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.

Cautions on writing, creating, sharing personally revealing stories AKA testimonies, the possible negative results, and what to do instead

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We all want to share stories, yet we must always be respectful of the person whose story we want to tell and above all, we need to keep primary God's story and God's Word.

Storytelling is very popular currently. Just today I got yet another promotion of a “Learn How to Tell Stories” webinar.

Though storytelling is perennially popular, our Bible is made up of stories, after all, we must also be aware of some cautions when we tell stories—and that’s what this podcast and blog is all about…. The podcast is below and the blog on the same topic follows.

With the current trend of excessive sharing influenced by current media and the public revelations of indiscretions of previous Christian leaders, it seems there is nothing that is off-limits in public discourse.

There truly is no longer shame in what is shared.

The secular news media is one area; the church is another and it's important to set limits for what we share in the church in our written and digital communications and spoken public and digital sharing. This includes written and spoken testimonies and regardless of our reasons for wanting to share them, please consider the following cautions as we do them.

Please consider the following suggestions as both the ignorance of possible consequences of oversharing and the abuse of it can have lasting, though often not intended consequences for the people in our church.

We can never separate the content from the person

Allow me to first share my background on this issue as it comes from years of writing about people in difficult situations when I wrote about people for a number of Christian ministries in Colorado Springs and also was a religion reporter for the Colorado Springs Sun.

When I was a senior editor and writer with Compassion International and progressed to teaching writing and publication creation to other ministries, one thing I was adamant about was that we never, ever show people who were recipients of our ministry from a victim position either in what we wrote about them or how we photographed them.

No pictures of children with flies on their faces, no women beaten and bruised, and no men slumped in a pile of rags. Regardless of their previous need, I felt we should always treat people with honor. [Read more...]

Don’t steal videos for ministry—create your own with animoto!

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animoto video creation web software
Use animoto video creation software to legally create fantastic videos for ministry.

As I talked about in a previous article, it is illegal, it is stealing, to download and use videos from YouTube that you did not create. It doesn't matter if you are using them for church or if you don't get caught—you aren't supposed to do it.

It is a lot more work to create your own, but the online video creation software, animoto, makes it easy to create great looking videos for a variety of ministry purposes.

The software is SUPER EASY to use. After the demo videos below is a short video I did to show you how simple it is to use. It isn't cheap, currently it runs $22 a month if you pay for a year's subscription, but you don't need editing software, or any knowledge at all and your can create great church videos.

Two videos I created with animoto pro:

First is one I created using the free images from www.freebibleimages.com, a site I cannot recommend enough for a wealth of both drawings and pictures of actors in Biblical settings. You can use them to create your own videos as well as any other communication project in print or online. The second one is for Mother's Day and following it a short video that shows how I used animoto to create the Mother's Day video.


Video of how easy animoto software is to use

The video below was created a couple of years ago and animoto has made the process even faster and easier, but this video still give you a good idea of how the software works.

 

How to create “ministry motivating communications” and tips for photos, writing, creating videos in them

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http://www.animoto.com
You don't have to yell to get people to motivate people in ministry--here is a video program that will help.

In ministry we want people to respond to our message with tangible actions and to do that we need to create what this training article refers to as "ministry motivating communications."

In contrast to administrative or teaching communications, the purpose of ministry motivating communications, is to create a change in the lives of your audience. That change might be to encourage them to grow in their walk with Jesus, to become involved in a ministry, to donate time or money, to be challenged to share their faith. To be most effective creating these behavior responses, ministry motivating communications must involve the hearts and emotions of your audience in addition to their minds. When the heart is involved, people are more likely to take action. And to involve the heart, it's helpful to stimulate emotions to drive that response.

An important point needs to be clarified here. This isn't about creating artificial, falsely generated, ramped-up emotions. This is not about by-passing the mind—solid facts, statistics, and examples are part of the foundation of our communications, but to motivate to action, conviction, and life change, we often need to go beyond the facts.

Children dying of hunger; children without education or drinking water, young people sold into slavery, these issues and many more are worthy of our deepest emotions. We should cry. They should pull at our hearts. Some situations should make us sick to our stomach and angry.

When Christians do not grow in their faith, when they act in disobedience to God's Word and harm themselves and others, when they do not walk worthy of their calling and cause the Lord shame, whether from lack of teaching, not knowing any better, or outright disobedience, we shouldn't be indifferent. This is not how the Christian life is to be lived.

These situations need to be changed. The task of the Christian communicator is to share situations and stories, physically and spiritually, locally and globally, so that people will see the needs, feel them in their hearts, and respond in concrete actions.

We can do that in print and online writing, and in addition, video gives us a powerful tool to create ministry motivation communication. [Read more...]

Q & A Resources for PowerPoint creations and image use ideas

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Power Point, an incredibly useful tool
You can use Power Point in many ways in church communications and here are some resources for effective use of it.

PowerPoint is one of the most useful tools we have for creating church communications. Recently I was asked about some ways I use it at a church potluck and I told the woman asking me I'd send her an email of some of my favorite resources and some of the ways I use PowerPoint to do things like create videos. After putting it together for her, I realized this would be very helpful for Effective Church Communications.

At the end of this article, please out the Indezine site. In addition to many excellent resources, the site is now offering a FREE e-book if you sign up for their newsletter that is an excellent overview of some of the resources

Animoto

http://www.animoto.com.

This is one of my favorite tools--you can use it to take pictures, images, words, or a PowerPoint presentation, and turn it into a video complete with special effects and a sound track, all with a few clicks of the mouse. They have a FREE version (regularly $200 a year) for non-profits and churches. If you haven't tried it, check it out! You can create incredibly impressive videos with little work and no cost! It is really one of the most fun programs I use.

The  videos in the collection here  were all created with animoto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvrABjnZwYw&list=PLF12CC86F2FA2FC15

Presenter Media

http://www.presentermedia.com/

I use the images from this company in many of my training videos that start out as PowerPoint presentations. The faceless people in many of my videos come from them. The materials aren't free, (price varies from $49 to $99 a year, depending on the specials they run) but if you need to do training PowerPoints or videos may be worth the cost:

Free PowerPoint Resources

The following videos illustrate free resource sites for Power Point. Be sure to check out the last one Indezine****It is currently offering a great free e-book on graphic use in PowerPoint slides.

Free PowerPoint Templates for Churches Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gxrW7PhSa0&index=2&list=PLA46F2C26E078F1EB

Free Templates and Clipart for Churches from Secular Sources
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEPd_V7Z8aI&list=PLA46F2C26E078F1EB&index=3

Free PowerPoint Templates and Training, a video review of Indezine, a great resource
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhJWG-g1Hv0&list=PLA46F2C26E078F1EB
***The link above is offering a free e-book that has some very helpful information on resources for using pictures in PowerPoint

If you have additional resources, templates or tips you have found useful for PowerPoint, please tell us about them in the comments below.

How to use Camtasia to demonstrate website resources for your church

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This short video will show you how Camtasia, a screen-capture software can be used to demonstrate resources on your website. Below the video is a link to a ministry example that I did for my church using Camtasia to show people various ways to study their Bible. This is also the software I use to create all the training videos I do for this website.

Camtasia is not cheap--it's $299--but it is worth every penny if you do a lot of demos. You can get it from:

http://www.techsmith.com.

To learn to use it, go to http://www.lynda.com. Lynda.com is only $25 a month for unlimited training in Camtasia and hundreds of other programs.

Click on the link here to go to some videos I created for my Sunday School class using Camtasia: http://untilfulllight.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/three-ways-to-study-the-bible/