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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Don’t be mean on Mother’s Day

30 April, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Sad faceA woman walks into the church. It is Mother’s Day and the church is handing out flowers. But before a woman gets a flower, she is asked, “Are you a Mother?” if the answer is “No” the woman is informed that the flowers are for Mothers ONLY. She turns around and walks away.

What the church forgot

Many women who attend your church on Mother’s Day are not moms. The reasons for that pain are many: they may have lost a child; they may be unmarried and with little prospects of a future marriage. They may be infertile and may not have had enough money for adoption or fertility treatments. They may have prayed for children for years, but for some reason the answer received was “no.” The reasons are many, but the pain felt daily by many of these women is deepened significantly on Mother’s Day. Often this pain is intensified by unintentionally unthinking and unkind actions of churches on Mother’s Day.

Not meaning to be mean doesn’t make it less unkind

Of course you don’t mean to be mean, but consider: in some churches only Moms are clapped for, receive a free brunch, are acknowledged as significant or given other public affirmations. It is obvious and on display if a woman is not a mother. If a woman has spent many private hours crying over her inability to have children, imagine her feelings at that time.

These reminders are not meant as a suggestion not to honor mothers, but honor can be done sensitively and with the feelings of the childless women in mind. One way to do this might be to focus briefly on the joy of physical children but then to shift into a challenge for spiritual parenting that all can be part of. You cannot take away the pain of childlessness, but that pain can be transformed into a vision for ministry. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles, Mother's Day

RISO ComColor Printers—an incredible print production system for your church

15 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

How a RISO ComColor Inkjet Printer can help your church
Many churches have no idea how this machine can help their church print more effectively. This video and booklet will help explain it. CLICK on the image to download a free copy of this booklet.

Editorial note: Many churches have no idea how this machine can help their church print more effectively. The intro and then the video and downloadable booklet will help explain it. Please pass this on to whoever makes office equipment decisions for your church.

—Why it’s so important to share this information with you

I’ve been helping churches create effective communications for over 20 years, but the last few years I’ve watched a bothersome trend develop. I saw it first-hand in a church I was helping create some materials to advertise an important ministry when the people doing the ministry were told, “I’m sorry, but it isn’t in the budget for us to create the bulletin inserts and flyers you want.”

Then we worked on an overview brochure that described the upcoming adult education classes in the church (a new program, lots of classes, exciting ministry changes) and were told that a limited number could be printed and only one time because that was all the budget allowed.

This was not a good situation.

No matter how useful the web and social media may be for people to connect with ministries and attend them regularly, many people in the church still need printed schedules, explanatory brochures, and flyers to remind them of basic information: the when, where, why, and how to attend. If a church cuts down on printed support materials for ministries, the ministry attendance will inevitably decline in numbers.

Churches see that happening in every area, but often fail to connect falling attendance with the falling number of communications created and printed to get people to attend events.

Even the coveted by churches younger families with kids appreciate a calendar they can post on the refrigerator to remind them of family activities. For churches with large Baby Boomer members, print is a preferred communication channel and in these churches, the Baby Boomers are often the most faithful in giving to support the church. It helps if they know what is going on in the church and they probably aren’t going to find it out from Snapchat or Twitter.

But churches say they can’t afford to print. What is going on?

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: cheap church printing, how to print in the church, Inexpensive church printing

Templates: Valentines for believers, remember how much Jesus loves you!

28 January, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Valentines Encouragement Cards
Sometimes we forget how much God loves us--these cards will help us remember.

Sometimes before we can share the love of Jesus with others, we need to be reminded of it ourselves. Below is a set of Valentines Cards to encourage believers in Jesus how much he loves us and how we should love others.

The set is free and is in a downloadable ZIP file after the images. The ZIP files contains both PDF images and the original editable MS Publisher file.

The message below can be printed on the back of the cards, or used in other ways for Valentine's Day Outreach:

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be all about love—but, truth be told—it is often about disappointment.

Disappointment comes from human love, which may be wonderful, but somehow
always seems to fall short of our expectations and dreams.

We may blame it on Hollywood and the media, on unrealistic images, unobtainable fantasies, on novels and dreams. But, though our expectations and dreams may have flawed foundations, maybe it isn’t bad to be disappointed in human love.

Maybe it is a realistic reminder that we can never expect human love to fill the place in the human heart only God can fill.

When we realize that God loves us unconditionally, totally, fully, when we rest and rejoice in that, an interesting thing happens. . . . . .

The human love we get from imperfect humans isn’t disappointing anymore. Because God loves us in our imperfections, stumbles, and short-comings, He can help us love others as they really are, not as fantasies, but as real people as flawed as we all are.

When we accept and give His love, it’s a Valentine better than chocolate—relationships not built on disappointing dreams, but on honest, satisfying, acceptance of each other.

Images of the Valentine's Day Cards:

To download the ZIP file of the images in PDF format and MS Publisher format, CLICK the following link: Valentine Cards quarter page Believer encouragements

 

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles, TEMPLATES, Valentines Day Tagged With: Bulletin inserts for Valentines day, card reminders of God's love, Valentines Day cards

Measure your effectiveness in church communications in 2017

12 January, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Click on the image above to download an article, share, and discuss with church staff to help you be more effective in your communication in the coming year.

How do you know if you are accomplishing anything of value in the work you do? We are entrusted with the words of eternal life and it's important that we be effective in our job. To give you some ideas on the importance of measurement and balance in your church communication ministry, I'm sharing a PDF of a recent article I did for Ministry Tech Magazine, "Figure It Out: What Works in Church Communication."

I'm passing this on in PDF format so you can print it out and pass it on to others on your church staff and hopefully start a discussion that will make you all more effective. To download the article CLICK HERE or on the image.

Ministry Tech Magazine has some very useful articles for church communicators. To get their free digital subscription, go to www.ministrytech.com/subscribe/

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: church com evaluation, how to measure church communication success

GIS: A Christmas Outreach that communciates kindness and love to your community

10 November, 2016 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Christmas gifts
There are many ways to communicate Jesus' love at Christmas and some should be tangible.

In addition to what we print and share, there are many ways to communicate Jesus' love to our community during the holidays. The following example came from someone who sent along this idea along with printed examples in our Great Idea Swap:

The church that I attend, has for the past two years put on a “Festival of Hope” Christmas Celebration.  This has taken place the 2nd Sunday of the month, during the afternoon, from 3 to 6 pm.  We take a special offering in November and with that money, we purchase as many toys as possible for families in our community that may not be able to afford gifts.  Instead of just a gift giveaway though, we make it a BIG Christmas party celebration, with many of our church family participating.  As soon as our morning worship service is done, we transform our sanctuary into an indoor play area with a bounce house, several game stations, face painting station, Christmas cookie decorating station, a refreshment table with hot chocolate, lemonade, and Christmas cookies, a seating area with round tables decorated in Christmas style, and live music performed on the platform during the whole time.  Families register when they come in and give us the names & ages of their children, each child getting a ticket for a free toy that they pick out (toys are organized according to age and boy/girl).  Our church family mingles with those who come and everyone is welcome, we don’t turn anyone away and we don’t ask any questions regarding their financial circumstances.  We trust God to bring us those who need this.

As you can imagine, it takes a lot to put this together and asks for a big commitment from our church family but it is so much fun to do!!  I have been blessed to help both years and our church just loves doing it.  To see the faces of children light up when they get to pick out exactly what they want and the parents eyes well up with tears of gratitude is priceless!  Getting to know some of these people is also an added blessing.  Yes, some of them don’t smell so good or behave the way you’d expect but we just look past that and share the love of Jesus with them.  It’s really impacted our church and community in a positive way.

Shared by:
Dot Ralitz, Faith Fellowship

I LOVE hearing about ministries like this! There are so many ways we can communicate the love of Jesus and please let me know if you have ones you'd like to share. My email is: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles

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