Effective Church Communications

Strategy for summer communications, remember visitors, delete hidden jargon, don’t host a money-divided event

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Summer Image
Your church will have visitors this summer, be sure your communications make sense to them.

LINK to FREE Summer Templates is at the end of this article

This summer your church will get lots of visitors, some of whom are friends of church members who might not regularly go to church, others may be from the surrounding community, and we can't forget out-of-town visitors. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out with the gospel and the love of Jesus and here are some strategic tips to help your communications make the most of this opportunity and some strong cautions about what not to do.

Do you know What is the meaning of the word Selah in the Bible? You will be surprise about the message that the bible has for you.

Jargon watch

We know we shouldn’t use church jargon terms like justification and sanctification in our church bulletin, web, or social media when we are writing for people visiting our church, but so much of our church jargon we don’t even see. Using acronyms we don't explain, talking about events that we do year after year and assume everyone knows about, insider jokes, assuming people know times and locations—all these things are confusing and unkind to someone visiting. We don't want our language to keep someone with a free night in our city to miss out on an opportunity to learn about Jesus.

What should we do? Awareness is a good first step. Look at your bulletin, web, and social media and ask the Lord to help you see them as a visitor would. Take the time to explain what you know is confusing, even if it benefits only one person. To go further, show your communications to a friend who doesn't go to the church and ask them to tell you what you said. If they have trouble explaining exactly what you are referring to, how to get there, and why they should bother to come you may want to make some changes.

Not for summer only: the above tip is useful to do at least once a year in your church. It becomes impossible for us to see if our communications make sense to anyone outside the church. You have to get that feedback regularly to be sure you are communicating with the people you want to reach.

Ask yourself what would make you feel welcome if you were visiting? 

For local visitors:

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Colorful, fun church reminder postcards for Summer

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Summer church reminder postcards
Remind people in fun ways about what is going on at church this summer with these cards.

A light touch, a gentle reminder is often all that is needed to let people know what is going on at church during the summer and to help you do that, I revised some summer postcards I made with www.tagxedo.com, a fun site you can use to create word cloud images that you can then place into any publication you are working on.

The cards below were designed as reminders or notes that you can send out to remind people of what is going on at the church. Make them up for Sunday School Teachers, Small Group Leaders and Pastors to write a few notes a day to various church members. Summer is time for fun, but the best of times are often with our church families and these cards can remind people of that.

Below the illustration of the cards is a downloadable ZIP file that has ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files.

To download the ZIP file for the images above, click the following link: Fun Summer postcards

 

Summer Postcards to encourage church attendance

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Summer postcard to encourage people to attend church
Here is a FREE set of summer postcards to remind people to keep coming to church.

Here is a set of cards you can print to remind people to come to church during the summer.

The all the images were created as 1/4 page postcards in MS Publisher. I then made PDFs of them that are ready to print. I intentionally left a white margin around the images so if you print them in the church office and are a little off in your cutting them apart, you'll still be OK. If you get them professionally printed you might want to add run the image all the way to the edge of the template size the online companies provide. Below is a ZIP file with additional cards that contains:

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A great need addressed—a Video and Instagram images of Prayer for GRACE for all nations

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A prayer for Grace for all nations
A prayer for Grace for all nations is desperately needed in our contentious times.

Grace, unmerited favor and kindness, which we receive from God and should share with our fellow pilgrims on this earth, is something we need now more than ever. To encourage that I created some Instagram images for you, plus the short video below.

Please watch the video as a prayer.

The materials above are an updating of a project a few years ago when I wrote up the acronym GRACE as a prayer to celebrate the 4th of July, taking as my inspiration the line from the song, "America, America, God shed his grace on thee."

You can grab the video from YouTube and use it however you'd like. Below are Instagram images I first made and that are illustrated in the video.

You can download the Zip file for them here: 2020 INSTAGRAM GRACE Prayer for all nations

An ECC Member in Canada modified it for Canada Day and that in turn inspired me to create a series of Free PowerPoint slides and videos using it as a prayer, go to this link to download both of them: https://wp.me/pDky9-7mJ

In addition to them, I created a series of PowerPoint Slides and videos you can use to celebrate the 4th of July for the U.S. and a set as a prayer of grace for any nation. Here is the link to them and they are illustrated below: https://wp.me/pDky9-7mD

You can freely use all these materials however you wish, but please DO PRAY for our hurting world, that God would change hearts and infuse it with his Grace.

4th of July, Canada Day and GRACE for all nations: slides, videos, handouts

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There is a lot here--slides and videos for you to use both in America for the 4th of July and for all other nations that we pray for God's grace to touch our world.

"God’s love in action towards men who merited the opposite of love."

is one of my favorite definitions of grace and as Jesus's disciples, grace is an attribute and action we can share with a world currently so desperately in need of it.

A few years ago I created a bulletin insert for the 4th of July that uses the acronym "GRACE" as a prayer. Following that, a member of ECC created one for Canada Day. (CLICK HERE to links to both)

That inspired me to take the same acronym of GRACE and make it into a set of PowerPoint Slides you can use however you want and as a prayer video not only for the 4th of July in the United States, but for the many members of Effective Church Communications in other countries around the world.

In the midst of all the rancor and strife that overwhelms our world, one of the most powerful things we can do is to remind our people to pray and encouraging them to exhibit grace to a hurting world by guiding them in prayer for lives that reflect the grace of God.

Below is a set of slides for both the U.S. version of the video and then the world-wide one. Only the intro slides and the last one are different, the ones for the acronym GRACE are the same. Just click the zip file below the slides to download them.

Below the slides are videos of each set with a voice over of me reading the slides to you and one with the music only. Below each video is a DROPBOX link where you can download the video to use for a guided prayer time in your church.

Please use and share with others and pray God will grant us grace to be his people in every situation to those who deserve it and those who don't and desperately need it. [Read more...]