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.

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

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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...]

FREE Easter Jelly Bean Prayer for Children’s Ministry

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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...]

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses

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Share your faith Snappa graphic
What an encouragement something like this can be when it comes across our social media. Snappa is a super easy way to create them.

Images with verses on them that fill our screens and phones can be wonderful moments of encouragement and refreshment. If we want to create them to share with others, Snappa is a fantastic program to use because it is so easy to create them. Though there are many programs you can use to do this, I like Snappa because it has more flexibility in placement of images and texts.

In addition, you can very quickly resize images in Snappa to fit any social media or print graphics format you want. Following is a short video I did to show how easy this is to do.

One quick reminder, Effective Church Communications does not take any affiliate advertising—I'm telling you about this because I personally love and use it all the time.

More videos about Snappa, click on the link below 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: How to create a side-bar ad
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mB

 

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

 

Pantone’s Color of the year–a vibrant, hopeful, lively Coral

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Pantone's Color of the year 2019
Pantone's Color of the year is a vibrant, beautiful coral--use and enjoy!

Well, this is different. After a murky green in 2017 and a vibrant, but somewhat depressing purple last year, Pantone's color of the year for 2019 is a vibrant, hopeful, and lively coral.

After the sad and contentious year, we've had it seems like the perfect color choice—somewhere between sunrise and sherbet. Here is a short video on it:

Pantone's color selections they say are done like this:

The Color of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s color experts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world looking for new color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, playstyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention.

Maybe. But maybe the committee or whoever this year just wanted to inject a bit of hope into the world.

Regardless of the reason—use the color!

It reminds me that Easter is coming, but even before then, use the color and put a bit of life and joy into your communications.