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; Effective Church Communications can help.

Year-end giving– links to donor resources–and a suggestion for your communication ministry

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Before the year closes out many people want to make the most of their charitable giving contributions, below is a link to the IRS site that explains charitable giving guidelines and might be useful if people call or email the church office with questions.

Here is the IRS LINK overall for charitable giving:
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc506.html

For Canadian charitable giving information: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/dnrs/menu-eng.html

Ask for what you need

In addition to this link, think about asking people to consider a designated donation to the communications ministry at the church. Good, complete, on-going communication is a vital part of every effective church. However, it is a ministry that needs resources to function at its best.

Here is a list of some of the things that designated gifts could be used for:

Updated computer--for producing communications in the church office, the prices of really powerful computers have dropped greatly in price. For less than $500 you can get a computer today that would have cost thousands just a few years ago and that can greatly improve your productivity.

Why MS Publisher is recommended for Church Com teams
This ebook is free for ECC Members and an inexpensive download for those who aren't. Take time to look it over and learn how Publisher can accomplish more than you ever imagined for your church and at a very low cost.

Updated software--if you don't have MS Publisher, a fantastic gift would be the software and a months worth of training for only $25  at http://www.lynda.com. CLICK HERE to go to an ebook that illustrates all the benefits of MS Publisher and gives you two great resources of where to get it at an amazingly low nonprofit price.

Updated production equipment--if you haven't looked at some of the current copier machines and digital duplicators, you'll be amazed at the updates in technology and how you can print high quality materials at a very low price. Ask for money to put into a fund and then schedule some time with your local, trusted dealer to show you options. Don't get things printed by outside companies until you've explored the options for your church.

Updated training--if you aren't a member of Effective Church Communications, check out the resources HERE to get an overview of the training videos, free ebooks, downloadable templates and ready-to-print MS Publisher files all available for only $9.99 a month or $99 a year. There is NO other place that provides this kind of basic and useful training for churches.  CLICK HERE to go to the membership page for more information and to sign up.

If you didn't get a chance to ask before the year's end

Effective Church Communications supports the ministry of every other part of the church--it needs to be supported as aggressively as missions or children's or music or any other area, because if it is done well--church communications will make every other ministry area more effective.

If you didn't give an opportunity for people in your church to give to the communication ministry before the end of the year, consider a special offering at the start of the year and assure all your ministries that they will have a more effective New Year!

Church Communication tools to help people grow to Christian Maturity, a key goal for the New Year

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We need to do more in our church communications than reach out to people to get them to church the first time. You probably had lots of people visit for the first time during the holidays, but you don't want them to come week after week and leave with only nice feelings about the Christian faith.

We need to give them enough information to make an informed decision about the Christian faith and after they become a Christian we need to keep helping them learn about the faith until they grow to mature disciples.

People grow in the Christian faith by learning about God and His guidelines for living as they are taught in the Bible. To grow your people you need to get them into the Bible and to get the Bible into them. Below are some simple communication tools that can help do that.

Bible reading plans

Everything is easier with a plan. Give your people a plan to read through the Bible in a year. To make it more manageable and enjoyable print up the schedule a month or quarter at a time and turn it into an attractive bookmark that people can keep in their Bible and check off for each day they do their reading. You could also provide a link to a read-through-the-Bible –in-a year program on the web.

There are many free Bible downloads or podcasts on the web for people who might prefer to listen rather than read their Bibles. Don’t think for a minute that listening to the Bible is inferior to reading it. For most of human history, the majority of believers have not had their own Bibles to read—join the saints of the past and listen to the Word of God.

This year the adult discipleship ministry at our church that my pastor husband and I lead will be be going through the Bible in a year in chronological order. We are using the reading plan at: www.bibleplan.org. The plan we are using is the Chronological, read in a year. This site has a number of useful features

  • They will send the daily reading to you via email.
  • You can then read it online.
  • Or you can click on the link to the Bible Gateway and listen to it.

Memory verse cards

In many ministries we’ve worked in we’ve used business-card size verse cards to help our people memorize verses. These are so easy to create with any desktop publishing software, such as MS Publisher and the pre-perforated business card stock you can get at office supply stores. Do these up for Sunday School classes, small groups, and for all of the various teaching ministries of your church. For special occasions, you can turn the verse card into a refrigerator magnet. We’ve frequently done that for key verses for ministries or as a holiday gift to ministry groups.

Web site support

For  the Bible reading plans, refer people to a place on your web site where you have additional background on the books of the Bible, the history of the books, profiles of the key characters, how that book of the Bible is part of the overall story of salvation. Add links to other Bible study sites and you have a great tool to encourage your people to get into the Bible more deeply. A good site to start with is www.blueletterbible.org.

Another great site that has both lots of help on Bible studies, yearly Bible reading plans and one of my favorites, the links to classic Bible commentaries is: http://www.ewordtoday.com/  Be sure to go to the bottom of the page because at the end of the page are links to some excellent sites--be sure you go to: http://www.ewordtoday.com/comments/

A key to successful outreach and growth in the Christian faith is not for church leaders to do it all, but for them to equip their people to do the work of the ministry. Technology is a great tool that gives us new ways to equip the saints to do work of eternal value.

Business or Invitation cards for Christmas or outreach, gifts, PR, invitations to come back to church, whatever you can think of

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Christmas business and invitation cards wide #1Christmas business and invitation cards wide #3

 

 

 

Business and invitation cards can be used for so many things during the Christmas season: invitations, gift enclosures, links to website explanations about your church or Facebook or Twitter encouragements, cards to encourage people to come back to church, gift tags, or whatever else you can think of. [Read more...]

Connection Cards for Christmas

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FREE Christmas Connection Card
Click on this image to download the FREE PDF file; all the other images below are part of a file for Effective Church Communication Members.

After all your hard work to get people to come to your Christmas events, you want to make sure you make a connection with them so that they will return to your church after the holidays. To do that you need to capture names and contact information.

These Connection Cards  for Christmas are a simple-to-create, but very useful tool. The one to the left is free for everyone, just click to download the PDF, print and use.

At the end of this article is a link to a ZIP FILE that has ready-to-print PDFs of all the images below, including  two versions that can be printed with color separations if you have a digital duplicator.

In addition  the ZIP file contains editable MS Publisher files of all the cards plus hi-res images of them. The ZIP FILE is free also. [Read more...]