freely give to church members and that are primarily shared within your church, you have much more latitude than I do in Effective Church Communications. What I create falls into the “commercial” area and the usage guidelines for that are much more limiting than your non-commercial uses in the church. I have changed many things I charged for in the past to free when I wasn't sure exactly of what drifted into the commercial area.

I'll summarize my bottom-line recommendations shortly and then give you details from various sites.

However, and this is a big, However—if your church does something as seemingly innocent as selling a t-shirt for camp, or a cookbook as a fundraiser or selling anything else, you are now in the commercial category also. Sadly, there are some professional groups (Getty Images has a reputation in this area) that love to go after churches if they feel their image rights are violated. For these reasons, in addition to keeping you informed as to why I do what I do for you, you need to be as careful as possible in your communication creations and in the media you use for them. [Read more...]

FREE Spiritual Endurance Encouragement verses in every imaginable format for you to share: Instagram, Facebook, Postcards and more!

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Set of Images for spiritual enduranceIt seems like we are all getting tired. For some tired of being inside; for others tired of the added work in job demands that now include digital demands on how to get work done. For others tired of not working and worrying about where food and rent money will come from.

For many, soul-tired of trying to remain upbeat no matter what the circumstances.

I'm tired also, but I've faced times of tired discouragement enough in my pilgrimage on this earth to know that the best way to lift myself up out of this downward spiral is to do someone for others. It especially helps if that involves giving them God's Word and His encouragement. The images below are available in every imaginable format and social media size for you to share in whatever way you want. You can download files of the individual sizes in the zip files below the sample images.

After you do that, please take a minute to read the material after the downloads for a little more about why I will be doing more materials like this in the same variety of formats.

Spiritual Encouragement Verses in many formats:

Various formats are in the ZIP files below. Download, unzip and then load up to whatever social media or communications you want. [Read more...]

Media Made for You: On the topic of Prayer

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Variety of Social media images to remind us to prayReminders to pray are always useful and here is a redone set of images for you in a variety of social media formats as well as MS Publisher and sized for PowerPoint.

Prayer social media and postcard images to share

To download the jpg., low res file, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer, jpg

To download the INSTAGRAM IMAGES FILE, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer INSTAGRAM

To download the PINTEREST file, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer, PINTEREST

To download the FACEBOOK POST file, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer, FACEBOOK

To download the PDF postcards and MS Publisher file, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer, MS Publisher and Postcards PDF

To download PowerPoint size images, CLICK THIS Link: Prayer, POWERPOINT size

 

 

FREE Instagram Images & Inspiration for Random Acts of Kindness Day

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Set of kindness images for instagram
Kindness is a characteristic of our God and one He expects us to develop in our lives. Use these images to encourage kindness in your congregation.

Feburary 17, is Random Acts of Kindness Day and in celebration of it, I've created a set of free Instagram images for you. Click on the link below them to download and use the set however you'd like, not only to celebrate today but anytime you need encouragement for kindness.

Unless some of the random "day of" whatever holidays, this one has an unusually serious organization behind it--please check out the information below the images for more information on Kindness.org.

Click the following link to download the images:  KINDNESS Images for Instagram

An organization, research, and resources dedicated to kindness

Kindness.org is their website and though it contains some things you would expect--suggested acts of kindness, stories of people doing kind acts, etc., there is an unexpected (at least it was to me) depth to it.

The site was started by Oliver Scott Curry, a PhD who teaches cognitive and evolutionary anthropology at the University of Oxford. He is part of a group called the Kind Lab that conducts research and creates programs on kindness.

This joint endeavor is a partnership between Oxford and Harvard University and joined by what they describe as a "multidisciplinary team of scientific advisors and have a community of over 400 Citizen Scientists in 45 countries.

Take time to go through their studies and programs for practical ideas on ways we can obey the Biblical commands on kindness. [Read more...]