Easter

A new look at Lent—baby steps to Christian walking worthy of our salvation

2 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lent reminds us to live for Jesus — Lent reminds us of the cost of our salvation and challenges us to live for Jesus.

I confess I was scared into becoming a Christian.—

As a little kid, I heard about hell in church, and I knew I didn't want to go there.

I had a Grandma who loved Jesus, the Bible, and who demonstrated every possible Christian virtue at home and to her neighbors. But wanting to be like my Grandma (which I did) wasn't my overwhelming concern regarding a relationship with God. Every night before I went to bed at the end of my prayers I would always add, "And please God, let me go to heaven when I die and not to hell."

Though we went to church every Sunday, that prayer tormented me until a Good News Bible Club teacher explained if you trusted Jesus as your Savior, you didn't need to worry about going to hell. Jesus' death on the cross paid for the sin that sent people to hell, and by accepting Him, by asking him to be my Savior, I wouldn't ever need to worry about it. I did ask Jesus to save me and never prayed that fearful prayer again.

What this has to do with Lent

As I was putting together the communications for Lent I realized the current public image of Christianity is a happy, happy one complete with the promise that if you become a Christian, life will always go well for you. Even those who don't subscribe to the crassness of the health and wealth gospel (if you give God money He will give you back much more), are shocked if someone in the family gets sick or loses their job. Any disappointment with what we think God owes us provides grounds for walking away from the faith or at least is a justification to be mad at God.

Lent gives us a corrective to that view. Lent reminds us that there are things about the Christian life that are difficult and costly. It challenges us to say “no” to ourselves in minor areas of life to strengthen our spiritual muscles for larger challenges.Continue Reading

Lent is for everyone, Templates, text, and a variety of ways to communicate it

1 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Observing Lent isn’t about a denomination, or whether your church is liturgical or not. Lent helps us to put the Christian life into a biblical perspective. It’s a time to practice saying “no” to ourselves in little things so we can say a bigger “yes” to God in the bigger decisions of life.

We know the value of discipline to achieve our goals in every other area of life and this time of year reminds us of the importance of discipline in the Christian life.

The PDFs pictured below are appropriate for any church. You can use them as bulletin inserts with perhaps some additional verses on the back side or invitations or reminders about your Easter schedule. You can post them in newsletters or online, whatever works best for you to encourage your people.

These can be used at the start of Lent or anytime during the Lenten season as a devotion or challenge.

Not only are there already finished templates for you in these sets, but at the end of this post is the text content so you can make your own, or copy and paste that into any church publication you want.

CLICK on the first image in the sets below and you'll see a larger one that you can read.

Free Lenten Insert, suitable for any congregation

1 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lent is a time to reflect and these flyers will give you a variety of ways to do it.

Lent is coming up and here are some flyers you can use to prepare your congregation for it.

During Lent, we begin looking towards Easter as we remember Jesus' time in the desert of his temptation.

Whether your church is liturgical or not, whether you have an Ash Wednesday or Sunday service, this is a great time to encourage people to think more of others and here are two FREE publications to help you do that.

Both of the flyers below encourage self-denial in non-traditional ways: fasting from words, buying, noise, and bad attitudes among other things, plus they encourage positive actions of service to others.

These are all actions we should continually practice as believers and the season of Lent is a wonderful time to remind your congregation of the values of self-discipline and service. Click on either image below to download the PDF you can use to print off the flyers for your church.

I've done additional designs for the first one CLICK HERE to go to them, but if you want this design you must download it here.

Flyer for Lent for different kinds of self-discipline — This flyer or bulletin insert will encourage church members to practice different kinds of fasting other than from food. CLICK on the image to download the PDF.

Lenten Practices Bulletin Insert — This flyer or bulletin insert encourages service to others and self-discipline during Lent. CLICK on the image to download the reproducible PDF.

From our vault: Everything you need for Easter: Templates, strategy, inspiration and encouragement for all your Easter communications

21 January, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This is one of the Easter Invitation Templates. You can link to dozens more from this article.

Effective Church Communications has dozens of Resources, including articles, podcasts, and FREE Templates you can use for all the Easter communications you need for before, during, and after Easter.

These are from our Template and Podcast vaults--we will be creating new ones for 2020, but I know many of you want to get started on Easter planning and many of these designs and the strategy linked to them are timeless.

The FREE templates have all the work of communications done for you: the design, layout, choice of type and copyright-free artwork is all done saving you many hours. The Templates are in both ready-to-print PDF format (which you can personalize on the back) and easy to modify, MS Publisher files. Please let others know about these resources. Following is the link to all of them:

All Communications Easter Templates
http://wp.me/PDky9-6Qx

We have much more than the Templates themselves because if you are going to be truly effective in your use of them, you need a wise strategy underpinning what you do. The podcasts, article links that follow, and the Church Communications Training course (link at the end) will give that to you.