Effective Church Communications

5 things that don’t work and 5 that do to start a Men’s Ministry at Father’s Day or anytime

22 May, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

True story here: a growing church of 1800 (from 300 only three years earlier) decided to start a Men's Ministry with a Bible Study for men. Lots of prayer and encouragement from the pulpit, plus a splashy PowerPoint show, encouraged men to come. The night of the study the staff set up 200 chairs in anticipation. Three men showed up.

What went wrong? Following are five staff assumptions about their advertising approach to this even and why they didn't work.

#1 The staff assumed men would do what the Power Point® told them to do.

The colorful, eye-catching PowerPoint® slide show ended with a call to "sign up in the church lobby." What they wanted to be a call to action was in reality the kiss of death to any event sign-up.

After church is over, does any man to say to his wife (please forgive any implied sexism in this illustration), “Honey, would you please wait for me in the car while I find out where to go sign up for the men’s Bible study?” It doesn’t happen. I know my own husband’s most pressing thought after church is–where are we going for lunch? Following the thought of food is football, basketball, or hockey, depending on the time of year. Most men I know, godly guys that they are, are similar in their after-church priorities. Trying to find a table in the church lobby to find out information about something that you may or may not be interested in simply is not a priority, even if by chance a man remembers he was told to do that.

Any time you require people to take a second step (call the church office for more information, sign up in the lobby, etc.) to find out essential details that they need to show up for any event, you will drastically cut down attendance.

#2 The staff assumed that men would remember the connecting details from the PowerPoint® announcement presented every Sunday.

Most men don’t. PowerPoint® is great for song lyrics, to set a specific mood for worship, or for graphics to reinforce a story or theme, but few men (women or teenagers) sit in worship, pencil in hand, ready to take notes off of a PowerPoint® presentation. A bulletin insert, ready to post on the refrigerator with all the details on it, would have been much more useful. Wives and girlfriends post it and remind the significant men in their lives about it. Yes, it might seem retro, old-fashioned, a bother to produce, but it works.

#3 The staff assumed that having the pastor encourage the men to come to the event meant something to the men and would make them want to come.

It usually doesn’t. Pastoral leadership doesn’t have the influence it once did. We live in an irreverent age, an age that doesn’t admire authority. A personal invitation can be powerful, but pleas from the pulpit to attend events that aren’t particularly appealing to uninvolved church members, men or women, are seldom heard, let alone acted upon. [Read more...]

Sugar water or sand, how to really change the world

24 April, 2012 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matt. 7:24-27)

The story is told of how Steve Jobs, the president of the new and struggling Apple computer company, enticed John Scully, then president of Pepsi, to come to work for him.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life peddling sugar-water?” Jobs asked Scully. “Or would you like to come and help change the world?”

Scully came to Apple and though they built a computer empire, it ultimately betrayed both of them and they were ousted from the corporation, though Jobs eventually returned. They gave their lives to a cause that may not have been built on sugar-water, was literally built on sand. [Read more...]

The media isn’t our message— our message is Jesus

24 April, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” "Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:40-42)

When Marshall McLuhan early pioneer of electronic media, pronounced in the early sixties, that “the media is the message,” he was predicting that the means of communication would be more important than the message it carried. For his time, the primary media was television; more and more in our world it is computers, and in the resulting forms of digital communication: desktop publishing, the internet, small screen, and social media communications.

Though it is easy to get caught up in the complexity and power of digital communications, as Christians we must constantly remind ourselves that these incredible innovations, and any that are to come, are only tools. The power doesn’t come from the tool or media—the power comes from the message. [Read more...]

Thank-you Cards for Church Volunteers, how to combine technology with a personal touch

12 April, 2012 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Thank you cards Free Sample — Click on this image to download the free PDF of this Thank-you card, both in black and white and in color-separated files.

We all want to thank the volunteers who work so hard at all the ministries of church. And we wish we could thank them all personally, but we often feel we are just too busy and so sometimes we don't do anything.

The video following shows you in three minutes how you can use technology to help create a card that provides a shell for a personal thank you. The length of your thank-you isn't nearly as important as the time you take to care and reach out.

If you click the image to the left you can download a FREE, ready-to-print PDF thank you card.

If you'd like a set of the all the cards shown in the video, plus some additional ones, in both ready-to-print format as well as editable MS Publisher files, it is available as a download for the Effective Church Communications E-book and Template Club and is available after the video.

The complete set of Thank-you Cards

The complete set, illustrated below, has the card above, plus these additional cards. The black and white, with spot color cards are color separated and ready to print in the PDF format.

The download for ECC Members has the following materials for each of these images

Ready-to-print PDFs
Editable MS Publisher files
Images of main cards

Effective Church Communications Club Members

If you want to find out more about ECC Membership or to sign up, CLICK HERE.

CLICK on the ZIP FILE below to download the files.

#1 The staff assumed men would do what the Power Point® told them to do.

#2 The staff assumed that men would remember the connecting details from the PowerPoint® announcement presented every Sunday.

#3 The staff assumed that having the pastor encourage the men to come to the event meant something to the men and would make them want to come.

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In addition, once a year they host Internet Evangelism Day, which this year is on April 29. 2012.

Additional free resource from Effective Church Communications

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The complete set of Thank-you Cards

Effective Church Communications Club Members

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