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.

Send postcards to your unchurched neighbors to encourage them

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outreach to neighbors during the virus
Now is a great time to reach out to unchurched neighbors and these cards can help you do that.

As I was getting some postcards ready to send to people who know Jesus and would be encouraged by the verses and sayings in the cards I put together last week and shared with you, I realized that I wanted to send some cards to my neighbors also. However, about half of them don't know the Lord and so the cards with verses would mean little or nothing to them

For this group of people, I made up 3 more cards that you could either send out as an individual or that might be good for your church to send out. It could be a wonderful way to let your community know that you are there for them on more than happy holiday times. Below are images of the cards and below them a zip file for you to download and print out. I did these in MS Publisher so you can also modify them for your specific church.

CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK TO DOWNLOAD THE CARDS:   Postcards for Neighbors

For the set of encouraging Christian postcards to send out, here is the article and download for them: https://wp.me/pDky9-8OR

Why inviting people to “Easter” at your church may not get a great response and what to do about it

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A simple Easter card
Many of the church outreach pieces I've seen this year are similar to this. They might look nice, but what do they communicate?

A number of years ago, George Barna released one of the results of his studies where he found that over 46% of the random audience surveyed did not know the true meaning of the word "Easter."

I would imagine that statistic hasn't changed much if at all since then.

To most people, Easter is about bunnies, chocolates, and spring flowers. And though we enjoy those things, it's important to remember that Easter is about the pivotable event of cosmic history when the incarnate son of God rose bodily from the grave after giving his life as a payment for our sins.

I'm not writing this as a hand-wringing, oh isn't the world awful observation. For church communicators, it poses some serious challenges. Let's look at them along with some suggested changes.

We need to remember that our audience probably doesn't give the same meaning to religious terms we do

Let's get practical. In looking at many designs church communicators are sharing online, including the ones from some of the major marketing groups, it seems like the majority of them prominently feature the word "Easter" with a variety of designs often surrounded by flowers or colored designs. They all look good, but what do they communicate? [Read more...]

Use freely—Seven selections of free verse about the real reason for Easter

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Thought provoking free verse about Easter
Use the materials here to challenge people about the real meaning of Easter.

As a former freelance newspaper reporter (back in the day when you did an interview, composed the story in your head so you dash to the office, type it up, and get it to your editor on-time) I knew well the advice "Don't bury the lead." Translated, it means don't put the most important part of the story at the end because chances are readers won't get to it.

Here is the most important part of my advice in a previous article on the need to explain the meaning of Easter—these short pieces that I hope are thought-provoking bits of free verse to create curiosity about Easter beyond the springtime celebration.

Use however you want in any way that might be useful. I wrote them all, so I can grant you rights to use them. No attribution is needed.

Seven selections follow

How is Easter about the cross and a bunny?

It makes much more sense than you might imagine.

In many cultures, bunnies symbolize life, rebirth, and the tradition of a spring
bunny bringing gifts to children.

The cross, though once a tool for a
tortured death, because of Jesus, has
become the symbol of eternal life,
possible because Jesus rose from the dead.

The Easter bunny tells a story of abundant life, giving,
joyful living, pictures of the reality that Jesus made
possible on the cross.

Join us for our Easter celebration—we’ve got bunnies and candy for the child in all of us, but we’ll also share about the creator of bunnies, and all things joyful and life-giving—Jesus. [Read more...]

How to change the colors of artwork in Canva

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Canva is an incredible program and though I've used it for years, I continuously discover new things about it. In this short video, I'll share how to change not only big blocks of color (which is obvious and easy) but how to change even small parts of images in the program. Lots of great options for your designs—check it out!

Canva’s remove background tool–absolutely WONDERFUL!

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This is the greatest tool ever to help in creating church communications! If you have ever tried to remove background around an image, you know how difficult it can be.

With Canva it is almost magically easy and then you can export the image to use in any program you want.

I had heard about the tool, but I didn't get around to using it until one Sunday morning my pastor (now sort of retired, but still preaching at times) HAD to have a flyer for a service he was doing later that afternoon. The video below shows how Canva came to the rescue to help me create what I needed.