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.

GIS: Editable Church Conference Booklet TEMPLATE in MS Word

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Journal Cover for MS Word Template
This is the cover for a wonderful booklet design you can modify for many ministry uses in MS Word.

Of course one of the greatest benefits of our Great Idea Swap is the inspiration you get from looking at what other church communicators create, but even better is when you can take it and modify it for your own church communication uses. That's what you'll be able to do with this wonderful little conference notebook sent in by Vicki Coulter of Christ United Methodist Church.

It is made up of 8 1/2 x 11 in. pages folded in half, which is easy to print in small quantities at your church office. The sample was sent in as a PDF, which you can see the from pages illustrated below ( just 6 of 12 are illustrated). It's hard to see from the illustrations alone what a wonderful file it is, but you can immediately see how useful a layout like this can be for anything from Advent booklets to devotionals.

To make it useful for you, I then took the PDF and converted it to MS Word to see if that would work out so that you could edit it for your uses. That worked out well. CLICK on the first image and that will bring up a larger image and gallery you can scroll through to see the pages better.

However, when doing a conversion to MS Word, the tricky part is always making sure the pages print correctly double-sided and it does work! I also played around with creating a couple of alternate covers just for fun and that worked great also. The examples of them are below.

Everyone gets access to the ideas in our Great Idea Swap, but for Effective Church Communication Members, I also have a short video that shows how to be sure you have the correct print settings to print out the modified template, plus the PDF file and the MS Word file if you want to create your own booklet.

Two more fun samples sent in with the booklet [Read more...]

GIS: Fire Escape Plans, scary to consider, but essential

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Fire Escape Plan for Churches
A great service church communicators can do is to create a Fire Escape Plan like this for your church.

What if a fire broke out at your church?

It's not something any of us want to consider and I honestly never thought about it, but in our Great Idea Swap, one ECC Member sent in an inspiring and thought-provoking collection of material that their church put together to deal with this situation. This is one of the things I love about the Great Idea Swap, is that it is about so much more than sharing design ideas, but a real exchange of MINISTRY ideas and information.

I can't describe the cards, their creation and inspiration better than she does, so I'm quoting her commentary on the materials, how they came about and ideas on how to use them: [Read more...]

Our Great Idea Swap—why it’s so much more than great Samples

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Great Idea Swap
This is just one of the wonderful samples of a ministry logo shared in our Great Idea Swap.

We just closed out our latest GREAT IDEA SWAP (GIS for short) and awarded the amazon gift-card prizes. You'll be seeing the shared communications on this site in the coming weeks, but before I tell you about what I've got planned on that, I wanted to talk about why the GIS is so much more than great Samples (even though those are part of it).

It is about extraordinary ministry ideas

I always have to have tissues handy when I open up the communications sent to me for the GIS, because they so often bring tears to my eyes. Just a few of them:

  • An entire packet of Fire Escape materials, motivated by a story that is heart-breaking
  • A collection of home-made greeting cards created for the birthdays of the congregation
  • A set of Business cards to advertise a local blood drive held at church
  • Underwear drive for those in need—much more than a notice or two, a whole campaign done with great enthusiasm
  • A similar Socks and Beanies drive for the homeless (from a great church in Australia)
  • Creative Stewardship campaigns, designed in-house for a local church and avoiding big commercial fees
  • So many, many more that I'll be sharing

When I see these entries from around the world (Canada, Australia, England, U.S.) I feel humbled to be able to see God's people at work in such incredibly inventive ways to "Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God (Micah 6:8)."

Above is just a fraction of the wonderful ideas shared, not only in some of the more unusual ministries, but without knowing it, many of you shared things other might not think about though a "regular" publications. Sometimes it's the way you list events or sermon notes in your church bulletin, or the details in your connection card, or how you write stories for the newsletter—we can all learn from and be inspired by what others in the Body of Christ are doing to communicate the messages of the Kingdom.

What's most important about The Great Idea Swap

[Read more...]

Sample of an EFFECTIVE church calendar postcard

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church postcard sample
You don't have to be fancy to inform people about important events at church. Postcards are a great way to do it!

This isn't a fancy publication, but I think if more churches would send out something like this, the impact for the Kingdom of God would be tremendous!

I'm saying that because we know many people today for good and bad reasons (have to work or choose sports) don't always attend church on Sundays. But that doesn't mean they may not want to attend other events at the church at other times. However, in most churches, if you aren't there on Sunday, you miss out knowing what else is going on because you didn't get the bulletin. Some churches may post it online, but if you don't have access to a computer or don't bother to check out the church website regularly, you won't see it.

The wonderful effectiveness of POSTCARDS

Postcards get taken from the mailbox, read quickly and often are then posted on the refrigerator serving as a continual POSTER of what is going on at the church.

A postcard like the one below, created by Ebenezer United Church,  is incredibly effective in how it reminds people of what is going on at the church. Below is a picture, at the end of this article a download for members of Effective Church Communications. Click on the image to see the printed side more clearly and then ECC Members can download the PDF file below.

Like the example above showed, you don't have to be fancy

[Read more...]

Great Sample of Prayer Ministry Brochure and Prayer Calendar

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2016-prayer-brochure-
This brochure is a great example of how we can be inspired to more than design in what we share in the Great Idea Swap.

This sample illustrates one of the main reasons we do the Great Idea Swap and that is to not only share great layout and design ideas, but to inspire us with what other members of the Body of Christ are doing in ministry. This brochure is an inspiring example of what Bonnie Kyle created for New Life Church for their month of prayer.

There are so many good things about the brochure including:

  • Clear explanation on the one side of what it's about and the guest speakers
  • When opened, a well-written history of the prayer month, plus a calendar that would be perfect to post on the refrigerator.

Below is a picture of the brochure. You can see it more clearly if you click on the image. At the end of this article, Effective Church Communication Members can download a PDF of the brochure.

We only have until Sept. 30 for collecting samples for our Great Idea Swap and WE NEED YOUR HELP! Please take 5 minutes right now and send us in a copy of bulletin you are did this week and perhaps one other sample (or more if you have time). Bulletins, flyers, newsletters, holiday PR, special ministry brochures, we'd appreciate any and all of them! [Read more...]