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.

Response to an overwhelmed church communicator

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For a new and overwhelmed church communicator, here is some advice that might help.

In response to the recent poll I sent out, here is what one person said in the comments section:

New to this role, unpaid volunteer for a small church. It all feels overwhelming.

That comment, totally touched my heart and I wanted to share a few things in response. Though helping people in this situation is one of the goals of the ECC Ministry, I hope the following advice is helpful.

Being overwhelmed is a totally appropriate response

You are tasked with making clear the words of eternal life to your congregation and community. Heaven will be different; the eternal destinies of people will be altered by your work. With that reality in mind, here are some things to do that might help.

The first thing to do

When (in 1 Samuel 30) David was under intense pressure and "greatly distressed" the passage goes on to say that he "encouraged himself in the Lord his God [KJV] found strength in the Lord his God. [NIV]" You can do the same. No matter what your tasks; no matter how little training or preparation you have for the job, the Lord is there to help you. Trust him and pray for every aspect of your work.

James 1:5 says that God will give you wisdom when you ask for it. Ask continuously and He will give insight and direction.

The first things NOT to do

Don't overly worry about how things look or your social media wizardry. People do not respond to the messages of your church because of your graphic design brilliance or the wit of your tweets. Of course we want things to look as good as they can and we want to use every channel possible, but don't focus on secondary issues at first.

Three things that are vitally important in all your communications

If your communications have these three characteristics, you'll be effective in communicating the needed messages of your church. The 3 vital characteristics are

Be CLEAR

Explain what you are talking about so ANYONE new to the church will understand (and many who have been coming a long time, but never learned what's going on). Don't use cute names, acknyomns, abreviations that only people who have attended the church for many years understand. Tell people precisely what is happening and why they should bother to be involved or care. Don't publish a picture ANYWHERE (social media or print publication) without a caption. You are in a unique and wonderful place just starting out in communications in that things people may have taken totally for granted that others understand, you can spot them more easily. Speak up; ask; clarify for the sake of your audience.

Be COMPLETE

The most deadly assumption you can make in church communications is "oh everyone knows." They don't. They don't know what time a group regularly meets. They don't know that childcare is always provided or never provided, they don't know that you have to be a church member to volunteer for certain jobs, they don't know how long youth group, or the mission committee or any other group meets.

YOU MUST provide all these connecting details in your communications and if you don't have room to put them in, be sure you have a link to your website that gives them in detail.

You can have the most stunning image, brilliant text, and fascinating slogan, but if people are unclear about the date or time and can't easily find out more, they won't attend.

There is a saying that "the devil is in the details." I would propose a more accurate statement would be that "the devil is in our communications when we leave out details."

These vital, connecting details may be hard to track down—they may be one of the most frustrating parts of your job, but they are extremely important.

Be CURRENT

Without this last characteristic—many vital communication tasks are either undone or only partly successful. This primarily has to do with your website and the fact that you must work EXTREMELY HARD to keep it updated. Your website is the anchor of your church communications and to emphasize some of the points above, it really doesn't matter how it looks (again, yes it's nice, but not the most critical thing)—what matters is that when people come to it, visitors and members that they find the COMPLETE information they want; that it is CLEAR and that it is CURRENT.

If you do that—you will be a rock star communicator because very few church websites are as current as they should be. Finding programs listed that are months or years old, no details on events happening this week, or in a short amount of time, no links to where to find out more—again, looks matter little if these details aren't there. If they are there people will attend the events and either come to know Jesus as Savior or grow in their relationship to him. That is what makes you an effective church communicator.

This is just a start, but I trust a useful one

There is so much to learn as a church communicator, but it is wonderful, exciting, and never boring work! The Effective Church Communications ministry is here to help and our Church Communicator's Training School has an ever-growing list of courses that will help you.

Know that though I can't see your face—I am praying for you and all the church communicators involved with ECC that the Lord will give you strength, wisdom, and joy as you do your work to share the words of eternal life.

PLEASE READ–IMPORTANT updates to Effective Church Communication, we are no longer a Membership site–all content here is FREE

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I apologize greatly for any of you who have come to this site from something that referred to it as a membership site--we've made some big changes that after some initial confusion, will serve church communicators well.

Here is our current status and update:

Though there is additional work to be done, after much prayer and work, here is what I believe is the right direction to go for the Effective Church Communications Ministry and that is to split the ministry into two websites:

The Church Communications Training School—I am extremely excited about this as I've been working to consolidate a lifetime of training in church communications into courses and books. The software and backbone of this system seems very solid and I like how I can upload videos, PDFs, files and resources in a well-organized way. The site is clearly labeled as a ministry of Effective Church Communications.

Currently there are 12 courses on the site (6 Free, 6 more lengthy ones part of the ALL-ACCESS MEMBERSHIP).

IMPORTANT CHANGE—I am shifting the MEMBERSHIPS of all ECC Members to a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP into the Church Communications Training School Site. You will get an email that gives you the coupon code for a LIFETIME membership. (actually probably several as this will take time and reminders). If you want to sign up before you get the email, the Coupon Code for LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP is MEMBERECC. PLEASE use it to sign up for the site as many of the paid resources will be shifting to it. You only have to do that once.

If you are not a member, I'm offering a special sale throughMarch for yearly membership to the Church Communication Training School of $59 a year (instead of $99) and that price will be good for as long as you stay subscribed to the site. The code for that offer is CHARTERMEMB.

The Effective Church Communications Site, this one will now become a FREE site, supported by the Training Site, book sales and Donations. This was a very difficult decision, but I simply could not handle one more membership software crash, issue, mess up on sign-ups and all the things that were going on. The other site is built from the ground up to handle those things, it is not an add-on to try to fit into a site, payment sites, etc. I felt like I was not supporting members at all with the time and trauma I was having to spend on membership issues.

I will continue to create resources for this site as I have in the past --in fact I made great progress while figuring all this out on the STRATEGY section of this site--lots of articles that I think will be helpful have been written, re-written and organized under accessible categories. There will be quite a few links on this newsletter for them and in the weeks ahead.

In the midst of all these changes, if the ministry has been useful to you, please consider a one-time Donation to the support of this ministry to keep the site ad-free and affiliate-free, help pay the hosting and software bills, and support the creation of Templates and other free resources. This is a costly ministry to keep going and I am committed to it and no matter what as long as the Lord gives strength I will keep producing resources for church communicators.

I do believe that once this site is reorganized (it's close) and the Church Communicators Training School has a larger curriculum and running well (I'm very excited how that is going so far in creating materials, though lots of money has gone out and zero in so far) I can focus totally on this ministry and that is my fervent prayer. PLEASE pray that I have the wisdom and strength to do all that needs to be done

Your DONATION (any amount is appreciated) at this time would help pay for some of the start-up costs and would greatly help as we redo the ministry and launch the school. I've set up a secure PayPal donation link, CLICK HERE to go to it. Thank you in advance for whatever you can do (and if nothing at this time—thank you for listening and praying!). Please let your friends and people in ministry know about the school. I think it can help the church tremendously.

At present, purchases and donations are not tax-deductible, unless for educational purposes, which your tax expert would have to decide.

Telling your friends about the site and our resources and most of all praying for us are extraordinary ways of support also.

Hi from me. I really hate it when people don't update pictures--though the ones I use aren't that old. I took this one of me at my computer a few days after my 69th birthday. No PicMonkey retouching (of course you can't see the weight I gained.....)

Much more on the changes, the school and other ministry news will be coming shortly, but I wanted to get this important update to you by the start of the week.

May the Lord give us all grace and strength as we serve Him in communicating the words of eternal life.

I praise God for your partnership in this exciting ministry,

Yvon

Why church communications are sometimes ineffective and what to do about it

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Ineffective Church Communications
Sometimes our church communications aren't as effective as we'd like them to be. Here are some reasons for ineffectiveness and a proposed solution

Editorial note: I found this article when reorganizing the website. It was first written in 2009 and as I reread it I fear I sound excessively cranky. Do forgive me for that, but I think there are some worthwhile challenges in it and of course the  purpose of the Effective Church Communication ministry is to solve the issues discussed here.

The church today is the butt of late night television jokes, the target of aggressive atheists, and if not openly attached, seen as irrelevant to everyday life.  Why is this happening when....

  • We have the greatest message: that Jesus came to earth, died on the cross, rose from the grave, and offers eternal life to all who believe in him.
  • We have definitive, historical proof of the truth of our message: in terms of the history of people in the Bible and the textual support of biblical manuscripts, there is no other religion that can make the truth claims made by Christianity.
  • We have extraordinary tools: churches today have undreamed of power to spread their message through computer-generated print publications and the power of the internet, websites, and social media.
  • We have incredible people: people who work on church communications are extremely committed and dedicated.
  • We have an incredible promises: the Lord has promised to be with us in all we do and to give us the power to do the tasks he asked us to do.

So why aren't we getting our message out there clearly?

Sadly, many church communications are not created strategically, with any well-thought-out purpose or plan. We throw things together (like the church bulletin) because we’ve all ways done it that way; we put up a website (great template,  little content) because at a conference somebody said we have to have one; we get social media accounts because churches are supposed to have them, but don't have the time to update them or the energy to do much with them.

Finally, because we often work without strategic goals, we have no basis for measurement of how well we communicate the biblical message, how efficiently we use  our resources, or how effective we are in reaching people with our church communications.

To remedy this situation, I'll discuss the following:

  • Why we are ineffective in church communications.
  • A proposed overall strategic goal and approach for effective church communications

[Read more...]

Major software problem, site will be closed for a few days

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This is getting old......the Membership software I have has now done some very strange things in their latest "update."

Some of you have experienced this where you go to log in and it just bounces you out. I am so sorry and will be working to get this fixed.

Tomorrow is a holiday--Easter is a few months away.....hopefully things will be functioning well soon.

PLEASE go to the Church Communicators Training School while I'm working on this. There are a number of free courses and for ECC Members, below is the code to take all for free.

 

CODE to enter:   MEMBERECC

Again, I greatly apologize -- please pray I can get a system that works well for all for the wonderful work we are called to do in church communications.

Reminder of Christmas links and personal update on the California fires

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Please know you are being prayed for in the final days of preparation for all you have to do for your Christmas services. I'm sure you are exhausted and stressed, but I pray that in your heart you'll know the peace that comes from serving our Prince of Peace. I wanted to take a few minutes to remind you of the resources available to you from Effective Church Communications and then a personal update about the fire situation.

Christmas Resources: ECC has Templates for every aspect of Christmas, CLICK HERE to go to them. At the top of page are some FREE ones that you can use to share the gospel message this Christmas. [Read more...]