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.

Church Bulletin Insert motivation for your congregation to invite friends to church Halloween Events

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Halloween B Insert Photo
A bulletin insert to motivate your people to invite their friends for Halloween outreach events.

Many people forget that Halloween is a great time to share your faith. That's because it is one time of year when many people are thinking about death.

Though secular views are distorted, this provides an opportunity to start a discussion about the one person that conquered death--Jesus. To encourage your people to use this time of year to share their faith, I prepared this Halloween-themed bulletin insert.

It was designed to be used on a church bulletin insert, but it can be put into any regular communication with your congregation: email; newsletter, website, whatever you can think of, to motivate your people to use every event of the year as an opportunity to bring their friends to church and introduce them to Jesus. [Read more...]

Halloween Outreach Videos and how to use them to reach unchurched people for Jesus

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Halloween Outreach video
Use this video to get people thinking about Jesus, the only person who conquered death.

Halloween is a fantastic time for evangelism outreach because everyone is talking about death and the supernatural. That makes it a perfect opportunity for you to engage unchurched people in a conversation about Jesus. The following are two versions of the same video that will help do that.

At the end of this article are download links to download HD versions of both videos for you to use in your Halloween Outreach. Do whatever you'd like with them.

The first one is a mellow one with Christian background music and soft fall graphics background.

The second one is a much more in-your-face with the music and a harsher graphics background—different ones for different audiences.

This video was created for you to share with your unchurched audience. Please download, share, link to your website. The other version of it has more mellow, church music if you prefer that.

Soft style of the video:

In-your-face style of the video:

Following is some information you can copy and share on your website after the video. It has a challenge for people to consider Jesus as well as websites for them to go to for more information. You have permission to copy, change, use however you want:

[Read more...]

Backpack ministry bulletin inserts–a variety of options to publicize this caring ministry

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When the stores start their Back-to-School sales, not only are these great deals for families, but for the family of God, backpack ministries are fantastic ways to share the love of Jesus. You can do fill backpacks for needy kids in your community; you can also do it as part of a missions outreach.

To encourage and inspire the people in your church to take part, Effective Church Communications has links at the end of this article to entries that have church bulletin inserts with a variety of illustration formats that you can either personalize on the back or change in any way you want if you are an ECC Ebook and Template Club member

The first two links are for Backpack Ministry Inserts, the third one encourages people to shop for your Christmas Shoe boxes when the fall sales are on, and finally a personal article on why this ministry is so important to me.

Click on any title to go to the articles:

Back-to-School Backpack Ministry--an opportunity to bring joy to needy kids

A new set of designs with templates for Effective Church Communications

My personal reasons why backpack ministry is so important to me

Bulletin Inserts: Shop for Your Christmas Child Boxes in August--Samaritan's Purse shopping Tips!

Bulletin insert and links to Christian resources about Ramadan

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Ramadan Resources bulletin insert, color image
The image here and the one below illustrate ready-to-print and editable church bulletin inserts for Ramadan that are FREE to members of Effective Church Communications. The downloadable file is at the end of this article.

In trying to practice Christian disciplines, I've fasted at various times in my life for short periods of time and always only from food. It is never easy. From my feeble experiences I am in awe of Muslims who during the month of Ramadan fast from sunrise to sunset not only from food, but from water (and that includes coffee and tea--which to my mind are essentials of life at the computer).

Currently, theological debates rage over the internet as to whether Christians should observe Ramadan, and though I come down on the side of those who believe that a Christian should no more observe Ramadan with a Muslim friend or neighbor any more than we would ask a Muslim to take communion with us--it is a very good time for us to pray FOR our Muslim neighbors and the Muslim world.

It is also a good time to learn and understand the differences between the Muslim faith and Christianity. If you don't understand the differences, you can't knowledgeably share the uniqueness of the Christian faith. In my personal experience as a Sunday School teacher, one of my students came up to me one week and shared a conversation he had with a Muslim student that he and his wife were sponsoring as an exchange student. We'd been sharing life and discussions about the Christian faith with her and he said, "We finally found something in common because Christians and Muslims believe in the same God of the Old Testament and Abraham." I was very concerned, but before I answered, I realized I needed to do quite a bit more study. CLICK HERE for the study that resulted. (Update: it's been over 2 years since that lesson and after much more interaction, many more lessons, discussions and prayers--last weekend our formerly Muslim friend was baptized as a follower of Jesus.)

Following are some resources to help you communicate understand the Muslim faith and pray for Muslims. [Read more...]

Free Islamic Images and Clipart, a video tour

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Free Islamic Images and Clipart Video overview
Free Islamic Images and Clipart Video overview with links to download sites.

It is not easy to find good Islamic images and clip art that are free. I found lots of sites that charge a lot for images. Though the images were beautiful and very nicely done, the prices were not realistic for church communicators who want to create materials either in print, PowerPoint or on the web  for the upcoming Muslim festival of Ramadan or any time that your church wants to teach about the Muslim religion.

On the other hand, many of the sites that say they are "free" really aren't or have so many rules, regulations and usage guidelines they are unrealistic.

The video below will give you a tour and preview of some sites that have good quality, respectful and correct images. In addition all of them are FREE and they don't have restrictive usage guidelines. Below the video are three links. There is a fourth site illustrated, but the link I had no longer works and I do apologize for that in the video. [Read more...]