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.

Make the most of your Father’s Day Connection Cards

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Make the most of Father's Day Connection Cards by including options for information on ministries related to men.

The selection of Connection cards that follow for Father's Day includes some cards that not only have the standard information on them, but that give men the opportunity to request information about ministries that may be of interest to them.

These include: Service Projects, Men's Group, Habitat for Humanity Build, and Children's Ministries. Having these on the card is one way of advertising these ministries that men may not even know go on at the church. In addition, asking on a card directed primarily to men on this Father's Day that includes asking for information about children's ministries, lets men know that the church is aware that many men today participate actively in child-rearing. More men than many churches are aware are single dads and greatly appreciate it when a church is aware of this and actively works to minister to them.

Below the gallery of Connection Cards for Father's Day below is a link to download a ZIP file that has ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

To download the ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files, click on the following link: Fathers Day Connection Cards

Men’s Ministry Business Cards you can modify and adapt

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Men's Ministry Business Cards
One of the business cards you can use to launch or advertise your Men's Ministry.

Father's Day is a great time to kick-off or start a Men's Ministry and the following cards may be useful for inspiration if you are just starting or want to try something new.

On the opposite side of the card you can have your meeting times and work or service projects listed. These are business card size and are great for you to make up enough of them to give them to the men of your church to use as invitations to neighbors or the men they work with.

Below are pictures of the cards and below that is a link for a ZIP file that has both ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. CLICK HERE for more about the Templates and to see others available.

To download the ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files, click on the following link: Men's Ministry Business Cards

For a very useful and challenging article on starting a Men's Ministry, please read this: Dos and Don'ts to a successful launch of a men's ministry

 

Dos and Don’ts for a successful launch of a men’s ministry

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Men's Ministry Do's and Don't
Father's Day is a great time to launch a Men's Ministry and here are some tips to help you do it effectively.

Father’s Day is a great time to focus on and do PR to grow a Men’s Ministry. Growing a Men’s Ministry is one of the most challenging tasks for church communicators, but it can be done and Father's Day is a great time to work on it. Below is advice that goes through the true story of what an otherwise large and successful church tried and didn't work and what they needed to do to make a Men's Ministry launch successful.

The following excerpt is from my book, Ministry Marketing Made Easy.

Real life story about the limitations of prayers and good intentions

True story here: a church, in a town which shall remain unnamed, was experiencing great numerical growth. It had grown from 600 to over 1800 in attendance in three years. The Sunday service was spectacular, with seeker-sensitive music, drama, and powerful need-centered preaching. Individuals were making decisions to become a Christian every week and the church was growing in numbers. They were doing many things right. Though grateful for the growth, the church staff was concerned because the growth was primarily in the Sunday morning service.

The leadership realized that people also needed to grow in Christian maturity as well as their primarily passive involvement in the Sunday service. The staff decided to address this issue by beginning a men’s ministry, where they could intentionally work to develop the men into mature disciples. They decided that the kick-off event for the men’s ministry would an evening when they would start a new men’s Bible study group. They felt that getting the men of the church into an in-depth Bible study was an important foundation for discipleship. So far, so good. Now, how to get them there?

The staff prayed about the kick-off event. They advertised it for four weeks in the bulletin and newsletter, on PowerPoint and through lively announcements from the pulpit every Sunday. After all their promotion and prayer, the staff expected at least 100-200 men to show up. The night came for the event. The twelve men from the church staff and the planning leaders enthusiastically set-up tables and chairs for 200, expecting a great response. Three men came. What went wrong? The staff did all the right things, spiritually. They followed a biblically sound ministry model, they planned and prayed, and then they prayed some more. They held more meetings and prayed more. They advertised the way they advertised other events in the church, but admittedly the church was doing little else other than Sunday morning. [Read more...]

A tasteful, subtle card to help deal with a big problem—pornography addiction in the church

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You can be free card
No matter what, we have freedom in Jesus and here is a practical card to help members of your church find it.

You don't need another listing of statistics to  convince you that many men, even in your church have a problem with pornography. The challenge is how to help them in a graceful and effective way.

The solution is very simple and I can't take credit for it, it is an idea from a church communicator who attended one of my seminars. I was thinking about this as I was preparing the materials for Father's Day and thought it would be a good time to share it

Here is how she described the ministry solution for porn addiction used by her church

We realized that we wanted to reach the men of our church with solutions to pornography issues, so what we did is we created business cards with websites on them where they could get help. We also had information about the programs our church had on the cards. The challenge then was then how to get them to the guys.

What we did was install the small, stick-on business card holders inside the men's restroom stalls. That way they could pick one up, put it in their pocket, and no one else would know.

It seems to have worked—we refill the card holders often.

With that as inspiration, I created the card to the left. It is simple and gets to the point.

You could also add additional resources from your church, pastoral or counseling help, or support groups that minister in this area. Assure members of confidentiality in any interaction in the church and be sure you stick to it.

To download the Free for everyone  ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files for the basic cards, click on the following link: Problem with Porn Business Card Image

Bonus for Effective Church Communications Members

Though the plain card will carry out the goals, for this card or for others you use to promote ministries that help people, I created the following set of cards that you can use for the front of these cards or for any others you create. Here are images of the cards:

Below is the link to download the ZIP file for these cards.  [Read more...]

FREE Father’s Day social media images

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Father's Day FREE Social Media Images
This is one of the set of FREE Social Media images available for you for Father's Day.

Images are a great addition to social media to attract attention to our messages. I created the following images for you based on the set of Father's Day invitations (CLICK HERE to go to that set) you can use to invite people to Father's Day events.

I also did this as an experiment and would appreciate your feedback. I usually have images in jpeg format in the ZIP files for the various publications. I do that so you can use them if you want to advertise the event perhaps in your newsletter. However, I know that the jpeg image is often not large enough or of a high enough resolution if you want to use it for some social media. Therefore, I created the set of images below in Canva. They were created in the Large Pinterest size. I resized the Square set and the Facebook set in Canva, which is why the layout is shifted somewhat.

For the small Pinterest set, I resized them in Paint.net which keep the layout spacing intact.

Below is a gallery of the Inspirational social media images. The size sets below have all of the gallery examples. Following the gallery example, you can see the actual screen size of the images in sizes for:

  • A small Pinterest Image
  • A featured or large Pinterest Image
  • A Facebook Image
  • A square image for Instagram or other programs that prefer this type

Click on the image examples below to download the ZIP file of whatever size image you like.

Gallery of all images

Sizes and downloads

Please continue reading for these images, some are very large. Click on the size image you want to download the ZIP file of images in that size. All of the designs above are in each set. The size description is below the images.

[Read more...]