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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Church Bulletin Tips and Resources from current Church Bulletin Sample Books

13 October, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Church Bulletin Sample Books
Along with collecting great Samples of Church Bulletins, contributors also sent tips and resources for creating effective church bulletins. CLICK on this image to go to the Sample Books.

As part of gathering samples for our current selection of Church Bulletin Sample Books, we asked contributors for resource and production tips. The best ideas and resources come from all of you. Please add your tips and resources in the comments section. A brief video that illustrates some of the best resources and websites listed is available if you CLICK HERE.

Below are tips and resources for creating church bulletins:

**We tried various formats before we developed the one we are currently using. One of the problems we had was getting people to sign up for various opportunities and how best to do it. We decided the Connect Card would solve the problem. It is a tear off section of the bulletin. We use the information to record attendance, receive prayer requests, requests for information, and finally on the back side sign ups for opportunities being offered. We print it on 11 x 17 paper and it is a tri-fold. The only complaint I have is that it is labor intensive in that I hand perforate all the copies and it can get time-consuming. I do call for help when I’m really rushed with several things at one time. Susan

**Keep announcements (PowerPoint) open while working on slides for worship, so changes can be immediately made on both. Learn how to use tabs!Keep learning more about the computer programs you use. April

**Perhaps less is more, or don't be afraid of white space. I think there is a tendency to overload bulletins with information instead of using inserts.Crystal

Lots more tips:

**Following are some great resource links, CLICK HERE if you want to see a video that previews them for you. Some of my favorite websites:

  • http://www.bamagazine.com/
  • http://ilovetypography.com/
  • http://desktoppub.about.com/
  • http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php
  • http://www.churchartpro.com/
  • http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

**When I create something that has to be printed outside, I always do 2-color to save money. We have a top-of-the-line color printer in house that handles most of our regular volume. My bulletin is printed free of cost by an outside company that sells adds for the back cover. Eulene

**I have found actionenvelopes.com to be the cheapest source for printed envelopes. But not the fastest. I use nextdayflyers.com for all of my really urgent printing. If I have the files uploaded by 6pm they will have the printing done overnight. They will do quantities as low as 100 and they are not much more expensive. I use gotprint.com for most of my regular printing of over 1000 pcs. Both next day and got print are local in southern california, so I can print multiple jobs and pick them up with no shipping costs. Nextdayflyers, and gotprint have done good jobs for me, but when you are doing very color specific work, or using pantone colors, you do need to talk to them. They will fix things that are wrong, but that doesn't help with urgent printing. I don't worry about it with my printing. For my flyers and the things you looked at anything is close enough. I use San Diego Web Offset for newsprint. I have printed magazines, and a newsletter in Newspaper size and format with them, they are fast and reasonable plus easy to work with. Graphics for an old web press like they have is different, but our newspaper was one of the most enjoyable things I have printed. One more, for big printing I use BPgraphics.com in Phoenix, AZ. They are cheap cheap and they do printing of almost umlimited size. They do billboards mostly. That is printed on reinforced vinyl like banners, the rolls are like 200feet long and i believe 16 feet wide. Plus they can be welded together to make unlimited size. One warning, when banners are made for use indoors, the full color printed ones, are best when they are uncoated matte finish, they don't reflect stage lights and stuff. But many banner printing places BPgraphics included UV coat their banners by default. And their uncoated banners are still extremely glossy. So they don't work that well for use under stage lights. Paul

**I use Churchart.com for cover graphics and have OT & NT lectionary grahic art when it fits with pastor's selection of 3 out of 4 pericopes. Tom **Here at Immanuel Lutheran Church ELCA in Forest City we have 2 services on Sunday at 8:00 inside the Sanctuary and at 10:00 outside under the umbrella of trees on the Waldorf College campus by their pond (weather permitting). Our 2 bulletins are done as a Word document. The early service is usually a tradition service mostly from the ELW hymnal. The second service, since it is outside, songs are all printed or music inserted since we don’t use a screen outside. Jaci

**We print a different bulletin for each service. The parts that change are the liturgy, the servants and the front page date and time. The bulletin is a bi-fold printed on white paper; the ‘blue sheet’ is printed on blue and cut in thirds then inserted into each bulletin. Pat

**Previously our two worship services had a different order so the inside left column was the order for first worship and the right column was the order for second worship. We put the words to the songs that are not available in the hymnbook in case someone is unable to see the screen because of where they are sitting or limited eyesight. We print our own picture on the front of the bulletin. Usually it is a sketch of the church but we use other pictures that will go along with a specific sermon series the minister is doing. Teri

**This is a preprinted bulletin shell that I do all the inside in B&W but for the website I scanned in the front and insert it and I change all the graphics to color when I upload it to our website. Also normally we have sermon notes on the back but for the Lord’s Supper he does not have notes. Hope you can use it! Thanks for all you do for us!! Jeri

**I have found it helpful to have a monday meeting with the pastor, to review what will go in the bulletin this week, and what inserts might be needed. Always good to touch base before things go to press on Thursday.We are a small church, so our pieces are very simple and printed in house. Jennifer

**Attached is our bulletin for last weekend and one from a week or so before. To be honest we have had a few bulletin makeovers in the 6 years I have been at the church, and we still are not really happy with what we have. To explain the threads “theme” (logo at the top of three pages) – we believe a balanced believer will have all three threads woven into their lives– worship, grow, and serve.

**Tips: · If something is going into the bulletin it has to fit in either worship, grow, or serve. · We have one contact person per ministry who submits the bulletin request. · Wednesday by 5 pm deadline. · We eliminated pictures/clipart due to space and it being too busy looking. Kelly

**For the weekly bulletin I open up the previous week’s bulletin and then save it with this week’s date before editing. The items you see along the edges include calendar info for meetings that are recurring, (e.g. weekly, and monthly). This eliminates retyping or opening a previous bulletin to cut and paste. Our ushers for the 11:00 service do a particular week each month (1st, 2nd, etc.) so I have the groups set up in a file named “Usher” which is inside my main “Bulletin” folder. Each week’s group of ushers is set up so I can just cut and paste them into the bulletin. Unfortunately the others aren’t consistent enough. My pastor doesn’t give me hymn and sermon info until Wed. so on Monday or Tuesday I go ahead and do the calendar and lists of worship assistants on the back as well as delete old announcements. That way I am ready for his info and can get it back to him to proofread quickly.

**We print and fold our bulletins inhouse so I now have volunteers on Friday morning that cut the inserts and stuff the bulletins. It took me several years before I realized what a help this could be. It always seemed more inconvenient to call people and ask whenever I needed someone. We now have a “Taking Faith Home” insert each week so I know I can use someone every week and can ask several weeks out. Gordon

**In the Episcopal church we use a prayer book and hymnal. To make it more user friendly (rather than fumbling between books) we develop, each week, a booklet that includes all the liturgy and music. We have a wonderful copier that copies, folds, and staples…couldn’t live without it! Here is a sample. Sara

Keep track of your ideas and share them with us!

In the coming months we'll be asking for lots more ideas to put into our Great Ideas and Sample Swap books--you all have the greatest ideas! As we tackle various types of communications, share with us! ***In addition to helping others out, all the contributors to each of the Great Ideas & Samples Swap collections get a FREE copy of all the samples submitted. This is an extraordinary deal! Be sure to sign up for our newletter--on the home page so you will know when we are collecting samples.

Church Bulletin Sample Book 2
This is one of the books in the new set of 4 Sample books on church bulletins. These are a fantastic resource for your church. CLICK HERE to go to them!

Check out the current GREAT IDEAS & SAMPLES books--to see the bulletins created by the people who shared the tips above. CLICK HERE to go to them!

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: Church Bulletin Samples, church bulletin tips, church bulletins

All the Great Idea Swap Newsletters submitted in 2011

11 October, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

THANK YOU SO MUCH to all of you who submitted newsletters in our GREAT IDEA & SAMPLE Swap. As promised, below are the PDFs of ALL the newsletters submitted.

Only YOU, the ones who submitted your wonderful work, these gets these all. It will be some time before these come out to the church communication world and they won't be in the set like this.

There are almost 400 pages total in these samples, so I broke them into two collections. Just click on the images below to download the PDF.

There is a lot of material here

Download the files, keep them on your hard drive and take your time to read through the newsletters. There is so much, it will take lots of time to absorb all of it (and that's what will take me quite some time also to get through all of them).

The content is very important and you'll get lots of  ministry ideas from the newsletters in addition to graphic design ideas. You have permission to share these with any staff member that it would be helpful to.

Again, thank you and may the Lord bless you and give you joy as you serve Him in church communications!

Click on each image below to download the PDF--they are big files so do be patient.

Newsletter one imageNewsletter two image

Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles

“More Than 1 in 5 American Children Live at Risk of Hunger” statistics and fact sites to help us communicate about hunger

11 October, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:7

Communicating information on hunger and challenging people to alter their lives and give sacrificially or to even give at all is often not one of the most fun communication projects. But caring for the poor is very important to our Lord.

In addition, it has to break our hearts that one in five children is hungry in our land of abundance.

We can't do everything to solve all hunger problems, but we can do something. One of the most important things we can do is to tell the truth and to constantly keep the reality of hunger before our people.

We need true facts to create communications to teach our people.

These three sources give statistics and information on hunger that can help you prepare teaching, PowerPoints or fact-sheets.

Three great resources sites follow

Feeding America
http://feedingamerica.org/press-room/press-releases/fa-children-at-risk-of-hunger.aspx

This site has a Press Release archive with statistics and press releases you can use. Below is one of most recent and serious.

From the Global Policy Forum
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/217/46138.html

12 Myths about Hunger
An excellent article that does a great job of showing why these myths are false. It can be reused for research and educational purposes and is an excellent resource for teaching a class on hunger.

Myth 1: Not Enough Food to Go Around
Myth 2: Nature is to Blame for Famine
Myth 3: Too Many People
Myth 4: The Environment vs. More Food?
Myth 5: The Green Revolution is the Answer
Myth 6: We Need Large Farms
Myth 7: The Free Market Can End Hunger
Myth 8: Free Trade is the Answer
Myth 9: Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Myth 10: More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Myth 11: We Benefit From Their Poverty
Myth 12: Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?

From the Food For All Website
http://www.foodforall.org/hungerstats.html

Below is one of their lists of very useful facts that you can use on teaching and communicating about hunger. This is an interesting site that does a lot of work with grocery stores and other places like that for manufacturing agreements and special events that raise money for hunger. Might be good to check it out for ideas.

Hunger Statistics

Data gathered from the USDA's "Food Security in the United States", 2008 Study

  • In 2008, 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, which includes 16.7 million children
  • Overall, households with children had nearly twice the rate of food insecurity (21%) as those without children (11.3%)
  • 5.7% of households (6.7 million households) experienced very low food security, an increase from 4.1% in 2007
  • In 2008, 8.1% of households with seniors (2.3 million households) were food insecure
  • In 2008, 4.1 % of all U.S. households (4.8 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times
  • Groups with rates of food insecurity much higher than the national average (14.6 %) were:
    • Households with incomes below the official poverty line—$21,834 for a family of four in 2008—(42.2 %)
    •  Households with children, headed by a single woman (37.2%)
    •  Black households (25.7 %)
    • Hispanic households (26.9 %)
  • Food insecurity rate was highest in the South (15.9%), intermediate in the West(14.5%) and Midwest (14%), and lowest in the Northeast (12.8%)
  • According to the US Census Bureau in 2008, 39.8 million people (13.2% of the US population) were in poverty

More coming, send me your samples

I'm going to continue to provide resources and, when possible, samples. The Micah 6:8 Section is where the updates will be.  Please send me samples of anything that you create to communicate to your church about hunger and other poverty and compassion issues. Send original files and PDFs with permission for ECC to use them to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles

What hasn’t been said about Steve Jobs: what he did for church communications

9 October, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Steve Jobs and Apple Computers
In his later years Steve Job created incredible things, but his early work made an immense, but often forgotten impact on the church.

In commemorating the life of Steve Jobs much of the media attention this past week has focused on his recent inventions: the iPod, iPhone, iPad and understandably so because they are extraordinary devices. Though beautifully designed, at their core they are merely ways of listening digitally to music, making a phone call, and viewing digital content. Jobs did all these things with more style and features than anyone else, but he didn't invent a new way of interacting with the world in any of them.

For church communicators, however, Jobs totally changed our world

What he did has become such an everyday part of the church office, it is easy to forget what happened and if you are were not around in the days before the personal computer was invented, you honestly have no concept of the extraordinary revolution brought about through the Macintosh computer, the Apple Laser Printer. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: church communications beginning, Current Events Commentary, Steve Jobs

Editable Halloween MS Publisher materials, a FREE preview PDF for all, editable files for members

5 October, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Cover of Overview of the Editable MS Publisher Files
Click here to download the PDF. It is an overview of the editable MS Publisher files and how to use them for effective Halloween Outreach.

The publications illustrated here cover every aspect of preparation for, what to use during and follow up for effective Halloween outreach including:

***Motivational bulletin insert
***Invitation Cards
***Case-study, volunteer recruitment brochure
***Sign-in cards
***Cards to give out as people leave your event

Click on the PDF for a free overview of all the communications with ideas on how to use them.

Effective Church Communication members can click on the links below to download the two ZIP files that contains editable MS Publisher files for all the publications illustrated. The first file has all the PR, invitation, outreach, sign up and follow up cards. The second file has the brochure. If you are not a member, this is a great time to join and have access to all these files. CLICK HERE to go to the MEMBERSHIP area.

Just download and save the ZIP file on your computer, click to open it and then you can open and edit any MS Publisher file there. You must have a copy of MS Publisher on your computer for this to work.

[mepr-show if="rule: 23971"]

 

Click here to download the ZIP file

Click here to download the Brochure for Trunk or Treat File

[/mepr-show]

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Filed Under: Fall Festival and Halloween, Misc. Advice and Articles

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