Effective Church Communications
Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission
Print is still one of the most powerful ways to communicate because if you do up a print piece, such as a postcard and it is placed on the refrigerator--you can't help but see it many times!
The US Postal Service reminded us of that in a little video they did, and a clip of that is in the very short video that follows. At the end of the video is a link that will take you to the template page shown.
To see the video full-screen, click on the little square at the lower, right-hand corner. Enjoy!
The US postal service has a recent ad that starts out with the statement: "the refrigerator has never been hacked." You can check out the video below. Though the ad is obviously designed to encourage people and businesses to use the mail, it also has some great reminders for all of us as we as we work to reach out to our communities with invitations to seasonal and special events.
Below is the very short video and following it are some more applications for church communicators. At the end of the article are links to templates that you can modify to create invitations for your Christmas events.
Click on the image to go to video and then come back for some more advice.
Humor aside, the fridge is still communication central for every home that has one.
No matter how tech savvy you and your family members are, no matter how many people have mobile phones, ipads, or email accounts, everyone will see an image on the fridge many times. If you want your congregation to be reminded of a holiday event, the fridge is the place you want for your message.
CLICK HERE to go to an article with Christmas invitations.
There is a free one for everyone and a great set of editable templates for Effective Church Communication Members.
This is just one of the many resources available for Effective Church Communication Members. Membership is only $9.99 a month and give you access to a huge amount of templates, ebooks, instructional videos year round. CLICK HERE for more information.
It is challenging to plan a ministry outreach for any holiday and even more so when we want to recruit volunteers to help with it. Because there are so many things to do for successful outreach and our minds are pre-occupied with the event, it is easy to short-change our congregations in how we communicate to them about what is going on and what we need them to do.
As a very practical example, at our church, with the Adult Sunday School Class we are hosting a Thanksgiving outreach dinner. I've been working on it for some time and for it to be successful, we need many in the class to be involved. Though they have known we are doing this for some time--we just got the final approval of the location last week. I needed to let the class know and to let them know what we needed them to do.
My first idea was to simply do a PowerPoint Slide and announce it, but I knew that wasn't enough. I reminded myself of what I constantly try to teach that those of us who work and plan ministry events must always remember that the people we want to involve haven't been working on it as we have; they haven't been thinking and praying about it for as long as we have. They can't read our minds.
People need a tangible, paper, printed reminder of what we are doing and what we want them to do. Once the print piece is produced, we can put it on our information table for those who might have missed the first announcement and remind people about it in subsequent weeks.
We have a lot going on, we want people to do a number of things. Though in the coming weeks I will have specific task lists and sign-up sheets I wanted to give people a flyer that specifically told them:
The flyer illustrated here is what I came up with. The information is what is most important here and it was well-received.
It seems like we never have the time to put together things like this, but they are vitally important for as many people as possible to be involved in ministry events and outreach.
CLICK HERE to DOWNLOAD a PDF of the flyer.
As many churches plan their seasonal outreach celebrations, they often focus on putting on a big program for the community. It could be a play, serious or humorous. It could be a concert consisting of anything from the choir presenting a formal choral arrangement to the music ministry doing a special seasonal musical to hosting a visiting Christian Rock group.
There is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with these events and if you follow the advice of Effective Church Communications and are conscientious about connecting with people at your events, explaining what is going on at the church, explaining the Christian faith, linking them to more resources, and inviting them back, these events can be effective ways to grow your church. But something else is going on that we need to consider if you want your event to have a positive impact on your congregation beyond the event itself because. . .
Seasonal events don't stand alone. How we celebrate them reflects both the core beliefs of the church and the effect of them on the spiritual growth of church members. [Read more...]
