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; Effective Church Communications can help.

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

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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?

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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

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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

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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.