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.

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...]

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics

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Snappa is a great program for the fastest, easiest ways to make social media and online graphics! I've used it for some time (in fact, all the graphics you see in the sidebars of this website were created with it), but I like to use something for a while before I recommend it because I'm sure that many of you have had the same frustration I have where someone does this raving recommendation of a program and with great excitement you go to it and after paying for it realize it is a piece of junk and not only that you signed up for something that keeps wanting you to upgrade or buy more junk from them. That won't happen here as we don't take any advertising or affiliate payments (often the motivation for rave reviews).

Below is my little overview of it.

Here are some additional videos done about Snappa, just click the link below them to go to them.

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

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

Snappa: How to create a side-bar ad
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mB

 

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need

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Contribute to back to school ministries.
Few things were more exciting to me as a child than a new box of crayons--and we have opportunities to share that joy with needy kids.

Remember the smell when you opened a new box of crayons? Waxy and warm with a bit of paper mixed in.

Remember what it was like to see all those new crayons? Sometimes there were new colors. The metallic crayons seemed magical. I almost hated to use them, to turn the neat, sharp points into smushy stubs.  But there was always another year to look forward to, another start of school and a new box of crayons.

Crayons were just the start—pencils, notebooks with lines unfilled, sometimes a new lunch box.  Back-to-school was my favorite time of year. I hated summer. I didn't particularly like to play kid's games, especially outside. I wanted to be left alone to read.

We moved every year (my father was in the military and that's what they did then) and the first place I would try to find in any house was some quiet corner to read. My very favorite was at the end of a long closet where there was a window. In front of it were some packing boxes just big enough and at just the right height for an 11-year-old girl to with a book and read and look out the window. Clothes were in front of the boxes, effectively shielding me from the outside world. Still, my mother would find me and make me go out and play. I was obedient, but I didn't like it. [Read more...]

How to train churchcom ministry volunteers

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church communication volunteers
Recruiting volunteers is just the first step in assembling a team to help with the church communication ministry and here you'll learn what else is important.

Few church offices have enough time or people to get done all the communications they know they need to do to adequately inform and instruct their congregation and to get them involved in ministry activities that will help them grow to Christian maturity. Rather than complain or cut back on communications, one solution is to train a team of volunteers to help. That suggestion can be terrifying, but in what follows I’ll share strategy and tools that make it possible. Not easy, but possible.

First divide your communication ministry into two levels

Before we discuss the specifics of training tools it’s important to divide your church communication ministry into two levels because one of the greatest concerns churches have is that volunteers won’t do an acceptable job or won’t meet the overall standards expected by the church.

This is a valid concern, but it can be solved by dividing your communication ministry into:

#1 The PR Level

#2 The Production Level

The PR Level is the top level that encompasses the communications that define the church: the website, the church bulletin, the overall newsletter. This level has the strictest guidelines in quality and because of that, the work done by church staff.

The Production Level varies in communications, but it has items such as postcards, flyers, misc. communications from individual ministries within the church. This level can vary in quality (be realistic, you don’t need the same care for the postcard reminding the men’s ministry of a workday as you do the Sunday morning bulletin. There are lots of communications that are important to get people involved in ministries, that remind, educate, and encourage, and these are ideal projects for volunteers.

Prepare Guidelines and Templates

Two more things need to be in place before you launch your training program. [Read more...]

Why church communicators need to be on the church leadership team

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Teamwork is needed in church communications
God put us in a body for a reason and church communicators and leadership need each other to fulfill the goals of the church.

Many of you may now be part of the leadership team of the church, but for those who may not be and for those who are timid in their job, following are some reasons why it is important you are part of this team.

Church Communications are what make ministry reality in the lives of the congregation and community

The church leadership team can come up with a great plan to get everyone in the church into small groups. They can come up with a fantastic slogan, a great curriculum, all the members of the leadership team may be personally committed to small group interaction for discipleship growth.

How does that become real in the lives of the members of the congregation?

It becomes real through communications—through the lists of small groups, the website entries, the brochures, the maps that tell people how to get to where they need to go, the social media and church apps that remind and report.

In many ways church communicators are entrusted with continuing the reality of the verse, "and the Word was made flesh and made his dwelling among us" (Jn. 1:14) by taking the ministries of the church and turning them into the tangible communications that enable the congregation and community to become part of the ministries of the church.

Church Communicators can give strategic advice to church leadership teams

One of my goals in Effective Church Communications is to give you the BIG picture of church communications and to help you see how vital they are in helping your church fully fulfill the Great

Commission. I've developed the Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing to help church communicators and in turn their churches see how all the communications we do should be going towards the goal of fully fulfilling the Great Commission, which means to help people either come to know Jesus as Savior or grow to maturity in Him.

Individual communications might be tiny steps in the overall mission of the church and in being obedient to the Great Commission, but church communicators can help the staff see that you aren't just "creating another Sunday bulletin" but that you are creating an essential link that will help INFORM and INCLUDE people in the church.

Please take time to CLICK HERE to go to an article that explains the FIVE STEPS in more detail and help your church staff understand the importance of each communication piece.

Church Communicators can provide a reality check

In a previous article, It may not be your fault that nobody shows up for a ministry event that you advertised heavily, I talked about the reasons why no matter how great your communication piece might be in terms of writing, design, frequency, and multi-media outreach, people simply might not respond.

The reasons they don't are often because of decisions by the leadership team. The purpose in saying that isn't to assign blame or point fingers, but to encourage church leadership to have church communicators as part of the decision-making team about what and how to promote events to the congregation.

We all have blind spots, we all see things other don't and by expanding the spiritual gifts and viewpoints involved in making decisions about church communications, we will have fewer failures that could have been avoided by an additional viewpoint.

Also, church communicators can provide reality checks on scheduling and costs of communication ideas. The church leadership team may come back from a church conference with a great idea of what worked in a church of 10,000 and want the home church of 150 people to implement it immediately. That rarely works and the church communicators often are the ones who are realistic about what the church can and can't do AND can often provide ideas and options for how the great idea might be adapted or modified for their church.

In scheduling church communicators can help the staff understand that if they want a devotional booklet written, designed, laid out, and printed before Lent or Advent, that the church communication team needs more than a week to work on it. It's not fair for church staffs to make major decisions involving big communication projects or holiday outreach campaigns without having input from church communicators from the start.

It's a biblical model

We are called into a body and with the Lord as leader, when church staff and church communicators can work together respectfully and productively the Lord is honored and the church will be more successful in reaching the world and growing disciples in the church.