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.

A tasteful, subtle card to help deal with a big problem—pornography addiction in the church

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You can be free card
No matter what, we have freedom in Jesus and here is a practical card to help members of your church find it.

You don't need another listing of statistics to  convince you that many men, even in your church have a problem with pornography. The challenge is how to help them in a graceful and effective way.

The solution is very simple and I can't take credit for it, it is an idea from a church communicator who attended one of my seminars. I was thinking about this as I was preparing the materials for Father's Day and thought it would be a good time to share it

Here is how she described the ministry solution for porn addiction used by her church

We realized that we wanted to reach the men of our church with solutions to pornography issues, so what we did is we created business cards with websites on them where they could get help. We also had information about the programs our church had on the cards. The challenge then was then how to get them to the guys.

What we did was install the small, stick-on business card holders inside the men's restroom stalls. That way they could pick one up, put it in their pocket, and no one else would know.

It seems to have worked—we refill the card holders often.

With that as inspiration, I created the card to the left. It is simple and gets to the point.

You could also add additional resources from your church, pastoral or counseling help, or support groups that minister in this area. Assure members of confidentiality in any interaction in the church and be sure you stick to it.

To download the Free for everyone  ZIP files that contain the MS Publisher and PDF files for the basic cards, click on the following link: Problem with Porn Business Card Image

Bonus for Effective Church Communications Members

Though the plain card will carry out the goals, for this card or for others you use to promote ministries that help people, I created the following set of cards that you can use for the front of these cards or for any others you create. Here are images of the cards:

Below is the link to download the ZIP file for these cards.  [Read more...]

FREE Father’s Day social media images

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Father's Day FREE Social Media Images
This is one of the set of FREE Social Media images available for you for Father's Day.

Images are a great addition to social media to attract attention to our messages. I created the following images for you based on the set of Father's Day invitations (CLICK HERE to go to that set) you can use to invite people to Father's Day events.

I also did this as an experiment and would appreciate your feedback. I usually have images in jpeg format in the ZIP files for the various publications. I do that so you can use them if you want to advertise the event perhaps in your newsletter. However, I know that the jpeg image is often not large enough or of a high enough resolution if you want to use it for some social media. Therefore, I created the set of images below in Canva. They were created in the Large Pinterest size. I resized the Square set and the Facebook set in Canva, which is why the layout is shifted somewhat.

For the small Pinterest set, I resized them in Paint.net which keep the layout spacing intact.

Below is a gallery of the Inspirational social media images. The size sets below have all of the gallery examples. Following the gallery example, you can see the actual screen size of the images in sizes for:

  • A small Pinterest Image
  • A featured or large Pinterest Image
  • A Facebook Image
  • A square image for Instagram or other programs that prefer this type

Click on the image examples below to download the ZIP file of whatever size image you like.

Gallery of all images

Sizes and downloads

Please continue reading for these images, some are very large. Click on the size image you want to download the ZIP file of images in that size. All of the designs above are in each set. The size description is below the images.

[Read more...]

INSPIRATIONAL Postcard invitations for Father’s Day

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Free Fathers Day Invitation
Click on the image to download this Free Invitation.

No matter what your church as planned for Father's Day, you need invitations to get them there and we've got some for you.

These invitations,  which are half of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet and that print 2 per page, have a challenging verse for Dads on the front and then on the back you can add whatever details you want about what your church has going on for Dads. They can be printed on light-weight cardstock and mailed or given out.

If you want just one, the one to the left is free as a downloadable PDF. Click on the image to download it.

All the designs below are part of a ZIP file below the gallery of additional images. The file has ready-to-print PDFs of all the designs, plus editable MS Publisher files and jpegs of all.

CLICK the following link to download the ZIP file of the invitations shown above:Fathers Day Invitation

 

Templates: 1 Corinthians 13 Bulletin Inserts, true love defined

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1 Cor 13 Bulletin Insert
This bulletin insert shares not only how we should love, but reminds us of how God loves us.

First Corinthians 13 is the love chapter of the Bible. Not only does it challenge us with how we should love, but we often forget that the perfect love in this chapter describes how God loves us. Take a minute away from your work to think about that and praise God for its truth.

With those reminders in mind, following are Bulletin inserts (or postcards or however else you want to use them) that quote 1 Corinthians 13 that you can use for Valentine's season or any other time people need a reminder of God's love. On the back of the cards you can put links, lessons, or activities your church has to teach people about God's love.

Below the images of inserts is the ZIP file for Effective Church Communications Members to download both PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. If you aren't a member you won't be able to see the links. For more information and to join Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE.

Community Outreach for Valentine’s Day—a door hanger sample and a postcard

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Valentines Door Hanger
A door hanger like this is a wonderful way to reach out to your community and invite them to church.

editor's note: I wanted to republish the article below because as I was going through my past articles on Valentine's Day outreach, her ideas are some of the best I've seen. I liked them so much, I created two Template collections for you to make Valentine's Day Outreach Door-hangers and Postcards. The links to them are at the end of the article.

Gayle Hilligoss, our wonderful columnist who writes so many helpful articles for us, also volunteers her time to help the communications at her church.

She recently sent me two WONDERFUL samples and I'm sharing them below. First is her brief explanation of them and then images to inspire you. I LOVE the idea of using door hangers as a Valentine's outreach for your church—what a happy way to invite people!

Gayle's email:

Did I ever send you these? The first is printed on door hanger stock.
We are putting them on 300 houses in a subdivision near the church.

The second is a postcard being sent to prospects, visitors, absentees, etc.
We are printing extras for our members to share as they have opportunity.
A couple of the projects of our new Outreach Team : )

 

[Read more...]