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.

Q & A: Where can you find Free PowerPoint resources, artwork and templates?

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Question:

"Our church has recently added a video screen to our sanctuary. We are in the beginning stages on learning how to use it for announcements and other parts of our church service. We have found some resources for slide backgrounds, videos and countdowns. Most of the video and countdown sites have a fee to use these. We are a small church and just wondering where the best sites are for these things, and possibly free usage sites also. Any suggestions?"

Answer:

Though there are many excellent companies that create PowerPoint presentations for churches, many do charge a hefty fee for their materials. As someone who creates resources for churches, I know everyone needs to make a living, but at the same time, I as someone who is married to a bi-vocational pastor and whose work at the church is done for no compensation, I do know that church resources can be very tight, while ministry demands can be challenging.

I did a good bit of research on this and found the following websites have some excellent FREE resources! Rather than simply telling you about them, I did 3 video reviews, so you can actually see the sites. Following are video reviews of the sites I found most useful with preliminary comments and direct links to them.

PLEASE respond in the comments section if you have other sites that you use either free or paid for. Any extra comments would be very helpful. Thanks so much!

Free PowerPoint Templates from Christian sources

Heartlight.org
http://www.heartlight.org/powerpoint/2262.html
This site is just WONDERFUL! Lots of free materials, really good quality, and I found the overall attitude of the site encouraging and uplifting. Not only PowerPoint, but lots of other materials you'll find very useful for church communications.

Ebibleteacher.com
http://www.ebibleteacher.com/
I didn't find this as useful for worship-type PowerPoint as some, but I really like their teaching materials. Good graphics and maps section and OK background images. I use a lot of maps and historical images in my Bible teaching to remind people that the Christian faith is rooted in real history that took place in real places.

Hyperpixels Media
http://www.hyperpixelsmedia.com/motion-background-loops/fire-flow
I really liked the materials here. This site has mostly materials that cost, but they also have some free materials, that change and that are wonderful. Their quality is excellent and their prices are very reasonable. This does cost, but their video: A Man's Thesaurus had me laughing out-loud. Check it out when you need a bit of humor.

Free PowerPoint Templates for Churches Video Review

Free PowerPoint templates from Secular Sources

PowerPoint Styles.com
http://www.powerpointstyles.com
This is a weird site—but useful weird. Be sure to look at the video before you go to it. It has some GREAT material and it's all FREE, but what is weird about it is all the junk ads, software download boxes and other stuff that clutter up the site. But if you take a few minutes with it, you'll be rewarded with some really great PowerPoint Templates.

Microsoft.com
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=presentations
The link above goes directly to the free PowerPoint templates from Microsoft. As you'll see the best ones they offer don't come from Microsoft themselves, but from companies that give free resources to them. It is a little tricky to find and access these resources, but the video that follows shows you how.

Free Templates and Clipart for Churches from Secular Sources

Free Power Point Training Resource

Indezine.com
http://www.indezine.com/
This is a very interesting site—it does have lots of free templates for PowerPoint and the video below shows you how to access them, but it also has lots of educational information on all sorts of topics related to PowerPoint, such as an extensive tutorial about presenting on the iPad. There are lots of links to books and other resources related to PowerPoint and links to downloads of software trials. Their religious templates feature ones for non-Christian religions, which could be very useful for world religion classes. Bookmark this site as the offering and education materials change often.

Free PowerPoint Templates and Training, a video review of Indezine

Father’s Day Post cards, a great set, ready-to-use

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Here is a set of postcards for Father's Day, that can also be used as stand-alone images in PowerPoint, websites, newsletters or however else you want to use them. These publications and images come in a ZIP file you can download in these formats:

  • A PDF of postcard size publications that is ready-to-print as is, but that you can also personalize on the back side with your church information.
  • An editable MS Publisher file of the images that you can modify however you choose.
  • A graphic image in either png or jpg format that you can use any way you want, in newsletters, on the web, however, you'd like.
Word Cloud image 3
These images for Fathers Day can be used for postcards, inserts into bulletins and invitations to celebrate Father's Day.

The images above illustrate only some of what is available for Father's day. All of the files on this page are FREE for ECC MEMBERS, some of the other files will be available for everyone. Members can download the ZIP FILE, at the end of this. If you are not a Members of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE for membership information --it is only $9.99 a month for many free resources and training available 24/7.

The images and postcards were created with Word Clouds, created with http://www.tagxedo.com.

These are illustrations only, the zip file containing all the files, PDFs, etc., is available at a link below the images.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD the ZIP file containing the PDFs, graphic images, and editable MS Publisher files.

 

What ONE THING do you need to do? a challenge for church communicators as you start the New Year

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Do the most important thing
We all juggle many things, but we need to listen to the Lord to decide what is most important and do it.

This past year the father of one of my friends died. My friend shared with me that in the time they spent together as death approached, he asked his father, “Is there anything you need to do?”

What a kind and wise question to ask a loved parent in the twilight of life—to be there to help him do whatever needs to be done to rest in peace. We all want to know our lives mattered and that we finished up the tasks, the calling, and, if possible, all we were created to do before we leave this earth. We may not be able to finish those things alone and the offer to help seemed incredibly insightful and caring.

As I thought about it in the days that followed, I realized that it’s an important question for all of us to ask ourselves and those we love. As the New Year is about to start, it’s an especially good time to do that. As many of us make resolutions at this time, we ought to take time to make worthwhile ones. [Read more...]

Year-end giving– links to donor resources–and a suggestion for your communication ministry

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Before the year closes out many people want to make the most of their charitable giving contributions, below is a link to the IRS site that explains charitable giving guidelines and might be useful if people call or email the church office with questions.

Here is the IRS LINK overall for charitable giving:
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc506.html

For Canadian charitable giving information: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/dnrs/menu-eng.html

Ask for what you need

In addition to this link, think about asking people to consider a designated donation to the communications ministry at the church. Good, complete, on-going communication is a vital part of every effective church. However, it is a ministry that needs resources to function at its best.

Here is a list of some of the things that designated gifts could be used for:

Updated computer--for producing communications in the church office, the prices of really powerful computers have dropped greatly in price. For less than $500 you can get a computer today that would have cost thousands just a few years ago and that can greatly improve your productivity.

Why MS Publisher is recommended for Church Com teams
This ebook is free for ECC Members and an inexpensive download for those who aren't. Take time to look it over and learn how Publisher can accomplish more than you ever imagined for your church and at a very low cost.

Updated software--if you don't have MS Publisher, a fantastic gift would be the software and a months worth of training for only $25  at http://www.lynda.com. CLICK HERE to go to an ebook that illustrates all the benefits of MS Publisher and gives you two great resources of where to get it at an amazingly low nonprofit price.

Updated production equipment--if you haven't looked at some of the current copier machines and digital duplicators, you'll be amazed at the updates in technology and how you can print high quality materials at a very low price. Ask for money to put into a fund and then schedule some time with your local, trusted dealer to show you options. Don't get things printed by outside companies until you've explored the options for your church.

Updated training--if you aren't a member of Effective Church Communications, check out the resources HERE to get an overview of the training videos, free ebooks, downloadable templates and ready-to-print MS Publisher files all available for only $9.99 a month or $99 a year. There is NO other place that provides this kind of basic and useful training for churches.  CLICK HERE to go to the membership page for more information and to sign up.

If you didn't get a chance to ask before the year's end

Effective Church Communications supports the ministry of every other part of the church--it needs to be supported as aggressively as missions or children's or music or any other area, because if it is done well--church communications will make every other ministry area more effective.

If you didn't give an opportunity for people in your church to give to the communication ministry before the end of the year, consider a special offering at the start of the year and assure all your ministries that they will have a more effective New Year!

Church Communication tools to help people grow to Christian Maturity, a key goal for the New Year

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We need to do more in our church communications than reach out to people to get them to church the first time. You probably had lots of people visit for the first time during the holidays, but you don't want them to come week after week and leave with only nice feelings about the Christian faith.

We need to give them enough information to make an informed decision about the Christian faith and after they become a Christian we need to keep helping them learn about the faith until they grow to mature disciples.

People grow in the Christian faith by learning about God and His guidelines for living as they are taught in the Bible. To grow your people you need to get them into the Bible and to get the Bible into them. Below are some simple communication tools that can help do that.

Bible reading plans

Everything is easier with a plan. Give your people a plan to read through the Bible in a year. To make it more manageable and enjoyable print up the schedule a month or quarter at a time and turn it into an attractive bookmark that people can keep in their Bible and check off for each day they do their reading. You could also provide a link to a read-through-the-Bible –in-a year program on the web.

There are many free Bible downloads or podcasts on the web for people who might prefer to listen rather than read their Bibles. Don’t think for a minute that listening to the Bible is inferior to reading it. For most of human history, the majority of believers have not had their own Bibles to read—join the saints of the past and listen to the Word of God.

This year the adult discipleship ministry at our church that my pastor husband and I lead will be be going through the Bible in a year in chronological order. We are using the reading plan at: www.bibleplan.org. The plan we are using is the Chronological, read in a year. This site has a number of useful features

  • They will send the daily reading to you via email.
  • You can then read it online.
  • Or you can click on the link to the Bible Gateway and listen to it.

Memory verse cards

In many ministries we’ve worked in we’ve used business-card size verse cards to help our people memorize verses. These are so easy to create with any desktop publishing software, such as MS Publisher and the pre-perforated business card stock you can get at office supply stores. Do these up for Sunday School classes, small groups, and for all of the various teaching ministries of your church. For special occasions, you can turn the verse card into a refrigerator magnet. We’ve frequently done that for key verses for ministries or as a holiday gift to ministry groups.

Web site support

For  the Bible reading plans, refer people to a place on your web site where you have additional background on the books of the Bible, the history of the books, profiles of the key characters, how that book of the Bible is part of the overall story of salvation. Add links to other Bible study sites and you have a great tool to encourage your people to get into the Bible more deeply. A good site to start with is www.blueletterbible.org.

Another great site that has both lots of help on Bible studies, yearly Bible reading plans and one of my favorites, the links to classic Bible commentaries is: http://www.ewordtoday.com/  Be sure to go to the bottom of the page because at the end of the page are links to some excellent sites--be sure you go to: http://www.ewordtoday.com/comments/

A key to successful outreach and growth in the Christian faith is not for church leaders to do it all, but for them to equip their people to do the work of the ministry. Technology is a great tool that gives us new ways to equip the saints to do work of eternal value.