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.

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!

Christmas invitation Cards, the start of Christmas outreach–many uses, many designs

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Christmas Invitation Card
Make up Christmas Invitation Cards for every member of your church--involve everyone in Christmas outreach!

Business and invitation cards can be used for so many things during the Christmas season: invitations, gift enclosures, links to website explanations about your church or Facebook or Twitter encouragements, cards to encourage people to come back to church, gift tags, or whatever else you can think of.

Below, first is a minute long video to preview the cards, then some cards including ready-to-print PDFs, and editable MS Publisher Templates and hi-res images of all the cards.

Video preview of the Church Invitation Cards

[Read more...]

Don’t be a secret-service Christian, how church communicators can help

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When you do outreach in the name of Jesus, communicate about Him.
When you do outreach in the name of Jesus, don't be a secret Christian.

True story here about a lost opportunity to share Jesus:

In our area, one church frequently does a compassionate outreach at a Laundromat in an area of town where many homeless people do their laundry.

My husband, who is a bi-vocational pastor and who does handyman work to support our ministry habits, was on a job recently with a homeless young man. When he overheard him talking about "some guy who paid for my laundry," my husband asked him who did that and what they talked about.

The young man responded, "He didn't say anything—he and his wife just sat in a corner for two hours. I would have talked to him if he wanted—he put in ten bucks for me."

How sad! To pay for washer and dryer use for people who sometimes must choose between clean clothes and a decent meal is a fantastic way to demonstrate caring in the name of Jesus—IF people know you are doing it in the name of Jesus. If not, you may be considered nice, but perhaps a bit strange. [Read more...]

Church Invitation Cards, why they work so well & how to use them

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Church Business Cards make great invitations to church
Church Business Cards make great invitations to church, here's why and how to use them effectively.

A personal invitation is one of the best ways to get people to come to your church and one of the best ways for people to remember your invitation and actually show up at the church is for you to give them a business card with the church information on it.

PLEASE take a few minutes to watch this video on the value of them and how to use them effectively.

Below the video are more resources to help you create them. [Read more...]

Church communications give a voice to the silent and shy

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Church Communicators can give a voice to the silent
Church Communicators can give a voice to the silent and shy through the tools we create.

I can be loud--really loud. Not obnoxious loud, not loud when I speak normally, just loud in volume when necessary. I often joke that it's because I'm the daughter of a drill sergeant, but regardless of the reason, if a group of people at church want an auditorium of milling adults and kids to be quiet so we can pray and no microphone is available, no problem.

Though I spend a lot of time quietly writing and putting together resources, love solitude,  and don't consider myself particularly chatty, I never really thought about what it means to be too shy, too quiet to talk about something when necessary. For some reason I assumed that most church communicators were people who didn't have a problem getting their message out when they wanted to and that the tools I create for them simply helped them do, in perhaps different or more professional ways, what they were already doing.

Then I got this comment after creating a series of church invitation cards for Come Back to Church Sunday (CLICK HERE if you want to see them): [Read more...]