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.

The Power of Infographics and an example of a useful one for Bible Teaching

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Best_Time_To_Post
This infographic illustrates the best time to post social media.

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.

Learn about Info Graphics from: Cool Infographics

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/

Not as much training, but lots of ideas at: DailyInfographic

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.

Teaching infographic—number of NT manuscripts

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:

Bible info graphic
A great example of an infographic for Bible teaching. The large circle represents the number of New Testament documents in contrast with the small number of other ones from ancient writers.

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.

Advice on creating a Facebook Page for your church and the fantastic way it can reach people

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Jane McGookey, Communication Coordinator for the Presbytery of Lake Michigan, the owner of Key-Web, Communication for Congregations and an ECC Member shared this extremely helpful video with us. In just a few minutes she explains how to create a Facebook page for your church and even more importantly, how a page benefits your church. She shows you how you can potentially reach hundreds of people with your content--and it's all FREE!

For more from Jane, check out her website:
http://www.key-web.net/

How to create a Word Cloud for the cover of your Facebook page

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Facebook has added a "cover" option for your page. You could put on a picture of the church, but why not make a Word Cloud of it?

Its a fun thing to do, unique and very easy. Here is the WordCloud I created for my Facebook page and the video below shows how to create one for yours.

Please check out our Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/EffectiveChurchCommunication, it's another way to get updates about material on the ECC site--also love your comments and suggestions!

Word cloud header, you can create your own, video shows you how

Video: Why your church needs to create multi-channel communications

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We have so many ways we can share the messages of our church today, often our biggest challenge is knowing which one to use. The video here is an overview of the communication channels available to church communicators today along with a discussion of the positives and challenges about each one. It also encourages you to create a communication team because no one person can possibly do all the communication in any church today.

This is not a how-to for every channel shown, but an essential OVERVIEW of the church communication channels.

Below the video is a PDF of the handouts for the Video.

This video is FREE for everyone, but the PDF of the notes are for ECC MEMBERS only. We are in the process of adding HD videos for ECC Members, this one was created before we had that ability, but it is still very useful. Membership is one of the best investments you can make in the communication success of your church and is only $9.99 a month or $99 a year for any size church. CLICK HERE for membership information and signup.

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Below is a PDF of the notes for the video above:

[mepr-show if="rule: 23971"]
Multi-channel Handouts
[/mepr-show]

Request for advice from a new missionary, how to communicate?

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Missionary communication advice
Missionaries today must communicate in many formats, here are some ideas.

I recently got an email asking for communication advice on how to communicate as a missionary. Though I shared some ideas (I did missionary communications for years for two Christian organizations), this is an area that both I and Rusty, the missionary who asked, would greatly appreciate your comments--either for him as a missionary, what to write, but also what you as a supporter of missionaries have found useful.

Enter your responses in the COMMENT area below this article and THANK YOU in advance!

Email to Yvon Prehn

My family and I are now serving as missionaries in Budapest, HU. We find ourselves trying to communicate even more than we did as youth ministers.

I wondered if you might have, or know where we could find, some information that deals specifically with missions updates and letters. there are so many ways to communicate now beyond a typical/traditional monthly newsletter. I'm wondering what is most effective, though i suppose we are all wondering that.

I look forward to your response, thanks.

From Rusty

My response:

Great question! I have a couple of ideas on this and I am going to post it as a question on my site and ask for comments. Initially here are some ideas that I have:

Background, it would probably be helpful to let you know why I'm sharing: In the past, I worked for both Compassion Intl. and Young Life and a big part of my job for both was to write fund-raising, missionary updates etc. From what I was told, my materials were very successful in raising support. With the assumption that people vote with their pocket books (as well they should--wise stewardship in giving to worth causes), it seems that my methods were successful. [Read more...]