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; Effective Church Communications can help.

Why church communications are sometimes ineffective and what to do about it

By 2 Comments

Ineffective Church Communications
Sometimes our church communications aren't as effective as we'd like them to be. Here are some reasons for ineffectiveness and a proposed solution

Editorial note: I found this article when reorganizing the website. It was first written in 2009 and as I reread it I fear I sound excessively cranky. Do forgive me for that, but I think there are some worthwhile challenges in it and of course the  purpose of the Effective Church Communication ministry is to solve the issues discussed here.

The church today is the butt of late night television jokes, the target of aggressive atheists, and if not openly attached, seen as irrelevant to everyday life.  Why is this happening when....

  • We have the greatest message: that Jesus came to earth, died on the cross, rose from the grave, and offers eternal life to all who believe in him.
  • We have definitive, historical proof of the truth of our message: in terms of the history of people in the Bible and the textual support of biblical manuscripts, there is no other religion that can make the truth claims made by Christianity.
  • We have extraordinary tools: churches today have undreamed of power to spread their message through computer-generated print publications and the power of the internet, websites, and social media.
  • We have incredible people: people who work on church communications are extremely committed and dedicated.
  • We have an incredible promises: the Lord has promised to be with us in all we do and to give us the power to do the tasks he asked us to do.

So why aren't we getting our message out there clearly?

Sadly, many church communications are not created strategically, with any well-thought-out purpose or plan. We throw things together (like the church bulletin) because we’ve all ways done it that way; we put up a website (great template,  little content) because at a conference somebody said we have to have one; we get social media accounts because churches are supposed to have them, but don't have the time to update them or the energy to do much with them.

Finally, because we often work without strategic goals, we have no basis for measurement of how well we communicate the biblical message, how efficiently we use  our resources, or how effective we are in reaching people with our church communications.

To remedy this situation, I'll discuss the following:

  • Why we are ineffective in church communications.
  • A proposed overall strategic goal and approach for effective church communications

[Read more...]

Major software problem, site will be closed for a few days

By Leave a Comment

This is getting old......the Membership software I have has now done some very strange things in their latest "update."

Some of you have experienced this where you go to log in and it just bounces you out. I am so sorry and will be working to get this fixed.

Tomorrow is a holiday--Easter is a few months away.....hopefully things will be functioning well soon.

PLEASE go to the Church Communicators Training School while I'm working on this. There are a number of free courses and for ECC Members, below is the code to take all for free.

 

CODE to enter:   MEMBERECC

Again, I greatly apologize -- please pray I can get a system that works well for all for the wonderful work we are called to do in church communications.

Reminder of Christmas links and personal update on the California fires

By 4 Comments

Please know you are being prayed for in the final days of preparation for all you have to do for your Christmas services. I'm sure you are exhausted and stressed, but I pray that in your heart you'll know the peace that comes from serving our Prince of Peace. I wanted to take a few minutes to remind you of the resources available to you from Effective Church Communications and then a personal update about the fire situation.

Christmas Resources: ECC has Templates for every aspect of Christmas, CLICK HERE to go to them. At the top of page are some FREE ones that you can use to share the gospel message this Christmas. [Read more...]

PLEASE READ!!!! BIG revision to Effective Church Communications coming soon; site will be down for a time

By 10 Comments

I love books, but who can find anything in a place like this? I fear this website is in a similar state and drastic measures are called for, so I'll close down for a time to tidy.

Do you have a closet that started out organized and useful and filled with wonderful things, but then after you added this or that or put in one more thing you couldn't bear to part with your lovely closet, seemingly overnight turned into unmanageable chaos where you can't find a thing?

That's how I feel this website has become. Lots of good and useful stuff here, but what a mess.

I can't find things and I wrote them all.

For the last few months in the background I've been trying to reorganize things as we go into the important holiday season. In addition, I've been working on the new Training part of the website and trying to figure out how to integrate that and it's like trying to fit in five more pairs of shoes into that already overflowing closet. Not working well at all.

Drastic measures are needed.

I've spent lots of time praying and planning; researching and experimenting and I think I've come up with a solution. In summary, I'm going to reorganize the site into four areas:

  • Strategy
  • Templates
  • Training
  • Resources

I could go into reams of details for how and why, but I'd rather just wait and show you.

But to do this, I have to take the site off-line for a couple of weeks.

I tried to not do that, but though I'm pretty techie, mocking up a site just doesn't work for me (and I've wasted weeks trying).

We are in-between major holidays and I'll have the site up with lots of new things for Christmas in plenty of time so as of Tuesday, Halloween, Oct. 31, I'll be taking the site off-line.

Please pray LOTS for me for wisdom and that I follow the Lord's will in all. Many of you have prayed for me over the years for the many changes and I believe this is one of the most important ones. In many ways I want to greatly simplify the organization of the material and make it more accessible to church communicators of all levels all over the world.

This is scary. But the Lord knows what He wants me to do to obey His voice and serve His people. Please pray I hear and obey.

********

One more thing: I may be giving updates on the ECC Facebook page.

No promises, but I know I do need to be better on posting on it and while the site itself is down, this would probably be a good time to try.