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.

Write to reach today’s audiences in your church–book updated

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Writing, Editing, Proofing ebook
People will read what you write if you follow the advice in this book.

"Nobody reads what we write!" is a common complaint from all church communicators. Often the assumption that goes with it is that people simply don't care about the Christian faith anymore and that's why they don't read.

In reality people do care tremendously about their lives and eternal destinies--as the bestseller response to self-help and popular spirituality shows. The reason people often don't read what is written in church publications is because much of what is written in church publications both in print and digital formats isn't written in a way that makes the message clear and easy to respond to. And the primary reason this happens is that few people in the church realize that writing that reaches people today is not the same style of writing that got you an "A" from your seminary professor. [Read more...]

Video: How I publish on Kindle and other ebook formats

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How I publish on Kindle and other ebook formats
How I publish on Kindle and other ebook formats, including Smashwords.

Ebook publishing represents an incredible opportunity for Christian writers and Christian workers anywhere in the world to get their message out to the entire world. There are many ways to do this, and while the following video is not a complete course in self-publishing, it does show you how I create books for epublishing.

I have a perhaps odd way of doing it, but it works well for me and that is a process where I first publish my book in Smashwords and then in Kindle formats. [Read more...]

Why words are more important than images in church communications

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Words are the primary carriers of meaning in our church communications.
Words, not images, are what clarify meaning in our church communications.

No matter what tools we use to create our message; no matter what channels we use to share it, the one thing that never changes is our core content. Our content, permeated with the truth of the entire Bible and culminating with a call to salvation and discipleship in Jesus, must be the anchor of every communication piece we produce.

The obvious question then is: what is the best way to communicate our content?

Here is one of the greatest errors, challenges, controversies, problems—it's hard to pick just one word—confronting church communicators today and that is the mistaken priority use of images over carefully crafted words to communicate our content. It doesn't matter what technology channel we use, the issues of the communication value of words vs. images is the same.

Words are the primary carriers of content, of clear propositional truth. Words however, are difficult to wrangle into meaning. It takes work, thought, planning, and editing to even approximate clear communication. [Read more...]

Why words and images need each other–the feedback loop of meaning

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Captions define what we see, never publish a picture without them
This PDF illustrates the topic of this article-- how our words define the meaning of our images. Later in the article you can download it.

We've all heard the phrase, "a picture is worth a thousand words"-- a phrase which I consider one of the most meaningless and destructive phrases to meaningful communication ever coined. That is because without words, the proper response to that statement is, "which thousand?"

I just posted a blog that discusses the importance of carefully crafted words in our church communication.

Here I want to answer the question: does that mean we can't use images?

Following the excerpt below from what's written in the blog, I want to illustrate what I mean by the feedback loop of meaning between images and words. [Read more...]

ebook: Back to Basics, writing and design skills for church communicators

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Back to basics cover
This book will teach you the basics of many needed, but often not taught, communication skills in graphics, design, typography, writing, and managing. If you want your church communications to look more professional, you need this book. Available in print and ebook formats.

Most people who work on communication creation in churches have no training in design, layout, typography, and many related skills they need to do a good job. Training material is not easy to find because many of the materials available on communication design and related areas, require the use of expensive, advanced software and teach a secular, image-heavy approach that doesn't always fit the needs of the church audience.

This book provides basic training that can help every church communicator, even those with no previous graphic arts training create, write for, and manage a church communication ministry. This book is not a how-to on a particular software, but about the basic design and communication principles that form the foundation of effective communication creation.

This book is a scanned reprint of Yvon Prehn's earlier book, How to use your computer to create Better Bulletins, Newsletters, and More! All the examples in the book are from church communications and the advice is practical and Bible-inspired.

To be honest, the quality of the scans in the book isn't the greatest, but I felt the content was worth it to make this book available to you.

To buy a paperback version of the book on Amazon.com, CLICK HERE.

If you'd like the book in e-book, PDF format CLICK HERE