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.

Free Microsoft Clip Art and how to make the most of it

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The Microsoft website has some of the most incredible clipart available or use in your church communication projects and it's all FREE! In addition to the free clipart, it has one of the most useful and fun to use search engines that allows you to find similar clipart, either in style or subject matter.

Both of these features are demonstrated on the video that follows.Below the standard resolution video is an HD video for Effective Church Communication Members.

Following are links for material related to the video, just click on the title to go to them:

ebook: Back to Basics, writing and design skills for church communicators

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Back to basics cover
This book will teach you the basics of many needed, but often not taught, communication skills in graphics, design, typography, writing, and managing. If you want your church communications to look more professional, you need this book. Available in print and ebook formats.

Most people who work on communication creation in churches have no training in design, layout, typography, and many related skills they need to do a good job. Training material is not easy to find because many of the materials available on communication design and related areas, require the use of expensive, advanced software and teach a secular, image-heavy approach that doesn't always fit the needs of the church audience.

This book provides basic training that can help every church communicator, even those with no previous graphic arts training create, write for, and manage a church communication ministry. This book is not a how-to on a particular software, but about the basic design and communication principles that form the foundation of effective communication creation.

This book is a scanned reprint of Yvon Prehn's earlier book, How to use your computer to create Better Bulletins, Newsletters, and More! All the examples in the book are from church communications and the advice is practical and Bible-inspired.

To be honest, the quality of the scans in the book isn't the greatest, but I felt the content was worth it to make this book available to you.

To buy a paperback version of the book on Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.

If you'd like the book in e-book, PDF format CLICK HERE

How to make the most of mission trip photos

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Most mission trip photos are of groups of people smiling into the camera--nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't tell you much more than a lot of people went on a mission trip. With some simple editing, you can tell a story with your images that focuses on one person and their experience. The video that follows shows you how.

Software used in the video: Paint.net

Paint.net is a fantastic image editing software and best of all, it is FREE. For a series of videos that shows you how to download and use it, CLICK HERE to go to my playlist on Paint.net on my Youtube Channel.here to find it and how to download it. ideo that shows you where to find it and how to

How to turn a simple photo into a powerful illustration

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When you want to illustrate a mission or outreach project, you may have photos, but you might want an illustration and not a photograph to promote your project. Perhaps your printing method or website calls for a high contrast image or perhaps you want to universalize the image--whatever the reason, this short video will show you how to turn a good photo into a high-contrast image.

For a video that shows you how to download paint.net, the program used to create this image, click here.

The Power of Infographics and an example of a useful one for Bible Teaching

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Best_Time_To_Post
This infographic illustrates the best time to post social media.

Infographics are those great images that help explain complex topics by using images, or as one definition put it:

"infographics turn data into information"

This quote comes from the site Cool Infograhics a (http://www.coolinfographics.com/) and it summarizes how useful these images can be. Infographics go beyond illustrating or decorating; they communicate by their combination of words, pictures and symbols.

I wanted to talk about this, first to provide a resource for learning about them and second, to share a useful one for Bible teaching that illustrates the number of New Testament manuscripts in comparison to other ancient documents.

Learn about Info Graphics from: Cool Infographics

If you want to learn about infographics, this site is one of the best resources. It not only features interesting infographics, but the commentary about each of them helps you understand what works and what doesn't.

Cool Infographics: http://www.coolinfographics.com/

Not as much training, but lots of ideas at: DailyInfographic

As its name says this site has a different graphic everyday on a huge variety of topics. Below is a link to one that talks about colors and branding. Though article doesn't mention churches, the color theory illustrated is very helpful:

"True Colors, Branded Colors" from Daily Infographic: http://dailyinfographic.com/true-colors-branded-colors-infographic

In addition to the article about colors, scroll through the site to find the infographic above on when is the best time to post social media.

Teaching infographic—number of NT manuscripts

Below is a great info graphic about the number of New Testament manuscripts as compared to the manuscript evidence for classical documents. For those who teach about the Bible, it's a useful resource. Below the image is the link to go to for it:

Bible info graphic
A great example of an infographic for Bible teaching. The large circle represents the number of New Testament documents in contrast with the small number of other ones from ancient writers.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2769387572471&set=p.2769387572471&type=1&theater

Unless you have lots of time—creating your own infographics may not be something you want to do, but on the web there are so many useful ones. Take a few minutes and check out the links—you'll learn lots.