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.
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Measure success correctly—or why a big turnout doesn’t necessarily mean a successful event

9 November, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

How do you measure success in a church outreach event? Immediately after any event is a great time to evaluate past actions and plan future successes.

A great turnout doesn't equal great results

I recently looked at a church website that celebrated the great success of their fall outreach by listing the number of hot dogs served and bags of candy given away. Though I understand they were celebrating that they got a great turnout for their event, a great turnout alone does not make for a successful church event, especially for this kind of event. If you do even the most minimal advertising, it's difficult not to get a great turnout when you are giving away free food and candy. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, Leading & Managing, Seasonal communication strategies Tagged With: church communications measurement, yvon prehn

YOU CAN DO IT! all the church communications you need to do, in-house, using your people, and at low cost

2 November, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

You can do it! All you need to in church communications.
You can do it! All you need to in church communications.

For your church communications, we've come a long way since the start of the digital revolution.  As we've progressed, more and more of the tasks of communication that were difficult have become easier with the development of resources that enable your church to create cost-effective and professional results, in all areas of church communications.

I've launched this website to help you;  I've got lots of resources designed to help you and more will be released on a continuing basis. I trust the information here will give you  inspiration and practical training, but overall, again, and again, outside whatever I can provide, my core message  is YOU CAN DO IT!

YOU, in your church, with your people can create all the communications you need to reach the people the Lord called you to reach and to grow your congregation to Christian maturity.

The Lord calls and gifts his people to do his work-you may not feel like, you may not want to, but no matter how quickly changing the technology, no matter how old or young you are, no matter where your church is located or how small your budget, you can do all the communications you need to win your community to Jesus and to help your people grow in their faith.

Following are expanded reasons why you can and should do your communications work in-house, in your church, by your church people.

Content is primary and should be personal

In your communication ministry periodically it's important to remind ourselves why we communicate anything at all in the church. We are doing it to fully fulfill the Great Commission given to us by Jesus to go into all the world, preach the gospel, and make disciples. It isn't the technology that we use that is of primary importance, but the content of our message.

Though the core message of every church, salvation in Jesus, is the same for every church, every church will express the gospel in its own unique way and no one can express it better to the audience your church is called to reach than the people in your church. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Leading & Managing, Production, YP Foundational Tagged With: church communicators devotion, church leadership, church marketing, Training, yvon prehn

Do not confuse irreverence for relevancy in your church communications

20 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Our Creator worthy of awe and reverence in all our communications.
Our Creator worthy of awe and reverence in all our communications.

We serve a holy God.

There is a tendency today for some in church communications circles to use shocking or flippant language or advertising with the excuse of making the church appeal to the unchurched, or to make their communications appear cutting-edge, professional, and contemporary.

This is wrong. As Jesus’ ambassadors and representatives our words and lives are to mirror Him, not the current cultural fad. The Bible is clear in how this relates to our communications:

Eph 4:1; 25-31: Live a life worthy of the calling you have received. . . .  Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. . . . .Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.

Col. 4: 6 Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.

Graceful, worthy words, no corrupt communication, are just a few of the many, many worthwhile terms that should characterize our communications. As obvious as these passages seem, their message of holy, worthy words is not universally accepted in all circles of church communications today.

Some believe that it is OK, in the interests of sharing the messages of the church, to use language that shocks, offends, or frustrates. In addition to language that would have caused my mother to wash my mouth out with soap, some of this persuasion believe sexually suggestive images on billboards and sermon topics will get people to church—where of course then a proper biblical message will be preached. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: 5 Steps of ECC, Leading & Managing, YP Foundational Tagged With: church leadership, Communications, honoring God in church communications, honoring God in our writing, reverence in communications, Reverence to God, what not to do in church communications, yvon prehn

What church leaders need to do for their church communication creators

12 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This article is for church leaders and those who oversee church communicators. You are responsible for the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people who create your communications. Their job is vital to the growth and success of the church, but often they do their job under very difficult circumstances.

Please consider the following suggestions to help you effectively pastor and shepherd these vital members of your church team. They do so much for the church, following is what you can do for them:

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Realize the important place communications and church communicators play in the overall strategic success of your church

"What people haven't heard about they can't take action about. Uncommunicated issues DON'T EXIST." Stuart Brand

"Why is communication so vitally important to the health and vitality of the local church? Communication is the means by which we reach our ministry goals. You cannot find a healthy, growing church that is plagued by ineffective communications. Such an animal simply does not exist. If your church is going to maximize its potential, it is  imperative that you understand the communication process and constantly strive to upgrade how well you and others in your church communicate." George Barna, Marketing the Church

No matter how Bible-based, prayed over and passionate you are about your vision for the church, if it is not sequentially, clearly, consistently, and repeatedly communicated to your church, it will not happen. Today, the role of your church communicator in making your vision real has grown in importance because of two primary reasons:

  1. In our post-Christian world people don't have the unthinking understanding of churches that they did in the past. Church is not a part of people's lives today in the same way it was in the past and because of that, your church needs to be much more intentional about its communicators than ever before. This often requires that either a person be hired with the specific role of Church Communicator or Director of Church Communications, or in a church where the administrative assistant or church secretary has to juggle many responsibilities, where the title of Church Communicator is at least a professional part of that person's job description.
  2. The demands of technology and multi-channel communications make it necessary. In the past when the church had one communication tool: the church bulletin and one way to produce it: the typewriter, communication was still extremely important, but it was much easier to manage that task for the church secretary in the midst of the many other demanding tasks in the church office. Today when many kinds of communications produced through many channels: print, PowerPoint, web, social media are needed by churches, the role of the church communicator is more important than ever.

Because the role of church communicator is vital to the success of your church today, you need to support, involve, train, and encourage that person so they can serve the church most effectively. Following are some suggestions on how to do that.

 

Include your church communicator in strategic staff meetings

No matter what the communicators role is in the meetings—whether they can contribute to the discussion or not, whether their input is valued or not, whether they have a part in the decision making process or not, if you want your decisions clearly communicated to the congregation and your community, your church communicator needs to be in the meetings to do their job well.  All of the restrictions or inclusions mentioned above will vary depending on your church beliefs and practices, but if you want your decisions carried out, they need to be there in a listening role at a minimum. However, growing, successful churches greatly value and include their church communicators and churches can benefit greatly from the input of a skilled communicator. Your church communicator can:

  • Advise you on how well your congregation and community might respond to your message.
  • Suggest some ways other churches market or publicize ministry events.
  • Remind you of what was done in the past and the success or failure of communication methods.
  • Give you an evaluation on whether or not your church has the technology and resources needed to carry out your communication goals.
  • Help staff be realistic on the time needed to promote or communicate about events.
  • Help your message be consistent with other ministry messages in the church.
  • Suggest some communication channels that are new to the staff.
  • Provide feedback of program names, slogans, and approaches if you allow them to be honest.
  • Be a prayer partner to contribute to the success of the vision and ministries of the church.

There are so many things beyond this brief list that a well-trained and committed church communicator can do for your church. The rest of this article provides ways for you to help them be and do all they can for your church.

Give them authority

Communications people need authority to have the final say on editing decisions. They know how much space is available for articles and announcements and without authority they are constantly frustrated when someone demands every word is used and no changes made on what goes into the church bulletin or newsletter.

Practical ways to give them authority are:

  1. Make a decision on what they are in charge of and what they need to come to you for. In communications the church leadership should decide on basic themes and messages and perhaps even the overall look, but NOT on layout, or final editing of articles or announcements.
  2. Publicly announce and print your decision. You might say something like this. “Jenny Smith, our communications coordinator has final editing authority on the layout, deadlines and contents of materials that go into the bulletin and newsletter (and whatever else you want to list). She has posted her guidelines and submission deadlines on our website. Please support her decisions and deadlines so we can produce 1 Cor: 14:4 publications, ones done decently and in order.”
  3. Back up your decisions. Invariably people will test you on the rules. I am convinced as both pastor’s wife and communications trainer that inside all of our adult looking bodies is a little junior high school person who never, ever got a paper for school done ahead of its due date.

Invariably when you are instituting new guidelines various church members will come rushing in at the last minute with an article that just HAS to get into the newsletter. When your communications director tells them it is past the deadline—you know what they will do.

The little junior high person in him will bubble up and he will walk right around that person’s desk and in to your office and say something like, “She isn’t being very Christian today—she told me I missed her deadline and you need to tell her to get this article in there!”

If you answer by saying, “She is being very Christian. I have given her authority over that area and to do her job in a way that honors God and the church. I’m very sorry your article can’t go into the bulletin this month. We’ll make copies and have it in the church office, but Jenny’s deadlines are firm.”

Any other answer, or taking back authority or vacillating on this point will not only make the publication creation process a mess, but it will greatly harm your relationship with your communications director.

This approach benefits everyone

In delegating authority and holding your people to it, you are helping them grow up in their ministry responsibilities. Usually the article the tardy person wants  in at the last minute is about something he has known about and been planning for six months, but was not enough of a priority to get the information about it written up in time for the church. That sort of behavior would not be tolerated at the person’s regular job and should not be encouraged at the church either.

Exceptions of course can always be made for genuine emergencies, a family illness or something similar, but these are far less seldom the case than a lack of respect.

Give them protection

Giving your people authority gives them protection from disorganized people, but physical protection is also needed at times.

This doesn’t mean protection against robbery or whatever, but a church secretary with an arm brace because of carpel tunnel is the sign of a pastor failing to properly shepherd his or her sheep in the fields of technology.

Talk to some of your secular business leaders in the church and find out what is needed to make your church office ergonomically correct. Your communications people need proper chairs, wrist rests, and the right kind of mouse or trackball, the computer monitor at a proper height. They need to be protected from doing repetitive data entry; they need to get up and stretch if they have been working at the computer for hours without a break.

Care for their eyesight

Another area that needs to be looked at is the condition of their eyes. Because working with the computer requires the eyes to focus on a mid-range target instead of either distance or close reading, many people cannot adequately see both their screen and the text of a page they are typing from.

In practical terms this means they may need to get trifocals instead of working with bifocals (or no glasses at all). They may need special glasses for the computer work. Without proper eyewear your people will get eyestrain, headaches, neck pain and have a host of problems in creating publications.

I can speak from personal experience in this area. I recently got properly fitted with graduated, no-line trifocals. I can see better now than I have in 20 years. I had no idea that my problems with seeing the computer screen (glasses on, glasses off, focus, out of focus, headaches, etc.) could be fixed so easily.

You must be proactive in this area, because many people who work in the church office suffer in silence. In addition, the church should be financially responsible for decent chairs, wrist rests, and help in the cost of good eyewear, which can be very expensive.

Being a good shepherd means more than simply having devotions with your staff. A good shepherd also cares for the physical needs of the sheep.

Give them training

Training can take many forms. A membership to this site is a great gift if you are not reading this as a member. The books from Effective Church Communications available through this website's RESOURCE Section and the printed resources available at http://www.amazon.com (just do a search for Yvon Prehn)  will help in detail in many areas of church communication.

For training in software programs and website creation, http://www.lynda.com/ is fantastic. Best of all, free up a few hours each week where they can practice or explore new skills without interruption.

Give them adequate tools

Decent tools in terms of an up-to-date and well equipped computer are not a luxury for your church communicator—they are essential for the good stewardship of the person’s time. I’m not going to give specific recommendations here because what is adequate changes so often, but again, this is an area where a board member who has wisdom in the technology area may be able to advise you on what is necessary today to do the communications work needed by your church. For highly technical areas such as video creation and editing, a few hours of a consultant’s time would be wise to help you make adequate purchases.

Be sure that the advice you get matches the communication needs of your church. A small church that creates simple communications (that can still be incredibly effective) does not need the hardware of a larger church doing complex color work and website creation. Be sure your communication person has the equipment and software needed to get the quality of work done that you require.

Give them awards and encouragement

It seems in most churches that the only time the person who does communications is publicly acknowledged is when they make a typo that makes someone really mad. They know their name then, they make everyone aware of it

Don’t let that happen in your church. Award your communications people regularly and publicly acknowledge them. Honor and thank them in front of the church. When a ministry event has been successful, acknowledge their part in it. Know them well enough to know what kind of a monetary reward would be appropriate for them. For some it might be a gift certificate to Starbucks, to someone else a Christian book store gift certificate.

Pay them decently

Find out what the going rate is for graphic designers and webmasters in your area. People know that working in the church they will probably make far less than in the secular world, but if your communications person has become highly skilled in both print and website design they are worth paying decently. If you know your church is paying your church communicator far below what they are worth, at least acknowledge it.

Remind them that what they are doing matters for eternity. Regardless of your ability to pay, remind your church communication creators of the value of their work. It is so easy to forget that value in the midst of doing information cards for 20 small groups or while updating the brochures for all the ministries in the church. Take time to remind them (and yourself) that Heaven will be different because of the work they are doing.

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Filed Under: Communication Teams, Leading & Managing Tagged With: church communicators, Communications, pastor's responsibilities, yvon prehn

Bible teachers should teach, not conduct public therapy sessions

29 November, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Teaching is an exacting form of communication. Based on a biblical foundation, teaching in the church is an essential element in enabling people outside the church to understand the truth of the Christian faith and inside the church to instruct believers to grow in Christian maturity. Successful teaching in the church also involves more than our content alone, but it also involves the character of the teacher.

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. . . . . . if it is teaching, let him teach (Romans 12:3-7, italics mine).

If the lives of our people are not reflecting the kind of Christian maturity we would like to see, if we find ourselves  lamenting their lack of basic biblical knowledge among Christians today—it is instructive for leaders in the church to examine what their people are actually being taught.

We have at most, a couple of hours each week to teach, and it might serve us well to look at how we use those precious minutes. Some considerations:

  • How much time is spent actually sharing content, solid Biblical content?
  • How much time is spent giving Biblical background and Biblical application?
  • How much time is spent putting the Biblical narrative in a historical context?
  • How much time is spent sharing your personal opinion of the lesson and associated topics?
  • How much time is spent sharing your past life experiences or recent domestic dramas?

The Apostle Paul is an instructive example here to contemporary folks who seem compelled to share every detail of their childhood and the weekly status of their marriage in a time theoretically set aside for the teaching of God's Word.

Paul most certainly would have had some incredible stories to share. Stephen was only one of many whose death he facilitated. Did he have nightmares about the families he threw into prison, the lives he destroyed?  His relationship with his family, who paid to have him study with Gamaliel, and who had proudly watched him become a "Hebrew of Hebrews"  only to turn into a Christian evangelist most likely would have yielded some colorful stories.

But we know nothing of them. His focus was not on public therapy sessions of sharing, but instead:

"One thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things (Phillipians 3:13-15)."

Immaturity in any Christian teaching situation is evident when the teacher's focus is on his or her past, personal experiences, and pain. People do not come to church to get to know the pulpit personality; they come to see Jesus.

We have so little time to teach the truths that can change lives for time and eternity, as church communicators, if we are called to teach God's Word, we should teach.

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Filed Under: Blog, Leading & Managing Tagged With: Bible teaching, Religion, yvon prehn

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