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.

Holiday time management

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Holiday Time Management
You might feel like you are living in a snow globe at this time of swirling demands, but here are some tips to help you take control.

The analogy of living in a snow globe hit home with several ministry assistants enjoying a fall luncheon. “During the holidays I feel like I’m trapped in a blizzard of to-do lists,” remarked a longtime office professional. Her tablemates nodded. Each one knew well the sensation of having scores of demands swirling around her.

Conversation turned to ways they might weather the storm better this year. All agreed trimming tasks would be a challenge, but could be done. Some said they had already made strides toward maintaining saner holiday schedules and were anxious to explore even more ideas.

“To me, attitude is the key,” offered a pastor’s assistant who shared her positive experiences over the past few years. “We need to get over the notion that holidays should be all hurry-scurry. The real blessings of the season are missed when every minute is packed with activities, even if they are good activities.”

Another reformed overachiever noted, “The best thing I did was to take control of my personal agenda. When I quite trying to bake every cookie, make every decoration, and start every family tradition that sounded good to me, I found the time and energy to actually focus on the true meaning of the season.”

  • Make two lists of goals, one for work and one for home. It may seem a paradox, but making these two important lists now prevents the need to make a dozen trivial lists later. Decide what you want to achieve during the vital weeks between your two major holidays (say Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day). About each task, ask yourself, “Is there an easier way to do this?” Be selective; list only those activities and achievements that are truly important to you. Fun is important; schedule some.
  • Trim your calendar. Ditch all but what really counts. Save optional jobs and appointments for another time. Avoid taking on projects and plans that steer you away from your stated holiday goals. Don’t waste any of this special time doing things that can be done later—or not at all.
  • Protect your personal time. All year round, and especially during the holidays, give yourself daily or at least weekly private time to relax and refresh. Do what you like: walk, exercise, read, take a class, enjoy a hobby. Or do nothing at all. But keep this appointment with yourself.
  • Give up on perfectionism. Nothing paralyzes accomplishment, saps joy from achievement, and undermines good intentions like the irrational drive to be perfect. It is vital to know when to say, “This is good. Time to move on.”
  • Be realistic in your expectations. Memories, not to mention a plethora of magazines and websites, can create an unreasonable scenario of how the holidays should play out. No time of the year has more to live up to than Christmas (perhaps especially in the United States). Stay grounded. Kids will still be kids. Some people will still be inconsiderate. Problems won’t magically solve themselves. You will still get weary. Some recipes will just not be good. Life is life. Nevertheless, expect blessings. They are there to be claimed!

Free Image and media resources for church communicators

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Clip art is a key element to your seasonal masterpieces--here are lots of free resources
Images are a key element to your seasonal masterpieces--here are lots of free resources

In the coming months you'll be creating lots of communications for ministry and outreach over the holidays. As you do this, the following list of resources will help you with new images, photos, and an incredible way to create videos. All of the resources below have free sections, however, be careful because many of them also offer images for sale to finance their sites.

I didn't include standard, Christian sites because most of you already know about these and many of the images we use today are not your standard old-fashioned clip art images, but thematic photos.  I did include some basic clip art resources, but also a number of very contemporary photo sites.

I also included some smaller, new sites—if you like the material on these, be sure to download it ASAP—some of these sites don't last long, but have great images available while they do. Also, download the images before the site owners realize how much work it is to keep up the site and start charging for it, as I've seen happen on some sites.

TIPS on image collecting and organizing images and media

  • It's never too early to start collecting and organizing images for the upcoming holidays (and after Christmas it seems like Easter comes quite quickly). Here are a few tips to help you keep from getting overwhelmed.
  • Create folders on your computer for the different holidays and the images you'll save.
  • After some preliminary searching, decide on a theme, a look, perhaps even a color scheme for your upcoming holiday.
  • Use down-time to look for images ahead of time so you'll have them when you get ready to put your communication projects together. Doing this ahead of time makes actual production go much more smoothly.
  • If you have a laptop at home (this is what I do), browse through these resources while watching TV. There are thousands of images available today and it can take many hours to go through them to find just the right ones at the right price (free) for ministry projects. When I do this, I don't feel so guilty for watching TV.

Photos & other media

In many communications and on websites today the trend is towards using photos and not clip art (though there are times in church communications when clip art is still incredibly useful). Many church communicators think they need to buy photos, but the sites below have some excellent ones and all the photos are free and copyright free to use.

http://pixabay.com/  This site has an incredible collection of high quality photos that are all free to use under Creative Commons license. This site also includes simple vector graphics and illustrations. It has a useful search box that you can also sort your searches for photos, vector, or illustrations only.

http://www.imcreator.com/free/ Fairly new site, contemporary, high quality images. Many require attribution, but are free. Also has icons, website templates.

http://picjumbo.com/ very nice, contemporary photos, many of them free. Has a good listing of categories for searching. Not a huge site, but useful for up-to-date subject matter.

http://publicdomainarchive.com/  Interesting collection of images—some taken by the site owners others from public domain resources. Some are free, some for a membership fee. Worth checking back often as they post new images each week. They don't have a good search function.

http://nos.twnsnd.co/ New Old Stock—advertises itself as lots of uploaded old images or images in the public domain. Made me feel really old to see the space and astronaut images included.  No search function; and not particularly holiday related, but some great images and fun to scroll through.

http://magdeleine.co/browse/ "handpicked, free photos for your inspiration" very nice, contemporary photos, free to use attribution required. One nice feature they have is a search tool that you can search based on colors.

CLIPART and Image Resources

http://www.clker.com/ simple clip art images for the holidays, with an emphasis on very simple images, but often that is exactly what you need.  You have to scroll past some ads, but thousands of images here. One other useful feature is when you click on an image, they include a number of similar ones, e.g. search for "Santa" and on the download page are dozens of other Santa images in many different styles.

The program also has a built-in simple editing program, SVGEdit.  For example if you download a line drawing of Santa, you can open up the program and with one click change the color of the image to a red, instead of black line drawing.

http://thepatternlibrary.com/ Fascinating collection of patterns—not a lot of them, but definitely worth looking at and downloading—you can do so much with them later.

Videos

www.animoto.com  I LOVE this program! It allows you to create incredible videos (think alternative announcements, etc.) by simply adding images and captions, hitting a button and then the program turns them into great videos with amazing graphics and transitions. When you first look at the program you may wonder why it is listed as "free" but scroll down to the bottom of the page and you'll see a section for "non-profits" where you church can get a free membership.

I know there are many other sites, PLEASE send me the ones you like and I'll do another collection of them, email to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

 

 

 

How to create “ministry motivating communications” and tips for photos, writing, creating videos in them

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http://www.animoto.com
You don't have to yell to get people to motivate people in ministry--here is a video program that will help.

In ministry we want people to respond to our message with tangible actions and to do that we need to create what this training article refers to as "ministry motivating communications."

In contrast to administrative or teaching communications, the purpose of ministry motivating communications, is to create a change in the lives of your audience. That change might be to encourage them to grow in their walk with Jesus, to become involved in a ministry, to donate time or money, to be challenged to share their faith. To be most effective creating these behavior responses, ministry motivating communications must involve the hearts and emotions of your audience in addition to their minds. When the heart is involved, people are more likely to take action. And to involve the heart, it's helpful to stimulate emotions to drive that response.

An important point needs to be clarified here. This isn't about creating artificial, falsely generated, ramped-up emotions. This is not about by-passing the mind—solid facts, statistics, and examples are part of the foundation of our communications, but to motivate to action, conviction, and life change, we often need to go beyond the facts.

Children dying of hunger; children without education or drinking water, young people sold into slavery, these issues and many more are worthy of our deepest emotions. We should cry. They should pull at our hearts. Some situations should make us sick to our stomach and angry.

When Christians do not grow in their faith, when they act in disobedience to God's Word and harm themselves and others, when they do not walk worthy of their calling and cause the Lord shame, whether from lack of teaching, not knowing any better, or outright disobedience, we shouldn't be indifferent. This is not how the Christian life is to be lived.

These situations need to be changed. The task of the Christian communicator is to share situations and stories, physically and spiritually, locally and globally, so that people will see the needs, feel them in their hearts, and respond in concrete actions.

We can do that in print and online writing, and in addition, video gives us a powerful tool to create ministry motivation communication. [Read more...]

What will really make Mom happy for Mother’s Day

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Mothers Day can inspire Moms to pray.
Mothers Day can inspire Moms to pray.

Flowers and candy are nice and at church praise from the pulpit for all Mom's hard work is always appropriate. But in addition to those things, we've got two others that may have more eternal impact.

Inspiration to pray for her kids: One Mother's Prayer

This short piece, One Mother’s Prayer, has probably impacted more people than anything else I’ve written. It is the simple, but true story of a young man One mothers prayers, cute onewhose life was going very wrong, whose Mother prayed, and his life changed.

It was first published in Today’s Christian Woman magazine. It was repeated in their Best of Ten Years of writings, it has been reprinted and republished all over the world, and it continues to bring tears to the eyes of any group I read it to. You are free to use it any way you want and share it however you want.

It is useful for Mother’s Day, for Moms in Touch and other prayer ministries and to give out in Children’s ministries. CLICK HERE  to go to One Mother's Prayer.

Come Back #4 IMAGEMother’s Day: Come Back to Church Cards

One of the things that will make Moms most happy is for the people they love who only come to church on Mother’s Day and other special events to come every week. It won’t happen by simply wishing it will happen. You  can help this happen for Mom's by providing a way to intentionally let visiting family members know you want them to come back to church. Come Back #1 IMAGE

You have to invite them back.

Subtle doesn’t work as a communication strategy in our world today. Think of how the secular media bombards us with repeated messages to buy this, come to that, don’t miss out on some special sale. Though we don’t want to be obnoxious we do have to be persistent and clear.
The link here will help you do this: CLICK HERE to go to it.

eAdditional resources of all sorts for Mother's Day

Inspirations and how-to videos, ebooks, connection cards and bulletin inserts for Mother's Day are all at this link:  https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/mothers-day-resource-list/ 

 

Mother’s Day is your church’s BEST opportunity for evangelism!

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When you think about Mother's Day celebrations at your church, evangelism probably isn't the first think you think about--but it should be!

Mothers Day Book
Click here to download this free e-book. Read and share with your church staff and it will change your view of Mothers Day.

If we are to "make the most of our time" and our calling is to introduce people to Jesus and help them grow to mature disciples, we need to realize that Mother's Day brings many unchurched spouses and kids to church who seldom come any other time. If all we do is give out roses for Mom and say a few nice words (nothing wrong with that), we will miss out on the opportunity to give Mom the best gift ever--kids and husbands introduced to Jesus.

This free e-book will give you a new view of Mother's Day--just click and download.

For more resources for Mother's Day, CLICK HERE.

ALL of the materials are free for Effective Church Communication Members, in ready-to-print PDFs and in editable MS Publisher files. For more information on membership and to sign up, CLICK HERE.