Effective Church Communications

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators. 

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.

Marketing is not inherently evil–and why content makes all the difference

By Leave a Comment

You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry
You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry and church activities.

Marketing is not inherently evil any more than talking is inherently evil. The content makes all the difference.

We can talk in a way that exaggerates, misleads, and is obnoxious or we can talk in a way that is gentle, kind, and informative.

This morning I received two emails that illustrated this difference and I want to share them here and then comment on their implications from them ministry marketing in our churches.

Editorial clarification: I published this initially a couple of years ago and just found it again and thought it might be useful as so much marketing on the web continues to be of the overly pushy, loud, in-your-face type. This isn't necessary and we shouldn't copy it. I don't know if the obnoxious site still exists, but Lightstock still does wonderful work, check them out.

Here is a short video of both video links and after the video, my commentary on them. Please remember Effective Church Communications does not take advertising or take part in affiliate programs. If I like or dislike something it is my opinion related to ministry usefulness, not to any monetary agenda. Check out the video below and then read the commentary:

 A tacky and obnoxious marketing example

The link below is an example of the now overly popular squeeze or landing page.  If you are not familiar with these communication tools, here is a good definition:

Landing page is pretty much synonymous with sales letter. It's a hard sell page that pitches a product with several calls to action.

from: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.phpf?857520-Squeeze-page-vs-landing-page

The link here is attempting to sell some software that will automatically link content on your websites to various social media sites. There are many problems with this approach including that though automatic linking to social sites can be useful. I use a tool that links the headlines of the articles on this website I write to my Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/yvonprehn) but that tool is free and bundled in WordPress, the system I use to build my website. Given the skimming nature of Twitter (and I don't check it often and seldom interact through it), I feel like this is an honest representation of the level of involvement I want with it and feel is useful for the ministry at present.

In addition, the basic premise of the pitch for this product is faulty—automatic links, if solely used, come across as phony, automatic links and they often don't make sense.

People aren't stupid and Google isn't stupid. Automatic spamming of anything no matter how efficient, isn't a useful communication tool.

A tasteful and helpful advertisement

This example is from http://www.lightstock.com. I don't have the link to the specific ad because that came to me via email (that's why I did the video above) but here is what I like about this advertisement:

  • No hype, it simply presents what the company has to offer
  • It is beautiful and restful to look at
  • It makes the product offerings clear and links to the products if you want more
  • It both has material that is free and material for sale
  • It respects the viewer—if their product is something the viewer wants, he or she will click-through and buy. If not, they have given the viewer a few minutes of visual inspiration.

If you didn't look at the video, please do visit their site http://www.lightstock.com and take advantage of their free weekly images and video clips.

Ministry communication implications

When you want people to attend an event at your church or take part in any ministry opportunity, don’t feel like you have to pressure them or hard sell them.

Be clear, be concise, be kind, be complete in your message. Do the best you can to tell about the ministry truly and from a Biblical perspective. Having done that, get your message out in as many channels as you can, as many times as you can and trust the Lord to speak to the people He wants to draw to your church.

 

 

 

Church Invitation Cards, business cards with an eternity-altering purpose

By Leave a Comment

Free church invitation.
Make up cards like this for your church members to invite others to church. Links to a FREE copy of this one and others is at the end of the article.

How do you get unchurched people into your church?

Despite all the high-tech and expensive advertising methods available today, one method remains the most effective way to get new people to come to your and that is a personal invitation. Your members inviting their friends to church beats any advertising campaign at any cost.

While it is sometimes sadly true that once someone becomes converted, they soon have few friends who are not believers, no one totally withdraws from the world. Most people still work at secular jobs. Everyone has many contacts a week with people in the business community: the waitress or waiter at the coffee shop, the Starbucks employees, the clerks at various stores, the person standing next to them in lines at the grocery store, airports, or the driver’s license bureau, the person sitting next to them on the bus or subway. [Read more...]

Is your church marketing failing because of the lack discipleship in your church?

By Leave a Comment

Our personal discipleship and effective church outreach
Could our main challenge to effective church outreach be the person in the mirror?

The goal and North Star of Effective Church Communications is to "Fully fulfill the Great Commission" which means helping people to not only come to know Jesus as Savior but to grow to mature disciples. And though that is our goal, the following, incredibly challenging article, thoughtfully links the lack of success in our church communications to the lack of discipleship in our lives.

Following is a key quote from it and click the link below to read the entire article:

To put it simply, we don’t have a marketing problem, we have a sales force problem. Study after study reveals American Christians simply don’t believe in our product anymore. Can we turn it around? We believe we can, but not until we get serious about living the kind of life that astonishes the surrounding world. Remember in the gospels how people were “astonished” at the message of Jesus? But 2,000 years later, how many people are astonished at our message or our lives today?

 

8 Ways for Christians to Regain Credibility

Why your Church Bulletin is the most important piece of Christian literature printed today outside the Bible

By 4 Comments

Church Bulletins
Church Bulletins really can be the most important piece of Christian literature outside the Bible--read here to find out why.

“The church bulletin? You must be kidding!”

That statement may sound outrageous, but think about it. The church bulletin (or worship guide or whatever you choose to call it) is, for some people, the very first piece of Christian literature they see. It is certainly the very first information a visitor reads about your church. For many it is their first serious introduction to Jesus.

In our secularized society today many people grow up without reading the Bible or any kind of Christian material. At the same time:

  •  everyone has a spiritual vacuum inside;
  • the Holy Spirit is active in our world convicting people of their need for God;
  • tragedies happen personally and globally.

In response to all these promptings, people will come to your church looking for answers.

When they come to your church, they will read anything you put into their hands.

When that happens, what do you give to a person whose eternal destiny may be decided in the next hour?

You give them the bulletin. What does it say to them? [Read more...]

Faux code that correctly describes all we should do in digital outreach

By Leave a Comment

Internet evangelism
Many of us spend lots of time each day communicating digitally. Here are some challenges for how to do it as an effective evangelist.

Tony Whittaker, the founder of Internet Evangelism Day (http://www.internetevangelismday.com) recently sent me this faux code that is a great description of all we should do in digital outreach.

Even if you aren't into computer code, I think the message is clear on what our attitude should be in our Internet outreach. Please read it and then below it, I have some current, practical application challenges.

Finally, if you have ways you currently share your faith online, please share them in the comment section following.

<need digital-evangelists

('writing' = jargon-free;

'tone' = outsider-friendly;

'target' = prioritize-non-seekers; '

condemnation' = off;

'love' = on;  '

preachiness' = off;  '

churchiness' = off; '

cultural-sensitivity' = high;

'contextualization' = high;  '

storytelling-mode' = on;

'empathy' = high;

'popular-culture-parallels' = use;

'felt-needs' = understand;  'sense-of-entitlement'= off;

'politics' = off;

'humor' = use;

'social-media-interaction' = use;

'languages' = multiple;

'location' = worldwide;

'platform-optimization'

= mobile,tablet,pc)>

Current application idea

I was recently talking to a Christian friend who spends a lot of time on Facebook and she was honestly surprised when I mentioned that she could be using those interactions to share her faith.

It's good for all of us to be reminded that the internet provides us with extraordinary opportunities to be salt and light to our world. Particularly in a day when so much online discourse is vile and contentious, we can be gracious, kind, and truthful in all we communicate—in other words to practice the characteristics Tony encouraged us to in the code above.

If you or your church are doing things to actively share your faith or be a witness for Jesus in the online world, (other than church social media announcements or even if you do something special there) please share it in the comments here. It'a an area we all need ideas and encouragement in.