Seasonal

Dozens of Free Christmas Templates available with a focus on why Jesus is the Reason for the Season

12 November, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Jesus is the reason for the Season postcard — Our world needs to be reminded that Jesus truly is the "Reason for the Season." This piece will help you do that.

I've got dozens of free Christmas Templates available for you for every aspect of Christmas holiday communications.

HERE is the link to all of them: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/templates/christmas-templates/

I'll be featuring different ones in the coming weeks with tips on how to use them. Today I want to focus on one of my favorites. You can use it as a flyer, postcard, image in newsletters or social media. The ZIP file has jpg images, ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. Click here to download it: Jesus-postcard

This piece uses the words of the ancient Nicene Creed that distills the essence of who is Jesus. The creed settled the controversy over the identity of Jesus in the early days of the church and it is my prayer it might help to clarify who He is to some today.

Use it freely and pass it on!

A successful event, but lost opportunities—don’t let this happen for the rest of the holiday season

28 October, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

We often use our outreach events as a way to welcome people to our church, but if we aren't intentional in our communications, they may not get the message.

This last week my husband worked was involved with two Trunk or Treat events. A tremendous amount of work went into both events: cars were decorated with care; volunteers recruited and kept busy, candy, games, and toys bought to give away; church members created inventive costumes (my favorite was Mr. & Mrs. Noah with animal-themed trunk). Lots of kids came and appeared to have a great time. The events were considered a success.

Before I continue, I need to clarify—my husband was helping at two churches/ministries where I don’t have an overall communication responsibility. I don’t want to be overly negative about any member of the Body of Christ that is working hard to do outreach as best they can, but the following situation is extremely concerning to me and that’s why I’m sharing it. Later in this article are links to additional articles that address this topic.

In spite of all they did well—what they didn’t do—and why this makes the event less successful than it should be

Neither group gave away ANYTHING to the attendees that either shared the gospel message, told them about what their church did on a regular basis, or invited them back to the church.

Neither did they do anything to collect names or information about the attendees so they could reach out or follow up with them in the future.

This honestly breaks my heart—when a church does so much with the best of outreach intentions and prayers, but then doesn’t do the nuts and bolts communication work needed to get people to come back to the church on a regular basis. people so you can follow up with them.

Second, a handout of some kind that tells people about what you do on a regular basis. If they don’t go to church regularly, people have no idea what churches do on a regular basis. A simple card that you give out with candy that says “Join us on Sunday!” or something like “If you had a great time with your kids today come back for our kids program!” with the details of time, place, contact information and link to your social media can make a great difference if people return or not.

Third, a gospel tract. You may not have thought of these, but gospel tracts, the little flyers that share the message of salvation can be a very powerful tool. If you need a contemporary reason to use them, consider that advertisers tell us that people need to be exposed to a new idea at least 7 times before it makes any impact at all. A gospel tract can be one of those times. These are small and subtle, but they can be life-changing—you can hand them out in goodie bags or information packets at any event. Here are two excellent sources for them:

https://mwtb.org/

https://www.crossway.org/tracts/

Holding an outreach event is a great thing to do, but it is only the start if you want to have a continuing relationship with people so that you can introduce them to Jesus.

Here is another article that will help you apply some of the challenges in this one: Follow-up after a church holiday outreach event: speed dating or relationship building?

For Successful Fall & Winter Outreach Publications: Clarify and Coordinate for greater lasting impact

19 October, 2019 By Yvon Prehn

welcoming people — If you are planning a fall or winter outreach event at your church, these tips will help you have lasting success from it.

Fall and winter are two prime times for churches to plan outreach events for their communities. Large amounts of time and money are spent on these events and often the church gets a great community response to the free Harvest Festival or Family Thanksgiving Dinner or Community Caroling and Hot Chocolate Party. But seldom do these activities generate the kind of continuing church involvement a church hopes for. I'd like to offer some suggestions on how to CLARIFY and COORDINATE your message for greater lasting impact.

If you don't want to waste your time and money the following tips are essential!

To help you understand how important this is and to give you a sense of how futile it is to hold events without good communication to clarify and coordinate your message, primarily for the ladies reading this, think about when you buy cosmetics at the department store or online and you are given some free samples. (The gentleman reading this may or may not have some sort of similar situation, regardless the example will make sense.) The company that makes the cosmetics don't have the samples in the middle of the mall set up on a pretty display that says, "FREE FOR ALL." No, you go to the specific cosmetic counter and you know without a doubt who is giving them to you.Continue Reading

A Case Study to help you be more successful in recruiting volunteers, using Trunk or Treat as an example

8 September, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Sucessful fall church outreach — Fall is a great time for church outreach and the ideas here will make sure you get enough volunteers to make your event successful.

Yvon's note: though this material and the video is several years old, it has some extremely useful material that will help you be successful in your fall outreach. Consider the production values and artwork a retro memory and learn from the timeless principles represented.

Recruiting enough volunteers is always a challenge for any church event and few are the churches that report they have enough. When the event takes place and there are not enough people, not only is it tiring for the staff and the volunteers that are there, but it is spiritually trying also. When this happens, we ask ourselves:

Why didn't more people help?
Don't people care about their neighbors?
Doesn't outreach matter?

These and many other questions haunt us and make us hesitant to be enthusiastic about upcoming events.

In evaluating many instances of this kind, I've put together the online Video below that has a Case Study with specifics and samples that I trust will help you be more successful in recruiting people for your next church outreach event.

As you can imagine (this being a church communication ministry) I believe that the primary problem with not getting enough volunteers is in the communication that comes from the church—the problem is not in our people, but in us. Often we don't communicate nearly as well as we think we did to let people know how much we needed their help or even, as you'll see in the case of Trunk or Treat, even what the event is about.

This video would be excellent to watch with your church staff. Remember you can click on the little box of arrows at the bottom of the video to blow it up full size on your screen. Simply hook up the computer to a projector and you can show it to the entire staff.Continue Reading