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.

Postcards for Kids! A great way to encourage families to come back-to-church this fall!

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Kids Back to Church Postcard
Kids love to get mail addressed to them personally. Why not create postcards inviting them to Sunday School this fall?

Kids love to get mail especially in the days of almost all electronic communications and social media. A letter or postcard addressed to them is something very special because they almost NEVER get anything like this.

To celebrate fall and back to school and church time, I have a GREAT set of postcards for you to share with the kids in your church! They are in both full color to print on full-color printers and separated spot color for you to print with your in-house inkjets, laser printers, or a RISO Digital Duplicator or similar technology.

From inspiration to practical implementation

Kids back to church postcards PDF Files_Page_05What follows is a set of postcards for Fall, but you can use this idea any time of the year when you want to give a little boost to attendance at your children's ministry or to advertise a special event.

At the end of this article, you can download a ZIP file that has PDFs like the one to the left that are ready to print for all the cards, plus you also get the original, editable MS Publisher file so you can modify them any way you like for your church.

Just put the child's name on the front and on the back add in all the details of your children's program at church, print and you are set to go.

 

Following are images of all the cards

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PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation

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Backpack Ministry PowerPoint Slides
Backpack ministries are essential to help kids be ready for school. These PowerPoint images will remind your congregation to participate.

People usually want to give to worthy causes and making sure that children have adequate supplies for school is a very important one.

However, we all need reminders to do what we ought to do and these FREE PowerPoint Slide images will help you remind your congregation.

Here is a gallery of the images. Just click on the ZIP file below them to download them. 

Click the following link to download the ZIP file of the images: Backpack Ministry PowerPoint Images

Production note: when you place the image into your PowerPoint file, it will be a background and is not editable. You can add your own text over it.

Additional Resources for Backpack Ministry:

***These are all FREE! Please share with other church communicators!

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Back-Pack ministries: https://wp.me/pDky9-7rX

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need: https://wp.me/pDky9-pL

 

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Backpack ministries

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Back pack supplies ministry
Getting supplies for children who can't afford them is a wonderful ministry. Help your church do that!

One of the best ministries at this time of year is for churches to assemble backpacks for kids that need them.

Following is an assortment of designs from past years that you can freely reproduce. You can use them as is or modify them to fit your church or community.

At the end of the article are two NEW sets of PowerPoint and Instagram images you can use to remind people and promote your backpack ministry.

You can click on the link below the images to download the ZIP file that has:

  1. PDFs of all the designs
  2. Editable MS Publisher files
  3. The design above in MS Word file
  4. Text for the flyers

****One more important note:

At the same time you recommend that your congregation buy supplies for backpacks, remind them that this is a great time to stock up on great buys on school supplies for Christmas shoe box ministries!

Gallery of the flyers/bulletin inserts

To download the ZIP file containing all the materials above, click the following link: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Backpack-Ministry-Bulletin-Inserts.zip

For additional materials to promote Backpack Ministries:

PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898

The job of church communicators–to incarnate ministry vision, illustrated with Backpack Ministry video

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Backpack Ministry Video
We can make a ministry come alive with our communications.
List of materials for backpack ministry.
An image of the list of supplies needed for the backpacks.

The communication project started out as an email plea for help. Our mission committee was working with two orphanages in Mexico and they wanted to provide backpacks for the children there. I got a frantic email for help--the committee knew they needed a way tell the congregation about it, but they didn't know where to start.
They gave me lists like the one here and a jump drive of photos.

Below is the video I created for them. I also did up other materials, (detailed brochure, posters, website materials), but the point of what I wanted to share here is that, as I thought about it, I realized this project illustrated one of the most important things we do as church communicators--we incarnate ministry vision.

To incarnate literally means to put into bodily form, to put on flesh and bones. Jesus did that when he came to earth. Peter worshipped an invisible, holy God as a child. When Jesus became incarnate, Peter could go fishing with him. He could hug him, laugh with him, go to a party with him. God became real to Peter in the incarnate Jesus.

So many of the ministry dreams and visions of the leadership in our church are wonderful, godly visions of what God can do. But until we put them into tangible form in our communications, they remain the intangible stuff of vision. When we create a video like the project--people see the children; they see the need; they know what to do. Lord willing, we touch hearts and motivate minds to action. We incarnate. We put flesh on the vision of the ministry to our people.

Often when we do this, not only do we help our congregation get involved with the ministry, but it touches us also. I became very involved in this project and became a back-pack making maniac for a few weeks. Since then I've been involved in other Backpack projects and below the video are some flyers/bulletin inserts and social media you can use to advertise back-pack ministries at your church.

Resources to help your church share backpack ministries

Note: I used animoto.com to create the video above. It is very easy to add pictures and text to the program and then a video comes out! Really, it is that easy.

Other materials for Backpack Ministries:

PowerPoint Slides for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-88N

Instagram Images for Backpack Ministry to remind and motivate your congregation to give: https://wp.me/pDky9-898

Bulletin inserts and Flyers for Fall Back-Pack ministries: https://wp.me/pDky9-7rX

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need: https://wp.me/pDky9-pL

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need

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Contribute to back to school ministries.
Few things were more exciting to me as a child than a new box of crayons--and we have opportunities to share that joy with needy kids.

Remember the smell when you opened a new box of crayons? Waxy and warm with a bit of paper mixed in.

Remember what it was like to see all those new crayons? Sometimes there were new colors. The metallic crayons seemed magical. I almost hated to use them, to turn the neat, sharp points into smushy stubs.  But there was always another year to look forward to, another start of school and a new box of crayons.

Crayons were just the start—pencils, notebooks with lines unfilled, sometimes a new lunch box.  Back-to-school was my favorite time of year. I hated summer. I didn't particularly like to play kid's games, especially outside. I wanted to be left alone to read.

We moved every year (my father was in the military and that's what they did then) and the first place I would try to find in any house was some quiet corner to read. My very favorite was at the end of a long closet where there was a window. In front of it were some packing boxes just big enough and at just the right height for an 11-year-old girl to with a book and read and look out the window. Clothes were in front of the boxes, effectively shielding me from the outside world. Still, my mother would find me and make me go out and play. I was obedient, but I didn't like it. [Read more...]