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.
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How to change the colors of artwork in Canva

10 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Canva is an incredible program and though I've used it for years, I continuously discover new things about it. In this short video, I'll share how to change not only big blocks of color (which is obvious and easy) but how to change even small parts of images in the program. Lots of great options for your designs—check it out!

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Filed Under: Canva, Design, Graphics, Images, Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: changing colors of images in Canva, Changing template colors in Canva, How to modify images in Canva

Canva’s remove background tool–absolutely WONDERFUL!

9 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This is the greatest tool ever to help in creating church communications! If you have ever tried to remove background around an image, you know how difficult it can be.

With Canva it is almost magically easy and then you can export the image to use in any program you want.

I had heard about the tool, but I didn't get around to using it until one Sunday morning my pastor (now sort of retired, but still preaching at times) HAD to have a flyer for a service he was doing later that afternoon. The video below shows how Canva came to the rescue to help me create what I needed.

 

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Filed Under: Canva, Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: How to use Canva, How to use Canva remove background tool, How to use Canva to create a ministry flyer

Connection Cards: church service distraction or great ministry tool?

21 January, 2020 By Yvon Prehn 5 Comments

Connection cards, are they a great tool or church service distraction?
Connection cards, are they a great tool or church service distraction--please share your comments.

I recently received the following email (only slightly edited for privacy) with a practical ministry question about Connection Cards and how to avoid the time filling out the cards and collecting them more than an awkward break in the service. Following the email, I have some advice, but PLEASE add your comments and practices in the comment section that follows.

Question about Connection Cards

I have a question or two concerning having the whole congregation fill out connection cards during the service time. I know you believe this a very important part of the Sunday morning church service. I have read several church leaders that agree.

I am Director of Administration for our church and have approached our Senior Pastor about doing this. He has been the pastor for 25 years so he is a very experienced pastor. When I first mentioned us possibly doing this he said he could not imagine having a break in the service where pretty much everything comes to a standstill while hundreds of people fill out these cards. He said he would think it would be a real "flow" breaker if you know what I mean...however he cares more about doing what is best for the body of our church than not wanting to try something new. So, he is willing to give this a try but I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask you so I will have more information to approach him with...

What would you estimate the time to be to complete these cards? Each service would have around 200 people in it....Would you estimate 2 or 3 minutes or something much shorter like 30 seconds?

Also, when other churches do this do they have something going on at the same time or does everything come to a standstill while they are being filled out?

My answer

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Church Communication Leadership, Church Communication Management, Church Connection Cards, Q & A Tagged With: Church Connection Cards, connection cards as a distraction, connection cards for church, how to present church connection cards, why use church connection cards

Why you shouldn’t be satisfied with less than 100% volunteer involvement in your church—the fallacies of the 20/80 often quoted statistic

8 September, 2019 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Volunteers can help in church work overload
Volunteers can help in church work overload, here are tips on how to recruit them.

There are many reasons why churches aren't successful in recruiting and retaining volunteers, but one of the most damaging may be that we have an underlying incorrect assumption about how churches and their volunteer programs work.

We’ve all heard: “20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work.” Sometimes those who are in the over-worked 20 percent in the church console themselves that is simply how life is and in the church we must suffer for Jesus.

Though trials are part of the Christian life, 20 percent of the people doing 80 percent of the work in the church is not an inevitable part of them. The 20/80 statement is merely a business observation—it is not scripture. The Bible tells us we are to have 100 percent involvement in the church.  We make up different parts of the Body of Christ, but everyone has a job to do.

When we believe the 20/80 fallacy (which is what it is), the result is that the leaders (staff and key volunteers) of the church do all the work and the majority of the congregation members sit back, watch, and expect to be cared for and entertained. They complain if things don't get done and criticize how things are done. They don't grow as servants or disciples. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Church Communication Management, Volunteer Management Tagged With: church volunteers, communications to recruit church volunteers, how to manage church volunteers, volunteers in the church

FREE Easter Jelly Bean Prayer for Children’s Ministry

23 March, 2019 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

Jelly bean prayer

By using the colors of Jelly Beans, this prayer is a visual way to share the gospel message to children—and to the adults with the children—sometimes candy isn't nearly as intimidating as a sermon.

It is useful at Easter to enclose in goodie bags, to use as an invitation, use as an illustration during a lesson or children's sermon.

The one to the right is an easy download for everyone, just CLICK HERE or on the image to download a ready-to-print PDF of it. Additional designs are illustrated below.

Additional Jelly Bean Prayer Designs

To see the images larger, click on the first one and a slide show will come up.

To download the Jelly Bean Prayer file, click the following link: Jelly Bean Prayer

At the end of this article is the text for the Jelly Bean Prayer that you can use to create materials for Easter for Children. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Easter, Evangelism & Outreach, Skills Tagged With: Children's Easter Church, Children's ministry, Communications, Easter, Easter Jelly Bean prayer, Evangelism for children, Evangelism resources, Jelly Bean Prayer, yvon prehn

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