Effective Church Communications

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators. 

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.

Snappa: Super quick and easy, how to create a side-bar ad with it

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Side bar ad example--read through the Bible Chronologically
This and every other sidebar ad you see on this site was created very quickly and easily in Snappa. The video here shows you how to do it.

Snappa has removed a huge source of frustration for me because I never seem to manage my creative time as well as I start the day hoping I will. I'll work hard on project (like the one for this sidebar ad on Reading through the Bible in Chronological Order), and after the work is done on the project I realize I need to create a graphic to tell people about what I'm doing.

I panic. But then I remember I have Snappa, so I take a deep breath and usually less than 5 minutes later I have a graphic—polished, done, and ready-to-use.

Below the short video shows you how to do it.

I can't recommend Snappa enough—even if you are better at time management than I am, it's a super quick and easy way to create any kind of digital graphic you need.

 

For more videos on Snappa, click on the links that follow the title:

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
https://wp.me/pDky9-8il

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics
https://wp.me/pDky9-8hw

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mw

 

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa

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Comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
All three are great programs, this lets you see the strengths of each one.

 

After the recent overview/tutorial of Snappa, an Effective Church Communications member asked me how it compared to Canva and PicMonkey. That was such a good question and as I thought about it, I realized it wasn't something I could answer in a quick email and that the answer would be useful to many of you.

I like all three programs and use them all, but they are different in what they do best. Below I did a video review of all three. It is short and subjective and far from an exhaustive overview of any of them, but I trust it will help you see the differences. Below the video is a summary of the cost of each and a few additional comments.

Remember Effective Church Communications does not take any advertising or participate in any affiliate programs. You can CLICK HERE if you want to read more of our concerns about affiliate programs. On Pic Monkey (the only one I bothered to look up) they give affiliates 30% of what you pay. I would much rather they had a lower rate than participating in a system that can distort reviews of the product. But regardless of what others do, we will not be part of the affiliate kudzu that infects the web. You can read our reviews knowing they have no secondary agenda. [Read more...]

Encouraging Quotes and Pins for Church Communicators

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Church Com images set
This is one of the PINS and images set for church communicators--enjoy!

Something very different in this post today—graphics to encourage you! I did this because sometimes I feel like an Old Testament prophet of doom on this website—warning church communicators to Do this! Do that! And whatever you do, don't ever do this because what you do is SOOOOO important. And it all is very important because we've been entrusted with the words of eternal life and the eternal destinies of people. However, in the midst of all the heavy responsibility is great JOY! What incredible work we've been given to do!

The Devotion for today is incredibly important for you to read and let sink in because all of you doing work in church communications truly are the GREAT ONES in the Kingdom of God. I decided to do a Pinterest size graphic for that and share it on my Pinterest Boards (https://www.pinterest.com/yvonprehn/quotes-for-church-communicators/) which I've just started updating again. Then I decided to do that for all the Devotions for this year and share the graphics with you. Below are all the images and then below that is a link where Effective Church Communication Members can download the graphic files to use in any way they want.

Below you can download all the graphics to use however you want in any communication or website to encourage church communicators or others in ministry.

CLICK HERE:  Pinterest quotes, set #1 to download the ZIP file of Images

 

For a ministry to the arts in your church and incredible graphic design creativity, check out the RISOGRAPH!

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RISOGRAPH Samples
Images like this show why the RISOGRAPH has become a favorite graphic design tool of artists everywhere.

In a recent newsletter, the AIGA  (the American Institute of Graphic Arts) had a wonderful article about how the RISO is becoming the darling of art schools!

I must admit, I was just astounded by some of the work being done with the humble digital duplicator, but it proves what I have often said that the quality of communications has so much less to do with the latest and greatest technology and has everything to do with the imagination and skills of the person working on it. Artists around the world are doing incredible things with the printers and their low-cost and versatility make it perfect for printing in the church.

Below is the link to the article, and then after that, some quotes from it and then some examples of images on sites that specialize in RISOGRAPH (aka the RISO Digital Duplicator). It really is inspiring! [Read more...]

How to legally download images from Google and Bing

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How to legally download images legally
It only takes a few seconds to make certain that the images you are downloading are legal--this video shows you how

I imagine it happens to almost everyone who has worked on church communications. You really need an image for the project you are working on. You don't have money to buy one. You go to Google or Bing, do an image search and grab the first image that looks good.

And then later you feel guilty because you feel you may have stolen an image that wasn't legally right for you to use.

What to do? Check out the video below for super quick and easy ways to make sure you only snag legal images.

I can't believe I just learned this, but there is a very simple solution which this brief video will show you: