Easter | Effective Church Communications

New and FREE set of 11 Easter Invitation Cards—equip your people for Easter Outreach and inviting!

10 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Free Easter Invitation Cards — Your people inviting their friends is your BEST method of outreach for Easter. This business card size invitation with your church's specifics on the back will work well.

In a recent podcast and blog, I strongly encouraged you to focus on the people in your church as your primary way to reach out to your community at Easter (and for every other seasonal celebration).

In doing this you will help your people be obedient to the Great Commission—to go into all the world and share their faith. This is a natural method of evangelism and helping your people grow as disciples when they pray for, ask, perhaps take to church, and go out to brunch their unchurched friends. It's a tremendously effective, Biblical alternative to buying an anonymous mailing and sending it out to strangers.

(SIDE NOTE: there is nothing wrong with mailings or postcards—I've got a lot of free designs for you and they can be very effective. It is the anonymous part that is bothersome. If you create your own postcards and YOUR PEOPLE mail them out or give them away with a personal note, and best of all follow up on the sent invitation, they can be very effective.)

Though we have many free templates for the holidays and there will be more new ones for Easter in the coming weeks, I just finished a set of business-card-size invitation cards. Below are pictures of them and below that a ZIP file of the cards you can download, modify, and use. The cards are in ready-to-print PDF format and in editable MS Publisher files. All the artwork is copyright free and legal to use and the designs are mine and I freely grant the rights for you to do with them whatever you want.

When putting together these cards, take time to make sure the website and social media you link to is up-to-date and welcoming. Even better would be to have links to sites or blogs or videos from people at your church that explain the Christian faith and why Easter is so important. Be sure you have a contact person (or a team) who will answer the phone, text messages, or emails if people have questions.

This is a fantastic opportunity and time to equip your people for Easter Outreach—be sure you make the most of it!

To download the ZIP file with the cards, click on the following link: Easter Invitation Cards, Bus Card Size

How to involve your congregation in Easter Outreach and why it is so important to do that

3 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Bulletin insert for Easter — This FREE bulletin insert will motivate your people to invite their friends to come to church this Easter. Just click on the image to download it.

Ed. note: Our most recent podcast, What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing talked about the importance of people who love a product talking about it and how understanding this can help us be more effective in outreach marketing. This updated article will help you with Easter communications that you can use to motivate your congregation.

You are no doubt busy planning how you will get a big turnout for your Easter Week activities and that is vitally important work—but you shouldn't have to do it alone.

Why it matters to involve your congregation

It doesn't matter much if you merely think of Easter as a time for chocolate and brunch. It isn't really important if your Easter service is primarily about fun things for kids and a musical extravaganza as uplifting as that might be.

But it does matter tremendously if you believe the message of Easter that Jesus Christ, fully God and fully human died on the cross to pay for the penalty of sin and that He rose bodily from the grave and is our living Savior and coming Lord.

It does matter tremendously if you believe that those who do not trust him as Savior will miss far more than a petting zoo and free candy if they don't attend your church on Easter. The Bible says those who die without Jesus will spend eternity in darkness, pain and conscious regret. Your Easter message can change all that.

We don't like to think about these things in a day when so much of the media message of the Christian faith is about how to entertain people and make them feel good and prosperous. But closing our eyes to eternal realities doesn't make them any less true.

Boldly proclaim the truth of the gospel this Easter and equip your people to invite their friends to hear you.

It isn't only important for you as a church to do this, but by equipping your people and encouraging them to invite their friends, you are helping them grow as disciples of Jesus. You are helping them to evangelism by giving them the tools and coaching to reach out to their friends and you are doing it in a way that is solidly Biblical. One of the best ways for people to come to faith in Jesus is for them to do it in the context of a church family and by introducing friends to the church family through your Easter events they can become part of a group where they can learn about Jesus.

How this insert can help

I have a free set of inserts that will help motivate your congregation to invite their friends. You can use these with a sermon or series on the importance of inviting friends to church for Easter and always. On the back is a place for people to list friends to pray for.

In addition to the Bulletin insert above, there is a larger collection with the same text and idea of motivation to pray for and invite friends to Easter services. They are illustrated below and are in 1/2 and 1/4 sheet of paper sizes. You can download a ZIP file that contains ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files of the images below. It also contains an MS Word file of the text only if you want to create your own publications or use it on the web or in email newsletters or other materials. The link is below the images.

CLICK on the following link to download the ZIP file that has the PDF, MS Publisher, and MS Word files: Easter Why Invite Friends Motivational Materials

Don't think about spending lots of money for purchased church outreach this Easter season. YOU CAN equip and inspire your people to be inviters with materials you create in the church! Have them pray for their friends, bring them to church and be part of introducing them to God's forever family. In other posts and upcoming articles, we'll have lots more ideas and communications to help your congregation invite their friends. CLICK HERE to sign up for notification of new materials.

To get you started, CLICK HERE for a set of Easter Invitations.

GO to the podcast, What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing

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

24 February, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lenten Meditation Runner Card — Lent is for everyone as a time for us to work on discipline in our Christian lives. These communications will help your congregation do that.

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.

Don’t go AWOL! Send out Easter follow-up postcards, and invitations to latte with the pastor

31 March, 2018 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Easter is just the start of a relationship with unchurched guests. Send out a card like this offering interactions, links, or studies to encourage them to explore the Christian faith. CLICK on the image to download this FREE Card.

A successful Easter strategy that will grow your church includes knowing that attendance at special events is not an end in itself, but the start of a relationship with your church and Jesus.

After Easter invite people to interact with you

A postcard or even bulletin insert at Easter can do that. You can use the FREE one here where you can invite people to any kind of event. Just click on the image, or CLICK HERE to download the PDF you can then personalize on the back.

An invitation to "Latte with the Pastor" a time for "Coffee and Conversation" either at a local coffee shop, a church member's home, or the church, if you have a casual setting or room is another idea.

The Latte with the Pastor idea came from a church that sent out coupons for a free latte to guests and told them that they could use them when they wanted, but that the pastor would be at the local coffee shop from 3-5 on certain days of the week. People were invited to come down, have latte with the Pastor, and ask any question they wanted about the Christian faith.