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.

Christmas carols as inspiration for Christmas outreach, sermons, website content

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Christmas Carols are not only fun to sing, but can provide inspiration for sermons, blogs, and outreach.
Christmas Carols are not only fun to sing, but can provide inspiration for sermons, blogs, and outreach.

How do you find a theme for your Christmas outreach, sermons, blogs, or for content for your website that visitors might read?

One of the best resources is in the classic Christmas carols. The content is rich with biblical references and truth. The carols make a perfect communication starting place because people, both church members and unchurched are familiar with them, but may not be aware of the truth they reflect.

Following are some suggestions of ways you might want to use Christmas carols, but before you pick one, be sure to pick a carol that is in the Public Domain (copyrights expired) so that if you want to quote all or part of it you aren't breaking any laws. Sixteen of the most popular ones are listed below.

For an extensive list of all the carols with lyrics in the public domain, including many little-known, historical ones: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/HTML/index_of_carols_ab.htm

A limited choice of lyrics of some of the more popular carols:
http://songsofpraise.org/christmaslyrics.htm

Short list of some public domain Christmas Carols, suggestions for use follow this list

  • Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
  • Silent Night
  • Jingle Bells
  • Deck the Halls
  • Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
  • Angels We Have Heard on High
  • Away In a Manger
  • Deck the Halls
  • Here We Come A-Caroling
  • The First Noel
  • It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
  • Jolly Old St. Nicholas
  • Joy to the World
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas
  • We Wish You a Merry Christmas
  • What Child is This?

Some suggestions for ways to use the content of carols in outreach, sermons and blogs

From: Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

The idea of hope and fear--a combination of emotions as old as the years before Christ and as new as contemporary Christmas expectations.

From: Joy to the World

The title alone is great inspiration.

We all need JOY and the reason we can have it now and forever is because of the second line of the song: "the Lord has come"

From: What Child is This?

A good sermon series or Christmas Day sermon title or for a series of Q & A on your website. The answer is in the song: "this is Christ the King."

From: Deck the Halls

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly......tis the season to be jolly...."

Why is it a season to be happy? Again, back to the idea that salvation has become real and tangible in the birth of Jesus. God fulfilled thousands of years of promise in the birth of the Messiah.

 

What to do now to prepare your church website for the holiday season

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If you advertise for holiday events, be sure your website answers visitor's questions.
If you advertise for holiday events, be sure your website answers visitor's questions.

When you see an advertisement on TV, in the newspaper, or a magazine, what do you do if you want to find out more? Most likely you'll check out the website. We go to websites to find out the details about a product: how reliable the company is, about the costs and benefits of a possible purchase.

What's true in our everyday perusal of products is also true for the people who check out and who will be visiting your church website this holiday season. If you are doing a postcard mailing, a door-hanger distribution, an advertisement in the newspaper as outreach for this holiday season or any other special event, if possible, before you create or send out the outreach piece, take some time to work on your website, and give it a tune-up, a sort of spring-cleaning before inviting guests in. Even if you've already sent out some materials, as soon as you can, work on your website. Here are some essentials that you need to do: [Read more...]

A very FREE, FUN, EASY, and Creative tool for Halloween graphics

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This is SO much fun! It is a short presentation of a free and very easy and fun program you can use to create and modify Halloween communications. So many things I've talked about Halloween outreach are rather heavy and intense--this is purely a fun thing--a way to modify any image with Halloween images.


 
CLICK HERE TO go to LINKS to motivation and tools to help you share the good news about Jesus at Halloween

LINKS to motivation and tools to help you share the good news about Jesus at Halloween

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Halloween Resources
Invitations, videos, motivation, sign-in cards & more--whatever you need for Halloween outreach, there are links here.

In church communications, we do what we do because we believe that the eternal destinies of people depends on how they respond to Jesus. We know that–but in the midst of long days and overwhelming demands it is easy to forget.

Halloween gives us an opportunity to use our communications to challenge people to explore the claims of Jesus--but it takes a lot of work to do that. The communications below will help you:

Just click on the links below each entry to go to the additional information. [Read more...]

Halloween Communications for before, during, and after your event

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Overview of Halloween Communications Needed
At the end of this article you can download all the communications and the videos to share with your church for your Halloween Outreach.

Below are screen shorts of the VIDEO OVERVIEW of print communications from Effective Church Communications. They include Motivational Bulletin inserts, invitations, sign-in cards, evangelistic material to give out at the event, and follow-up materials.

If you'd like a closer look at them, CLICK HERE to go to the Halloween Materials Overview Video.

To download the ZIP files that have all of these, scroll to the end of this article.  [Read more...]