Effective Church Communications
Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission
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.
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.
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/
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.
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:
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.
NOTE: I messed up on the link from the newsletter! Mea Culpa! CLICK HERE to go to the Infographics article.
We all know that the internet is a social medium and our websites are more than a way to talk to ourselves and about ourselves. Interaction is one of the things that make a website useful especially for a church. However, sometimes it is difficult for the people reading your site to know how to contact you if they have a question.
To make that process easier, check out:
I just signed up for this and my first reaction is that I like the basic form on the website. It does not take the place of comments that relate to specific content on articles, but sometimes people want to contact an organization about a question that doesn't fit any category and this is a great way to do this. It puts a CONTACT tab on your page listings at the top of the website (see the one above). It also puts the little tab that is to the left of this page....not sure I like it, but I'll keep it for now.
Beyond the usefulness of the free contact form, though their integration with a calendar and database seems nice and easy to do, it doesn't seem that better than MS Outlook at the subscription price (I think it's about $9 a month, but hard to find which also bothers me) I'm not sure it's worth it.
Yes, that is in all caps and yes, I'm shouting it. YOU MUST RESPOND to messages! Nothing is worse than a church posting email addresses or putting a button like this on the site and then not responding when you get an email. It still happens far too often—I know, last week I sent a pastor an email about something significant (no names to protect the guilty) and no answer or even acknowledgement of the message. My message was not a pastoral concern and ultimately not terribly important. However, I would hope if a lonely or questioning person or someone with a desperate spiritual need sent an email believing that a pastor would answer that person would not be ignored.
Check it out, see if it works for you--and whatever you use, be sure to answer when people contact you!
In the past when I traveled to teach seminars (instead of the far more enjoyable online teaching I now do from beautiful Ventura, CA) as soon as I got on an airplane, I would head to the magazine collection and grab the Harvard Business Review. It is an excellent publication with well-written articles that often had useful application to church ministry. It is also a VERY expensive magazine and when my travel days were over, so was my enjoyment of it.
I was delighted to learn from a link sent to me by a friend that I didn't have to totally do without the advice from this useful source. A friend sent me this link to a very helpful article (lots of applications on the spiritual damage complaining can do):
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/07/emotional-contagion-can-ta.html
When you go to the link--don't be concerned when they ask you to register. When you do, you get free access to the HBR blog, which is filled with quality materials and access to 3 magazine articles a month. Of course you will be prompted to subscribe, but you don't have to and there is a wealth of useful materials here.
For thoughtful, useful material, check this out: http://hbr.org/
The challenge for both churches and for the people who create resources for them is always how to have enough money to do what we all feel called to do. Creators would love to give away everything they do –but somehow the bills have to be paid. Churches struggle with how to balance budgets while finding the resources they need to do their ministry.
I just discovered a site that provides lots of FREE images, full-video clips and has a different ministry model to fund them. The site is: http://www.muddyrivermedia.org.
They truly do provide FREE video clips, images and assorted media for free. Check out their ever-growing collection.
Rather than sell their materials or charge a subscription, they are doing their work as digital missionaries. This means they solicit donations to support what they do. So please do consider a donation if you use what they create. I've often thought this would be a great way to do this kind of ministry, though a challenging one.
I like their material and hope to be in contact with them and find out more about what they do--but for right now I wanted to pass on what I did know so you can take advantage of it.
Enter a comment below if you have an opinion on this way of funding resources.
Even better, send a donation and pray for the success of the ministry! http://www.muddyrivermedia.org
