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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Bait and switch is not a tool for church communication–two sad examples of it

6 July, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

bait and switchThough bait and switch most often refers to the retail realm, it can also apply in many other areas as this definition from Wikipedia clarifies: "Bait-and-switch is a form of fraud, most commonly used in retail sales but also applicable to other contexts."

The Wikipedia article goes on to describe how bait and switch is used in many areas of contemporary life including the obvious teaser rates for the airline and travel industry, hotel and resort pictures that show non-existent levels of excellence, dating sites that post fake profiles, and methods of authoring legislation that hide the complete intent of a proposed bill.

This use of bait and switch, of a headline or link promising one thing, but not delivering what was expected, has become so pervasive in the media that many readers are no longer shocked or outraged, but meekly and quietly assume that you can't trust much of what you read or hear and if you get taken in by false of misleading claims, you, the reader, simply were not careful enough.

Caveat emptor, "Let the buyer beware," may be the rule for anything we read from the secular market place, but it should not need to be our response to communications from writers and organizations that claim Jesus as Lord. Sadly, this isn't always the case.

Remember who you represent

Christian communicators serve the Savior who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6).

We are Christ's ambassadors, as 2 Cor. 5:20 says, "We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God"

Let that sink in. As a Christian communicator, you speak for God. A core description of your communications should be that they are true.

To make that practical to you in your church communication work, following, I'll discuss:

  • How the reality that we are Christ's ambassadors applies in Christian communication
  • Some overall guidance on how we should communicate as ambassadors
  • Two examples of bait and switch in Christian communications
  • Application and advice on how not to be guilty of bait and switch  in your communications

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles, Strategy #9: Do not confuse irreverence for relevancy—remember who you serve and reflect his character Tagged With: bait and switch, baith and switch in Christian writing, misleading headlines, misleading links

Flyer to encourage church communications: You are one of the Great Ones!

29 June, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The Great Ones Flyer, image 1
This is an encouraging devotion for church communications. It is a free, ready-to-print PDF.

Church communicators work very hard at one of the most important tasks in the church and the purpose of this piece is to encourage them.

The flyer to the left is free for everyone to download and print, either to remind yourself of the incredible importance of your work or to encourage another church communicator. It is a copy of the devotion, "You are one of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize" CLICK HERE if you want read the devotion before you download it.

It is a black and white PDF and would look very nice printed on colored or parchment-looking paper. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: church communicators, church volunteers, Communications, encouragement for church communicators

Friday Miscellancy #2: FREE Bible Images, How to create a Video Bible Lesson, How to text without a phone

15 June, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

FREE Bible Images, a video review

This is a different kind of free image site. They have both illustrations and photos. They are different from other sites of free images that are mostly individual, unrelated images, in that they are in sets of images intended to be used as sets for Bible teaching.
As a Bible teacher, I really this because in the past I've had to search through many sites and images to get ones to go together to teach a topic. With this site they are already collected and ready to use. If anything, I've found they have more than enough needed.
In addition, though the pictures and images are historically and geographically accurate, they do not have any text or scripts other than the Bible reference so that there  is no cultural or language bias.
CLICK HERE to go to a video review of the site.

How to create a video Bible lesson with www.freebibleimages.org

Free Bible Images is a very interesting company that provides quality photos and images for teaching Bible stories. (CLICK HERE to see the video review of it). One way to use them is through animoto, which gives you a way to create videos. I really enjoy using animoto to create short teaching and thought-provoking videos. Below is the video I created about the topic of if God cares when we mess up, using one of their photo sets about the prodigal son. This video took me much less time than similar ones I created in the past because all the images were available instead of me having to find them, modify them and put them in order.
CLICK HERE to go to the very short (under two-minute) video I created with them.

Want to text your congregation, but don't know how to text?

As the Apostle Paul told us, we need to learn to be "all things to all people that we might win some," and today that often means making use of new communication technologies. Texting is one of the most popular ways to communicate today, but few church offices make effective use of it.
I just discovered a company, (actually they discovered me, more about that later) call-em-all that will text for you with a system that allows you to create text messages on your computer and then broadcast them to the people who on your list. They also have broadcast phone systems that you can do from your computer or a toll-free number.CLICK HERE to find out more.

Your people, your church greeters--a very important communication tool

Sometimes we work so hard on our printed and digital connections we forget about the most important one of all--our people. Chris Walker, aka, the Evangelism Coach has a great article here about people who were so upset with the rudeness of church greeters, they wrote it down on a response card. Studies show that for every complaint someone actually takes the time to write about, there are many more upset people, who don't take the time to write.
CLICK HERE for more.

Why you don't need to share your personal life on Facebook

We try new media tools because of the Biblical mandate to "be all things to all people to win some." But just because we try different tools to communicate our ministry, doesn't mean these tools can or should be used in the same way by everyone. If you are in a ministry that requires 24/7 social media interaction, and you love it—what follows is not for you. It's for people who may be very tech savvy, yet feel vaguely guilty and inadequate, for not sharing their personal lives to the digital world.
Here are 5 reasons why you don't have to feel guilty if you want to use Facebook and social media primarily for professional ministry news and updates and not for personal sharing:
CLICK HERE to go to the blog.

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CLICK HERE to sign up and you'll get a copy as soon as it's done on Friday. You can unsubscribe any time and of course your email won't be shared.

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: church communication tips, Church greeter info, Free Bible Images, Friday Miscellany Newsletters

CaringBridge, the best way to communicate in personal crisis, has now added SupportPlanner

7 June, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

CaringBridge (www.caringbridge.org)  is an essential tool for every church communicator as a way to keep people updated about tragedies, needs, and ongoing illness in the lives of your members. It is a free resource where members can set up a site to keep people informed about these events. The family member only has to enter information once and all interested friends and prayer warriors can go there for updates and can send messages and encouragements. They recently added SupportPlanner,  which they describe in this way:

Our SupportPlanner is a calendar that helps family and friends coordinate care and organize helpful tasks, such as bringing a meal, taking care of pets and other needs.

Many church communicators coordinate these important tasks and this free tool will help you do them effectively.

Before Facebook there was CaringBridge

USA TODAY recently ran a story about it:

Fifteen years ago, before there was a Facebook, Twitter or even MySpace, Sona Mehring turned to social networking to get the word out about the challenging health condition of a close friend's new baby.

Brighid Swanson was born almost three months early to JoAnn Hardeggar and Darrin Swanson. Mehring, then a website designer in Eagan, Minn., decided to create a site to post progress reports about the baby.

During the baby's brief life — she died after nine days — "I had this incredible experience of being able to bring these caring social networks together for my friend and the baby," Mehring says.

Today, Brighid's legacy lives on in CaringBridge, the not-for-profit site Mehring launched in 1997 so others can easily create private Web pages during a medical crisis.

HERE is the rest of the article: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/story/2012-06-07/caringbridge/55436942/1#.T9DFB1Ziwug.twitter

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: caring communications, communication resources, pastoral communications

Why training church communicators takes so much time and effort and the 10,000 hour rule

31 May, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

In the video that follows, Malcolm Gladwell talks about his 10,000 hour rule. This rule, based on extensive research, is that it takes about 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a field. To make that number more manageable, it means that you need to work on something 40 hours a week for 250 weeks, or slightly less than 5 years to become really good at it. Take a quick look at the video and then I'll share how this applies to church communicators:

How this applies to church communications

Don't get lost in the details of this idea. I've ordered his book, Outliers, to look at his thesis in more detail and will blog about it more later, but the point is, you don't get good at anything quickly. We know that's true in many areas of life--you don't become a great preacher with your first sermon, a great cook the day you buy a cookbook, a great apologist the first time someone asks why you think the Bible is true.

Why is it then, we expect people in the church who have no advertising, marketing, design, layout, typography or technical training to become instant masters at website design, church bulletin layout, and newsletter writing?  From the earliest days of the computer revolution when a church secretary would often come into the church office and find her typewriter replaced by a computer (this really happened more times than I could count). She would then be informed, with great excitement, by whoever did this, that by next week she would get to create the church bulletin and newsletter with it! With the extraordinary tenaciousness innate in church secretaries along with many tears and prayers, she would often get it done. She would go on to learn the computer and the software, usually with no formal training at all and on her own time.

That lack of respect for the person and ignorance of the training needed to do complex communication tasks has continued wherein church secretaries and communications people are told to create a website or various forms social media for the church. It usually happens, but often not easily or well.

The true Biblical Church of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, rose again and is coming back is not doing very well communicating our message (when we look at declining numbers and the public perceptions of the church) when we have the most extraordinary tools available in the history of humanity.

The key is, we haven't taken the time to learn to use them really well. That reality is what motivated me to start the ministry of Effective Church Communications and that's what keeps it going today. Here are some of what I have to help you get the 10,000 needed hours of training.

  • There are many resources available at: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com to train church communicators.
  • PLEASE check out the site--there is a LOT on it, but there needs to be.
  • If you are a church communicator, sign up for the newsletter, check out the site often to learn the continuously added and updated lessons.
  • If you are a church leader who is responsible for church communicators, buy them an ECC Membership and GIVE THEM TIME TO USE IT (yes, all caps and shouting to make the point). You must give your people time to learn communications.
  • Please also check out my books on church communications--this is an ever-growing resource that will help you learn about the importance of Effective Church Communications and what you need to do in your church to create them. The materials are available in all digital formats and in print. Check out, just click on site title:
  • Smashwords--the source for all digital formats, free materials and special editions here. Just scroll down the page to get to the books--I wish they didn't have my bio first, but I had no control over page layout.
  • Amazon.com--the source for Kindle and print versions.

10,000 is a lot of time to learn something. We have been entrusted with the Words of Eternal Life--that task is worthy of them.

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles

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