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.

Christmas Holiday visitors—how to turn them into regular attenders

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Christmas invitations and how to keep them
Here are ideas to keep your Christmas visitors coming back.

As we go into the holiday season, your church will be holding many events that will attract visitors. You want these visitors to become regular attenders and you can help make this possible not only by the quality of your holiday event, but by the follow-up publications you send out.

Successful follow-up publications DO NOT mean a mass generated “so glad you were here….” letter. Instead, try these ideas:

Position your church positively

Sending out a “so glad you were here” publication is OK to do if you have the time and money, but there is nothing usual or memorable about that. People expect churches to be glad they came and of course a church wants them to return.

What might be a bit more surprising is if your church, instead of asking for something, gave something away. For example, what if you sent out a series of postcards or a series of one-page newsletters and tips that would give people ideas that would help them get through the holiday season. What if those publications didn’t ask for anything, but were genuine servant publications with the motive of honestly helping the people they were sent to.

This would put your church in an entirely different place and a very positive one that would cause people to want to return. Following are some specific publications that could do this:

Countdown to Christmas Postcards/flyers or emails

Depending upon how far back from Christmas you start this, let’s assume you have a list of families who attended your Fall Harvest Festival. You make up a series of perhaps five post-cards,  tri-fold flyers, or follow-up emails in bright colors with topics like this:

Countdown to Christmas

Week #1—some inexpensive, creative, and alternative ideas on how to plan Christmas shopping and gift exchanges, drawing of names, deciding to give to charities in the name of family members, what charity opportunities are available in your community, if any churches (your church?) sell third world gift items.

Week #2—some favorite recipes from your congregation: a favorite fudge, a hot cider mix, a special grandma cookie recipe. Many families today don’t have family members close by and many young families don’t know how to prepare holiday items. Make sure your directions are simple and easy.

Week #3—the meaning of advent and some ideas on how to help families celebrate it. Perhaps offer an advent booklet for free by simply calling your church or requesting one from your church website.

Week #4—Offer to pray for people during this busy and sometimes stressful time of year. Have a prayer line where they can leave requests or an email address. Assure them it is confidential and is a gift from your church to them.

Week #5—An invitation to take part and the times your church offers free baby-sitting so busy parents or especially single parents can shop, locations where your church is doing totally free gift-wrapping.

On all these postcards be sure to clearly give the address of your church, your service times and times for children’s church or education programs, contact phone number and web site. Be sure also to always say something like “Your Local Community Church is there for you and your family, not only at Christmas time, but any time of the year. Please contact us if we can serve you in any way.” If you say something like that, be sure there is a team in place and ready to respond.

You could also do electronic versions of the postcards by creating electronic postcards or emails with the same content. The holiday postcard templates at www.constantcontact.com include wonderful designs that can be very useful in this way.

What it’s really all about

Another option would be a series of cards explaining the meaning of different traditions at Christmas. If you do a Google search on the web you’ll find dozens of pages with explanations of various Christmas traditions.

You could choose one tradition a week and again send out a series of cards. Again, many people today don’t know why we celebrate the traditions we do and you can give them a Christian explanation. Be sure to always remind them, that in addition to the reasons we have candy canes or Christmas trees (both with very Christian historical traditions) the “reason for the season” really is that Jesus, who was fully God, became fully man to grow up and become our Savior.

What’s most important

The most important thing about either of these communication/church marketing projects is not how fancy your clip art is or how stunning the type face that you choose. What is most important is if you create these and send them out with lots of love and prayer for the visitors to your church, you have a tangible way to let them know you care.

Successful Christmas Outreach Strategy

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Christmas tree
For Christmas outreach to be successful take lots of work and prayer.

For many churches, their idea of successful Christian outreach means finding and buying the best looking, professionally done postcard and then paying lots for mailing lists and a large mailing.

It doesn’t matter how great your outreach marketing piece looks, how flawless the printing, how inspired your slogan, no one piece can carry the weight of assuring a good turnout for a Christmas event. Even if you do get a good turnout, that doesn't mean that the response of the people who attend will be anything more than appreciation for a good time.

This is not to say that these things don’t matter, because they may be steps towards a connection with your church and Jesus, but the key thing to remember if you want your Christmas outreach to be ultimately successful, is that it takes many actions by every part of your church and here are some suggestions:

1. First for leaders and decision-makers in the church, spend time in prayer asking God to impress on your heart the seriousness and the privilege of our opportunities this time of year. Remember, this might be your one opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus with visitors and relatives. The eternal destiny of people can be decided at your church this holiday season. [Read more...]

VIDEO: A GREAT way to publicize Holiday Events

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Print is still one of the most powerful ways to communicate because if you do up a print piece, such as a postcard and it is placed on the refrigerator--you can't help but see it many times!

The US Postal Service reminded us of that in a little video they did, and a clip of that is in the very short video that follows. At the end of the video is a link that will take you to the template page shown.

To see the video full-screen, click on the little square at the lower, right-hand corner. Enjoy!

“The refridgerator has never been hacked” and church outreach applications

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The US postal service has a recent ad that starts out with the statement: "the refrigerator has never been hacked." You can check out the video below.  Though the ad is obviously designed to encourage people and businesses to use the mail, it also has some great reminders for all of us as we as we work to reach out to our communities with invitations to seasonal and special events.

Below is the very short video and following it are some more applications for church communicators. At the end of the article are links to templates that you can modify to create invitations for your Christmas events.

Click on the image to go to video and then come back for some more advice.

Fridge hacked
Click on this image to go to the video. It is from a USPS ad reminds us that a message posted on the refrigerator is a great way to communicate.

 

What church communicators need to remember

Humor aside, the fridge is still communication central for every home that has one.

No matter how tech savvy you and your family members are, no matter how many people have mobile phones, ipads, or email accounts, everyone will see an image on the fridge many times. If you want your congregation to be reminded of a holiday event, the fridge is the place you want for your message.

Tips to make your message fridge friendly

  1. Make it a postcard
  2. Be sure the key connecting points of your message are on ONE side of the postcard.
  3. Far too many postcards work hard to create a catchy image on the front, but then expect people to turn it over for connection information.
  4. If the backside only has connection information--you may not know what the details are for.
  5. Think of your postcard as a mini-billboard--connection and details on one side.
  6. People will post it on the fridge and come to your event.
Christmas Invitation Color, snow man, with details
This is an example of the way you can modify our templates to create mini-billboards for Christmas outreach. CLICK HERE to go to the article that has the templates.

A set of Christmas invitations

CLICK HERE to go to an article with Christmas invitations.

There is a free one for everyone and a great set of editable templates for Effective Church Communication Members.

This is just  one of the many resources available for Effective Church Communication Members. Membership is only $9.99 a month and give you access to a huge amount of templates, ebooks, instructional videos year round. CLICK HERE for more information.

 

Performance-centered vs church interactive, serving celebrations, what it means to the spiritual growth of your congregation

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Keep your celebrations focused on Jesus
Celebrate, but be sure your holiday celebrations don't present an incorrect view of the Christian faith.

As many churches plan their seasonal outreach celebrations, they often focus on putting on a big program for the community. It could be a play, serious or humorous. It could be a concert consisting of anything from the choir presenting a formal choral arrangement to the music ministry doing a special seasonal musical to hosting a visiting Christian Rock group.

There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with these events and if you follow the advice of Effective Church Communications and are conscientious about connecting with people at your events, explaining what is going on at the church, explaining the Christian faith,  linking them to more resources, and inviting them back, these events can be effective ways to grow your church. But something else is going on that we need to consider if you want your event to have a positive impact on your congregation beyond the event itself because. . .

"What you win them with is what you win them to."

Seasonal events don't stand alone. How we celebrate them reflects both the core beliefs of the church and the effect of them on the spiritual growth of church members. [Read more...]