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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.
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Church Directories How-to, ideas from church communications

8 March, 2011 By Yvon Prehn 24 Comments

Church Directory Tips
Church directories are great tools for helping people get to know each other in the church--here are some ideas how to create them.

Recently I received this question about pictorial directories and after the question are responses that were sent in and below them is a suggestion of a commercial product that I’ve had a number of folks in my past seminars tell me they really liked. Please put any additional comments or ideas that you have in the comment section below the article.

Question: Do you have any samples or ideas on how to put together an in-house pictorial directory?

We don’t like the traditional 8×10 size like Olan Mills for example prints. We’d prefer the 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 size or 4 1/4 x 11. We want to use photos, names, addresses, phone numbers (home & cell), emails, birthday & anniversaries of each person. All this information is preferred in the same area with the photo, not seperate. But where you can find ALL the information in one spot, but have it large enough to be read.

Looking for ideas. Any you have would be appreciated.

Thanks for all you hard work in making this such a fabulous informative website for church secretaries!

Connie

Idea #1:

Lord of Love has a membership-managing software program, Servant Keeper, which offers formatting for regular & pictorial directories.

I'm not able to export that information to send to you, since it is copywrite-protected, but basically, you can lay out the page with 3 large pictures on the right, with the families' information to the left & horizontal lines separating the 3, or lay out 10 to the page with smaller pictures, photo to the right, info to the left, basically making 4 columns on the page (info, phot, info, photo L - R) with horizontal bars separating each pair of families from the ones above & below.

I've even heard the suggestion that in a smaller church, each family can have its own page & add a short autobiography & candid snapshots. It would really take a small church to get all this information gathered in a timely manner!

Judy Rauscher,Secretary

Idea #2:

Hi Yvon,
We put out a pictorial directory in-house about three years ago, but unless some technology changes, I won't be doing another one again any time soon, at least not a printed version. The reasons are below:

1) Printing issues: To effectively print them on a color copier (our color copier was brand new at the time), we would have had to photoshop every single picture because photos output much darker on the color copier than they do on a color laser printer or ink jet. In the end, I couldn't get some of the photos light enough to render the people in them recognizable, so I ended up printing them all on a color laser printer.

2) Cost: The color laser printer I have is about twice the cost of printing on the color copier. When it was all added up, the cost PER DIRECTORY was almost $6. (It was 40 pages, 8.5x5.5 booklet format, with approx. 120 families.) We printed about 150 directories, one for every family, plus extra copies for staff and to give to newcomers, for a total cost of nearly $900.

3) Time cost: I had to spend literally HOURS gathering, cropping, sizing, tweaking and importing photos, not to mention the normal updating, merging, etc. of the data itself. It was way more work than we usually do to put out a directory.

Now, for a positive take:

1) If one has a church management system (CMS), where the congregation can log in and upload their own photo, and update their own info, then there is usually provision for printing a photo directory, and it would be somewhat easier, though still costly to print.

2) Taking it a step further: If we were to do it again, I would convert it to a PDF document and hand out CDs, then each individual family could absorb the printing cost if they even want to print it out at all. In this day of iPads and smart phones, I can see PDF being the preferred format at some point. I have a smart phone, and I think it would be great to be able to access it wherever I am. (Until we have a secure, member-only section on our website, I can't put it online for download.)

Blessings!
Rona Heenk, office manager
East Renton Community Church

Yvon's note on this:

Though I understand the value and impact of color, the most important thing about the directory is to simply see and identify the people and black and white might work nicely to do that. I recently saw a demonstration of a newer digital duplicator from the RICOH corporation and I was astounded at the quality of  the photos. Check it out if you get the chance, it would be interesting to see how that might work out, especially if you didn't do something really formal, but maybe a more casual one.

Idea #3:

Utilizing a local photographer or one in your congregation to take the family photos, you could then use a publisher such as Creative Memories or Blurb.com to produce an incredible book in whichever size you’d like. Blurb will even offer you the ability to have members purchase the books directly through their website, rather than ordering them in bulk. The downside, is that anyone would be able to see said directory. Once you find a good solution, please let me know. We are planning to do this on our next go round as well.

PS, last year we had our church photographers take photos of each family on Easter Sunday, just as a fun service to them. That may be a great time to catch most of your members dressed in their Easter best!

In Christ's Love,
Chaundra Ward
Administrative Secretary  | Clear Lake Baptist Church

Idea #4:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/publisher-help/create-catalogs-or-directories-RZ001078363.aspx?CTT=1&origin=EC001023015

Hi Yvon,
The above link is from Microsoft. I didn't take the "course" as I'm off to work in a few minutes but it looks like you can sit back and watch it or you can keep clicking Next at the bottom and it walks you step by step thru a Catalogue Merge.
If they create a data file (excel, access) with the information that they want to appear in the directory, they essentially do a mail merge with Publisher... except, Publisher lets you merge photos in too... so as long as they sorted their data on last names, and saved their photos by last name, so they would merge in. So as long as they sorted their data on last names, and saved their photos by last name, so they would merge in the right order, it would be (hopefully) fairly simple to do.

Laura
Secretary - Dundas St Centre United Church
Communications Committee Chair - East London Anglican Ministries

Idea from Yvon

In the past I have gotten some very good feedback about this product:

http://www.instantchurchdirectory.com/

They are the same people who make the clip art resources for churches, Communication Resources.

I'd love to hear from any of you that have used it, good or bad--just put your comments in the comment section below the article.

Here is the link to their latest version:
https://www.comresources.com/directory/

And an updated description of what it does:

The new 2011 version of Instant Church Directory offers you all the same ease of use as the 2008, but now with five brand-new features.  Now you can provide your congregation with an updated photo-directory every year – or as often as you like – without dealing with a photo-directory company.

You can do it yourself, right in your church office, with the equipment you already have. And you’ll see the results in hours … not months!

All you need to do is recruit a few members with digital cameras to stand near the doors on a few Sundays and take “head-shots” of families and individuals as they arrive or leave. The Instant Church Directory™ software will walk you through the process from there.

Instant Church Directory™ automatically prints your members’ photos and roster in alphabetical order.

Once the directory is on your computer, it’s a snap to make changes and keep it current. Simply print out updated copies anytime on request – as many or as few as you need (Instant Church Directory™ is designed to print on 8 1/2 X 11 portrait format only).

It’s like having a professional photo-directory without the hassles of a directory company. Or without obligating your members to buy expensive portraits.

And just like a professional photo-directory, Instant Church Directory™ will help your members get to know one another better, help build a sense of community, and strengthen member care.

Don’t expect your members to tolerate an outdated directory or loose supplements. Put an updated photo-directory into their hands that they’ll appreciate … and you’ll be proud of!

Instant Church Directory™ is also great for producing photo-directories for your Youth Groups, Choirs, Sunday School Classes, Pre-school, Women’s, & Men’s Organizations, Fellowship Groups, and other ministries of your church.

New Features for 2011!

New! Birthday Page - Quickly add birthdays to any member.  The ALL-NEW birthday page displays member birthdays by month.
New! Custom Pages - Insert any PDF page right into the directory.
New! Custom Information Fields - Two new custom fields allow you to add any special information.
New! Reorder Pages - Now you can tell the software which order to print your pages.
New! High-Quality PDF Directory - A high resolution image quality option for printing

_________________________________

Below are the websites of the companies that produce the professional directories.

I am not crazy about either of these companies, but I included them as something to check out for ideas or to compare options. Any directory is better than no directory at all and they do provide a useful service for busy church staffs.

http://www.lifetouch.com/

http://olanmillschurch.com/

Please add your comments, ideas, input and information in the comment section here. Thanks so much!

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Filed Under: Photos, Print on Demand, Printing methods, Printing your own books, Web-based printing companies Tagged With: membership directory, pictoral church directory

Clipart for World Religions, tools to help you be a modern-day Paul

27 February, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

There are many reasons why you might want to find clip art for religions other than Christianity, including to study and understand them or to do outreach. The Apostle Paul in Acts 17 carefully studied the pagan idols so that when he preached to the people he used what had learned about their religions as a bridge to share the good news of the true God and Savior Jesus. Below is how Paul did this and following are some websites of high quality clip art that you can use to reach the Athens in your world:

Acts 17:22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

Taking your cue from Paul, if you want to study the representations of  other faiths today, below are some sites that will help. Please enter any that you know about that I may have missed in the comment section below this article.

Good overall site to purchase high quality software

http://www.fotosearch.com

This site is listed in the categories below, but it is by far the highest quality site. The site has samples from many other sites, some of which are not widely advertised. You can buy the images individually and the site links to the collections the images come from. There are many beautiful, innovative and interesting images for the Christian faith in addition to a large variety of world religion images.

There are no free images listed and some are quite expensive, but the quality of many is quite high. Do take the opportunity to browse through it for ideas even if you don't purchase something.

JEWISH CLIPART COLLECTIONS

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/jewish.html
Wonderful collections and images, links to complete collections.

http://www.jewish-clip-art.com/

Contemporary, informal style, some cost

http://www.jewishsoftware.com/products/jewish_clipart_84.asp

Very nice CD, a comment on it: "Jewish observance permeates the content of this disk, which will be welcomed by Jewish schools here and in the Diaspora that need artwork to decorate classes or newsletters, religious children who want to illustrate school reports, and synagogues that produce bulletins to their members."

ISLAMIC CLIPART COLLECTIONS

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/islamic.html

Professional, quality images, priced per image, beautiful images. Also has links to more complete collections.

http://www.sakkal.com/IslamiClip1.html

Traditional calligraphic images

BUDDISM

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/buddha.html

Beautiful collection, contemporary, professional, links to complete collections.

http://karenswhimsy.com/buddhist-statues.shtm

Really nice black and white drawings. Don't let website title mislead you, this site has many vintage images that are excellent in a number of categories, check it out.

World Religion Collections

The quality, type, and religions represented below varies tremendously, but many religions represented.

http://www.fotosearch.com/clip-art/world-religions.html
Clip art sets, high quality, that have images for a group of religions.

http://www.aperfectworld.org/religion.htm

http://vector-images.com/cd_contents/mythology.php

http://graphics.elysiumgates.com/cultural.html

_________________________________

Please do add additional sites that you use for images for Christian or other religions in the comments below—thanks so much for sharing!

 

 

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Filed Under: Clipart, Graphics, Images Tagged With: church clipart, clipart links, religious clipart, world religions clipart

How to be a SUPER ASSISTANT in the church office

16 February, 2011 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Gayle Hilligoss Picture
Article by Gayle Hilligoss

Ed. note: Sometimes we might wonder why we do what we do and how do we measure our success? This inspiring article from Gayle Hilligoss will help challenge and encourage you. Though currently I do all the church communication work from home for my bi-vocational pastor husband, I found this advice timely and practical.

As a full-time trainer I met with more than 75,000 ministry assistants throughout the United States and Canada. I visited hundreds of churches from New Hampshire to Hawaii, from Wyoming to Florida, and spent time with you in dozens of states between. Many of us have corresponded regularly for years. So, I speak from firsthand experience and observation when I say you are an extraordinary group.

You know what your job is—and what it isn’t.

As a super assistant you understand that to hit the target you need to know where the bull’s-eye is. You know the responsibilities and duties involved in your job. Even better, you know what results are expected. Knowing what the job is allows you to take the proper steps toward being able to handle it with confidence, skill, and poise.

When no position description is in place for your job, you take the initiative in writing one. With your job clearly defined, you enhance and extend your responsibilities without taking on the responsibilities of others. While always ready to lend a hand when needed, you focus on your own work and allow others to do theirs. People enjoy working with you.

You work toward being effective—not merely efficient. Efficient secretaries do the job right; effective ones do the right job right. You make wise choices regarding how to spend your time.

You recognize your job as ministry.

Your job is more than a job. It is ministry. Ministry is seldom convenient. Needed but routine work can be tedious. People tend to take you for granted. Service above and beyond is often required. Emergencies arise, extra effort becomes necessary.

You shine because when the need is there, you do more than just enough to get the job done. Whether managing the everyday work of the church office, rolling up your sleeves for special church programs, or dealing with emergencies, you approach the tasks at hand as ministry—an opportunity to show God’s love through service to others.

You commit to excellence.

The difference between excellence and mediocrity nearly always lies in the small things, in the details. And taking care of details is what your work is all about. Ministry involves a million little things done with consistency, competence, and compassion.

It takes more effort to look after the little things. But you do it. And the effort shows. You are known for your good work. The pastor and congregation can depend on the quality of your work.

People are still touched by dedication. While they may not know the mechanics involved, they can tell the difference between a neat, accurate bulletin and a messy one full of errors and misinformation.

Whether people notice or not is not the question though. You are serious about your work and feel an obligation to do your best. You care enough to invest yourself in doing excellent work—a mark of the true professional.

You keep learning.

Twenty years ago maturity and experience compensated to some small degree for current training. No more. Today, the knowledge you need to do the job—the methods and the machinery—becomes obsolete very quickly. You are committed to staying on the cutting edge. Seminars, webinars, classes, print journals, digital resources, and ministry assistants organizations keep you informed and inspired.

Certainly, there is a price to pay for training—in time, effort, and dollars. But you know the price to be paid for not learning; you choose the wiser option.

You communicate responsibly.

The secretary is the hub of the information wheel in the church. You are the one people count on to know who, how, what, when, where, and why.

No organization can do its job well without the free flow of necessary information. But, in order to use and dispense information, you must have access to it. That access requires your confidentiality. You have the trust of others because you never indulge in gossip or loose talk.

You aren’t afraid to ask.

The three-letter secret to success is ASK. If you need something, or think some action ought to be taken or some situation ought to be corrected, you communicate those concerns.

If, as people communicate with you, you are in doubt about any aspect of the information or instructions, you ask questions rather than assume. Assumptions are too often wrong. Asking saves time, dollars, efforts, and tempers.

You accept criticism objectively.

It can be difficult to take criticism for what it’s worth, to remember that sometimes it’s worth a lot and other times it’s not worth much.

You don’t allow yourself to take criticism as a personal attack. You learn what you can from it, resist trying to justify your actions, and always consider the source.

In your own operating style, you practice being a role model instead of a critic; your goal is to fix problems rather than to place blame. You assess situations, plan constructive courses of action, and set them in motion.

You maintain a positive attitude.

Each of us tends to find whatever it is we look for. You have developed the habit of immediately seeking something positive in every experience—especially in the experiences others might view as negative. You are not a Pollyanna, but are resilient about foul-ups, knowing that mistakes and misunderstandings are a normal part of life. You never make them more important than they are.

Unlike those who allow the weather to dictate their feelings for the day, you remain sunny even on gloomy days. Others may allow how people treat them to set the tone of their day. If people treat them well, they feel good; if not, they have a bad day. You know that no one can ruin your day unless you allow it. You  don’t expect praise or appreciation for everything you do—even the outstanding things. For you, the satisfaction of a job well done is its own reward.

You are flexible.

Being flexible is being willing to discard a cherished opinion, to try new ways of doing things, and to learn new methods. As comfortable as an old habit can be, a new way can be even better.

While a detour from the familiar may temporarily slow you down, it keeps your job from being boring and demonstrates your professionalism.

You keep your eyes on Jesus.

Strange as it may seem, working at the church can be detrimental to one’s faith. Nurturing your spiritual life is essential.

Church members, perhaps even the pastor, can (perhaps unintentionally) treat your Sunday worship time like just another day at the office. Wisely, you don’t.

Because you care so intensely about the church and its ministry, it could be easy to become disillusioned when plans and people fall short. Wisely, you don’t.

Daily time in prayer and reading God’s Word keep you on track. You understand people, even God’s people, may fail you—but Jesus never will.

You are super assistants! Keep up the good work.

“But those who trust in the LORD will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” —Isaiah 40:31  NLT

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Filed Under: Church Office Skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss Tagged With: church assistant, church office assistant, church office skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss

Is video the best way to market your church?

27 January, 2011 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

The title of this article is a trick question. There is no BEST way to market anything to everyone. However, video is obviously an extremely powerful medium as the current advertising campaign by the Mormon Church illustrates. Some comments about that project, some suggestions for creating your own videos, plus some suggestions on how you can combine video with other communication resources follow for an effective multi-channel outreach.

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An extraordinary example of video sharing

Most likely you’ve seen some of the “I am a Mormon” videos on television or on the web. If you haven’t, I encourage you to look at them at www.mormon.org. I must admit to a bit of trepidation in referring you to the site because it is very powerful in advancing the Mormon religion.

My trepidation comes from the fact that I am not a Mormon and that I do not believe it is a Christian faith that correctly represents my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (for excellent apologetic resources about the Mormon Church, go to www.equip.org).

That being said, you cannot help but greatly admire the overall campaign and the extraordinary production quality of the videos and the site. They have taken a large cross-section of people and through video and text have them tell their story. The stories are from women, single fathers, people of various races. The cynic in me notes the somewhat excessive attempt to break from the stereotype of Mormons as primarily white males, but cynical or not, the message comes across that all sorts of people, people like you and me, are Mormon.

The videos are short and though they focus on people telling their story, each story is a very carefully edited view of life that emphasizes Mormon values without much detailed information about theology. In short, they have perfectly captured the spirit of the age where relationships are primary and asking deep questions is pushed aside for warm feelings and the appeal of being part of a caring, loving group such as this.

This is not the time or place to critique in depth their theology, but as an example of extraordinarily well-done videos to advertise a church, they are brilliant.

A great resource for how to create your own videos

Few churches have the resources to create videos of this quality—though some do and of course this magazine has a sister publication that is filled with great information all about video ministry. Be sure to sign up for it if you don’t get it at: http://www.christianvideomag.com.

A resource that I personally cannot recommend enough is www.webvideouniverity.com. There are lots of video training programs out there that, in my opinion, were too over the top to be really useful to the average person (not video ministry unit in a large church), who simply wanted to do some videos for teaching and ministry.

The person who runs the site, Dave Kaminski is an excellent, teacher who knows his topic extremely well and can explain it effortlessly. I personally highly recommend that you sign up for his video tip of the week and you can do that on his site, www.webvideouniversity.com. He offers an excellent, professional training course, plus training on specific topic including How to do Screencasts and How to use your flip-style camera to create videos. Please remember my ministry does not participate in affiliate programs or take advertising—I recommend what I genuinely like. To read a more detailed article on how his training helped me, go to this link:

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2011/01/powerpoint-to-screencasting-how-to-improve-your-church-communication-on-the-big-screen/

How to combine video with other communication resources

Once you have created videos, you need to let people know they are available. You can do this in a variety of ways.

Social networking is an obvious one. You can upload videos to the numerous video sharing sites available, but if, like the Mormon videos, you may want to drive people back to your primary site, don’t upload all of them to YouTube or Vimeo or whatever else you use. Upload only a few teaser ones with links to your primary site.

Putting up links to short teaser videos, announcements of them, and links to a complete video site are obvious content choices for your church’s Facebook, Twitter and similar sites. We have recently assigned a person in our adult education class at church to be our “internet evangelist.” Her job is to continuously update our Facebook and Twitter accounts, plus interact and link with the main church site and the various members Facebook pages.

Don’t forget the power of paper

If you’ve done some things online that you and your people love, follow the lead of many national advertising companies and use print to inform people that the online material exists and to link them to it. Check out your snail mail this week and note how many advertisements, especially in the form of postcards, are created to get you to a website.

You can either do a postcard mailing from your church or you can create postcards in church office, and make up enough of them for every person in the congregation to have 3 of them. Put them in the church bulletin and then on Sunday morning, have the Pastor ask everyone to give or mail them out to friends or neighbors who might like to look at your videos.

We’ve found business cards with a condensed message are a great way to get people to our church and ministry websites. Make up a large number of them for the members of your congregation, give them out and encourage people to pass them on to friends. In the midst of life, we have lots of conversations and if your people are excited about some videos you have produced online, maybe even if they are part of it, they will want to tell their friends about it. Always having a business card with you that has the URL is a great way to share and connect with friends.

The pastoral uses of paper

Creating print items for your people to give out accomplishes lots more than simply adding another communication channel. You are also involving your people in outreach in an active, hands-on way.

Outreach is the task of everyone in the church—not just of those whose job it is to create professional communications while the people in the pew sit quietly and wait for new people to come. When you have invitation cards or postcards and everyone is involved in handing them out, they will most likely talk to the person to whom they are giving the card and nothing beats a personal recommendation for great marketing, whether it is for coffee or churches.

When the church is growing because people are involved in inviting, it also helps them be more welcoming when newcomers arrive—they are expected and prayed for.

Yes, it is more work to create the print communications and involve your people in using them, but remember when Jesus gave the Great Commission, he didn't pull aside a select group of marketers or pastors to go and share the gospel message. He gave the challenge to everyone listening. Sharing, marketing your church is everyone's job.

Bottom line

Video may not be the most powerful way to advertise your church, but if you create them yourself with honest, true content and use combine your use of video with other channels of communication; you will have a tool in the never-ending challenge of ministry to powerfully communicate your message.

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Filed Under: Church Outreach and Marketing, Multi-Channel Communications, Video, how-to Tagged With: church marketing, church PR, church videos, Communications, multi-channel communication

Powerpoint, Screencasting & Video: how to improve your church communication on the big screen

26 January, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

One of the things I love best about this ministry is that I get to research resources for church communicators and then pass on great ones to you. I do this in a way that is perhaps a little bit different than some reviewers or bloggers in that:

  • I only pass on what I genuinely like. I pay for all the materials I review, I don't get free review copies.
  • I don't take any kind of affiliate or referral compensation, to keep my referrals honest (I have a selfish heart and I couldn't trust myself if I did).
  • I use what I like in real ministry settings. My husband is a bi-vocational pastor and we are responsible for two significant teaching ministries at our church. I do all the communications for them as well as a large part of the Bible teaching. If the products I try don't work in those settings, I don't pass them on.

With those disclaimers in mind, I'd like to share a resource that I have found extremely helpful:

Web Video University

This site is run by Dave Kaminski, one of the best online teachers I've observed. He knows his material really well and does a great job explaining and illustrating it.

To check him out, don't go directly to the website www.webvideouniversity.com, because it looks like just another sales pitch for making money with internet video. In ministry we have very different reasons for doing video and though his sales page wasn't tacky or as tedious as some, it didn't tell me what I needed to know. In fact, it was this page that kept me ignoring his site for months. My opinion changed however when I signed up for the free weekly video tip. A collection of these is at the link below and I STRONGLY recommend that you check this out:

http://webvideouniversity.com/podcast/

Once I started getting his weekly video podcasts and checked out the podcast site, I was impressed.More than impressed, I realized that Mr. Kaminski had a depth of knowledge that would be useful for the things I wanted to learn to do.

I had been looking for a way to improve my webinars and was very interested in learning how to do both Screencasts and videos with a flip camera. Screencasts are a sort of PowerPoint on steroids that you can then turn into webinars or videos. Though I've used PowerPoint, literally since it was invented and have taken a number of classes on it--I knew I was not making the most of it and using animations to make things move, expand, appear, etc. was not something I ever felt I made the most of. It seems like a lot of videos these days consist primarily of moving words. Though there are a number of ways to do this, a screencast using PowerPoint is probably one of the easiest. After watching his video training series Screencasting, —it has changed the entire way I approach teaching with PowerPoint and in the coming months you'll see the results of that on this site.

I have recently signed up for the course on creating videos with the flip camera and the overall video course--lots to learn, but I have been extremely impressed by the site and resources so far and wanted to share them with you.

Never let your videos stand alone

Video is a fantastic resource, but it is not the only resource you should you use to communicate your message or market your church. Please read this article: "Is video the best way to market your church" (Click on title or HERE to go to it0 for some advice on some excellent examples of church marketing videos as well as advice on the print and other communications you need to create to make the most of your videos.

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Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications, Video, how-to Tagged With: church video, Communications, ECC recommendation, how to videos

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