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.

Webinar VIDEO & PDF handouts: You can do it! You can create all of the communications materials you need, inexpensively, at your church, and by your people

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Today everyone is concerned about the costs and the ability of their church to do all the communication they need to do. I firmly believe that every church has the people and ability they need and can afford the necessary training to do all their church needs to do.

This video will give you a flying overview of some of the programs and training that will help your church accomplish its goals. WARNING: it may be frustrating because in many of the areas you'll want me to stop and show you how to use the software or program in depth--that is not the purpose of this video and there is either training on this website in the various areas or there will be. This Webinar/Video was created to show you what is possible.

Here are the PDFs of the handouts for the video.

Handouts for Video There will be a number of additional training materials posted on this site that go into the topics here in more depth. Please be sure you are signed up on our mailing list to receive them.

Perfection in church communications, inspired by Jesus

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Sometimes people don't think they are doing all they can for the Lord, that they aren't excellent or perfect enough in their communications ministry unless what they produce is done in slick, full-color printing or is professionally programmed. Sadly, it also often means that no one in the church is good enough to create the communications in print or on the website, so an outside, professional firm must be hired to do it or only products purchased from a professional company are used. Or, if done at the church, only a select person or two in the church is good enough to produce the quality needed.

But being expensive and professional, as defined by using the standards of a professional ad agency isn't the only standard of perfection for the followers of Jesus.

If we honestly look at Jesus' life, what sort of standards of perfection did he have?

First of all in who He chose as his disciples, the ones who would be trusted to carry out his message-they were a pretty scruffy group and they didn't get much better in three years. Not one of them was a professional religious person.

Second, his meetings weren't very organized affairs: little kids running around, not enough food, constant interruptions by sick people. Not what anyone would consider a professionally managed event.

Third, when he left his remaining disciples with the task of evangelising the world, he didn't leave them with a plan even vaguely perfected. The Great Commission could be summed up as "tell people about me and help them grow in the faith." For a perfectionist manager today, those parting words have a tremendous about of wiggle room that would allow wildly divergent attempts to apply it.

It wasn't that Jesus didn't care about excellence, but he obviously had a different standard of perfection than what we might consider perfection today. Following are two more observations and commentary how Jesus inspires us in our goal for communication perfection: [Read more...]

A website content sharing tool, FREE & easy to use

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Effective use of the web is all about interconnections. We read something of value and we want our friends to know about it. We blog and we want to let our Twitter followers know we did it or post it on our Facebook page. We'd like our Facebook to automatically link to our blog or Tumblr or whatever else tool we are using.

All great ideas, but the actual linking and referring can be a real pain in the neck. We want to do it, but to close out one  tool, open and add the content to another one, takes far too much time in our busy lives. Below I'll tell you about a tool I'm using on this site and how it can benefit you first of all to share content here that you find useful and then how to use it on your own website.

The tool that I am using comes from http://www.shareaholic.com/

It is free and very easy to use and set up. I've also found it easier to use to share content than any other tool I've found.

How to share content from this site

You may have noticed a new graphic at the end of articles:

All you have to do to share some content that you have found useful to you and that you would like to share is to click on one of the little icons--for Twitter, Facebook, email, Linkdin, Blogger, Tumblr, Digg, Delicious, or Squidoo and, without having to close the website, open another site and sign in, you'll be at the site you want to add the sharing information to. Super easy.

You have many other services you can link to--you get to decide for your own use of the service. I selected ones I either use or know that people who view this site use.

A new sharing service for website creators

For website creators, there are a lot of sharing services out there and some are already built into the WordPress free websites. I've tried other ones, but for a website that you host yourself, the one I am about to tell you about works better than any I've used in the past. Here again is the site:

http://www.shareaholic.com/

Share the joy of learning how to create effective church communications

Many church communicators have no idea of the resources available on this tie and I would very much appreciate it if you'd let them know about it. But I also know that can be an extra amount of work that you do not have time to do. To make that easier for you is one of the primary reasons I got this tool, but when I found out how easy it was to use and how much I liked using it myself, I couldn't wait to share it.

Go ahead and try it on any of the articles you read on this site—sharing greatly benefits all church communicators!

Books to download for Web Sample Contributors

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Click on any of the books below to download the PDF e-book.

How to Create Websites CoverConnect Card cover newWriting to each book cover

Thank you so much for your contributions to Effective Church Communications!

May the Lord greatly bless you as you serve Him in church communications,
Yvon Prehn