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.

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

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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. [Read more...]

Don’t expect unchurched people to feel the same way about Easter as you do

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Easter invitations aren't always appreciated
Would you invite people to a birthday party for someone they didn't know? Of course not--but that's what we do when we invite people who don't know Jesus to celebrations about him.

Would you invite people on the street to a graduation party for someone they don't know?

Would you ask strangers to celebrate the promotion of a person they never met?

Would it make sense at all to send out an impersonal bulk mailing for people to attend a wedding?

Of course, you won't do any of these things. You've all been raised better than that. You don't invite someone to an event that means nothing to them, attended by people they don't know when you don't know the person you are asking.

If that's true in our day-to-day lives, why is it we do that as a church for Easter or other special events?

Think about it. I'm asking because, after spending some time looking at current online advertisements created for churches to send to strangers for Easter, I realized that many of them would only make sense to Christians. Then I realized that outside of the brunch, many of the things that church people at the Easter service are only meaningful to the people at the church. [Read more...]

For seasonal and special event success: plan beyond a great invitation

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Join Us image
An invitation to an event at your church is simply the start of a relationship with someone who doesn't know Jesus. Plan from before you send it out to do more to make sure visitors connect.

When a church holds a seasonal or special event, initially we want to get lots of people to attend. But for a church that isn’t enough because we must always keep in mind that we are not just there to celebrate the various holidays, but to reach out to the community with the goals of helping unchurched people make a connection with the church, begin to come on a regular basis, come to know Jesus as Savior, and grow to Christian maturity.

We don't want to be satisfied with merely creating a great invitation and even with a great turn out at the event because as anyone who is involved in special events knows, attendance on the following Sundays, even if the seasonal celebration itself has a huge attendance, is almost always less than hoped for.

The problem is never because of the event itself—churches have figured out how to put on great events. Solving this problem is more complex than many churches realize but before we talk about solutions. . . .

First, a story that illustrates the importance of more than an invitation to events

This is a true story. Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it apply to Fall, Christmas, and every other outreach event in the church. Here is what happened: [Read more...]

The Sunday after Easter— 5 questions to ask if your church didn’t get the return numbers you wanted

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questions-to-ask-yourself
Your post-Easter or any event evaluation is extremely important for future ministry success, especially if you didn't get the return response you wanted.

For almost two months before Easter, the primary focus of most churches is on how to get the most people possible to the Easter service. With a tremendous amount of work and effort, for most churches, Easter is a fantastic success in terms of numbers of people attending. Also, however, for most churches, the following Sunday is often a big disappointment, with few of the new people at Easter coming back the following week. Following are 5 questions that will help you evaluate why that happened and to plan for next year.

After each question are links to articles that give practical solutions to the challenges presented. Download, file away and save these for next year and make next year's Easter return rate the best ever. [Read more...]

In case you missed these or didn’t have time to do much—Essential Easter Communications Templates, ready to print and use

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Last minute Easter Communications
You may have missed some of these essential Easter communications, so here is a list of the most useful with links to take you to them.

Here is a quick list with links below the title of the useful communications for Easter: 

FREE Easter Communication Essential—a panic pack for churches with no time and no money!
http://wp.me/pDky9-7b1
Simple one-color printing Templates for Connection Cards, two Easter Bulletin inserts and a Children's handout.

Connection Cards, why they work best to get people back to church after Easter
http://wp.me/pDky9-79t
Full Color designs of Connection and Prayer Cards for Easter.

People will have questions after Easter—how to help
http://wp.me/pDky9-1gQ
An Easter Bulletin insert that encourages people to ask questions and where to go for help.

Easter Follow-up: postcards, email messages for coffee & conversation, latte with the pastor
http://wp.me/pDky9-2wV
Don't go AWOL after Easter! What you need to follow-up with Easter visitors.

FREE Easter Jelly Bean Prayer for Children's Ministry
http://wp.me/pDky9-1dn
A must-have for everything you give out to children at Easter--a child-friendly way to share the good news about Jesus.

For an overview of all Easter Communications Templates, CLICK HERE.