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.
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Want to get to know the audience for your church? Just ask.

20 July, 2015 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Ask questions to learn how to reach people for Jesus
If you want to know the audience the Lord gave you to reach for Him, ask questions!

In one of the presentations on marketing at MarCom 2015, the presenter talked about the importance of understanding your audience better so you can serve them better.

He went on to quote the following statistics:

87% of Millennials say they believe in Jesus

47% say they go to church

The question we need to answer is: Why such a big difference? Why do so many say they believe in Jesus, but don't go to church?

The answer isn't rocket science. The advice they gave answer was to get out in your community and ask.

It really is that simple. You can't look it up somewhere; you can't do a study. If you want to know the answer to why people don't go to church in your community, just ask them.

But don't ask the person directly because you don't want the person to be defensive. Instead, ask them "Why don't people today like to go to church?"

You'll find that when you ask about people in general, the person you are asking will almost always give you their personal answer.The "people" they talk about are themselves and their friends. This is invaluable marketing research for reaching your community.

Effective Church Communication application ideas

A great way to put this into practice is for a group of you from church to go out to a mall or other gathering place in your community, tell people you are taking a 3 question religious opinion survey and ask if they could give you 60 seconds of their time (it really doesn't take long). Here are the questions:

1. Do you believe in Jesus? (no lengthy answer needed, just yes or no)

2. Do most of people you know go to church? (yes or no)

3. Why do you think people go or don't like to go to church? (Here let them talk as much as they want and take notes, but don't push for lengthy answers.)

Afterwards, thank them for their time and if at all possible, have a business card that says something like this to give to each person:

Thanks so much for taking time
to answer our questions!

We really do value your opinion.

If you'd like to find out more about Jesus
please come to our church (add or info)
or visit our website
(add info) or
contact me (if you are comfortable sharing a personal email).

After each person has asked 3-5 or up to 10 people, meet back at church or someone's home and share the results. Ask these questions of your group:

What did you learn about the people in our community you didn't know before?

What was the biggest surprise?

How can we use what we learned to reach these people for Jesus?

Then pick ONE thing you can do and do it in the coming month. Don't make it complex, it can be as simple as changing how you view the people around you.

Close your time by praying for the individuals you spoke to and continue to remember them in prayer.

Last bits of advice

You can do this as a small group, a staff or parts of staff, or a few interested people in the church. Don't make a big deal committee project out of it or something that needs 5 levels of approval before you find out more about the people in your community who need Jesus.

This is not a "witnessing" project—you are simply trying to learn more about the people the Lord has given you to reach in your community. If you have the opportunity and want to share more, that's fine, but you don't have to.

Don't be afraid. Be an objective interviewer and you'll learn a lot. Pray for the Lord's insight and wisdom to use what you've learned to reach your community for Him.

Finally, REPEAT the process.You want to keep in touch with the people you are trying to reach. Don't try to figure them out—get to know them.

 

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Strategy #5: Always be who you are, where you are—focus on your audience, adapt trends to their needs Tagged With: church outreach survey, evangelism marketing research, outreach

Want to attract young families to your church? These communication tips may help

27 October, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Lots of tech tools and challenges are needed to reach younger audiences.
Lots of tech tools and challenges are needed to reach younger audiences.

Many churches in America have aging congregations and a constant prayer in all of them is that they attract young families to the church.

A primary response to this need is for churches to upgrade their children's programs and make certain their nurseries are spotless, attractive, and well-staffed. Though facilities responses are essential, other communication responses are also important if your church wants to have a family come back more than once.

You've got to speak the same language as younger people

Imagine if you were invited to a party by a close friend. The friend tells you that the people are great and you'll have a fantastic time. You approach the party with excitement—but when you open the door, you discover that the party guests are all speaking the language of their native country and English isn't allowed. They are all English speakers, but they prefer to not speak it at their parties. They smile and are very nice. They offer you food; they have a game room for your kids; but when you try to talk to them, they shake their head and say your language isn't allowed. You will probably leave as quickly as you can and decide you never want to associate with that group again.

The language of many young people today is technology and if you don't speak that language, they will feel about as welcome as the guest in the story above.

Technology communication tips

Attitude is one of the most important things in learning to speak the language of technology.  You may not know how to do the things that are suggested below, but admitting that your church is working on these areas and perhaps even asking for help to implement them, will go a long way to making technology speakers feel at home.

None of the comments that follow should be taken as a recommendation that you do away with any of your current means of church communications. You still need printed Bibles, email, phone calls, postcards, and whatever else the people in your church use for communications. The challenge today is that we can't do away with past means of communication, but we continuously need to add new ones and here are some to consider:

Allow the use of cell phones and tablets in church and adult education classes

This seems so basic, but I still see church bulletins that tell people not to use their phone even to read their Bibles in church. One church went so far as to give a mini-lecture in print on how irreverent it was to read the Bible on your phone and how distracting it was to those around you.

I don't imagine many who were used to reading the Bible on their phones came back a second time to that church.

In contrast, at another church when it's morning time to read the Scripture for the morning, the Pastor invites people to follow along, "either on the screen in front, your printed Bible, or whatever electronic device you enjoy using."

It isn't surprising that this church, with a large aging congregation, has recently been running announcements in the bulletin asking for volunteers in the ever-growing children's programs.

Be sure your website is responsive and constantly updated

A responsive website is one that can be easily accessed on a smart phone.  A responsive website resizes so that text can easily be read on the smaller screen. A website that isn't responsive can be accessed with a smart phone, but it's hard to read and extremely difficult to find anything on it. For people who use their smart phones to look up every part of their lives, if your church makes that impossible, they won't bother to go to a desktop computer or call the church office.

Making a church website responsive can be as simple as changing the underlying template for the site, if your site is built using WordPress.

For a more complete explanation of what responsive sites look like and how they work, CLICK HERE https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/2012/09/a-primer-on-responsive-websites-what-they-are-and-why-they-are-important/—this article is a couple of years old, but is a good illustration of them.

Text important messages

Email is no longer the latest and most efficient way to contact people. Many people today don't ever look at a desktop computer unless their job requires them to. They access all the media and information they need through their smart phone and seldom look at email. It can be depressing to realize after all the work you do on creating email newsletters that many people won't look at them.

Texting is the next challenge to learn if you want to communicate with the people who don't access email. Here is an article that tells you how to send group texts on your smart phone: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/mobile-phone/3472964/how-send-group-texts-from-android-iphone/

Have the option to give electronically

Many people pay all their bills electronically today and some have few or no paper checks. If you want them to give to your church, you need a system where they can do this. Not only will this make it easier for people who prefer to pay this way, but many churches have discovered that electronic giving makes contributions much more consistent. I was going to link you to a Christian Computing article about this, but they switched to a Wix site and don't have a search box, so the best advice on this would be to ask churches in your area what software  they are using and if they like it.

Have your pastor's sermons and those of other teachers available online, preferably on iTunes

Sunday is no longer a sacred day and many people have changing work schedules. Because of that, they may not be able to attend church regularly. If people miss, they may want to hear the sermon and if the only way you have them available, if you do, is on CD or tapes, many younger people simply won't bother. Many of the church website templates have automatic ways to put audio files on your site. Getting your material on iTunes is more complex (I still haven't done it, hope to do an article about it soon), but important to do it if you want to make your message available.

Make social media more than a logo on your bulletin or a link on your website

If you or someone on staff isn't regularly interacting with your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Google+ accounts, don't just put these on your bulletin or as a link on your website because that's the "in" thing to do. These tools are called "social media" for a reason. If you aren't involved with them, don't bother. Better though is to get a volunteer who loves interacting on these sites and will do it for the church.

A final note—the technology advice above is for more than younger families

Confession time here—though I do think everything I said above applies to attracting young families to your church, the article above could also have been labeled, "Some tech communication  lapses in churches today that really bug Yvon."

I am far from being described as a member of the young family target audience, but my love of and involvement with technology make all the issues above important to me. I was motivated to write it after viewing one too many church bulletins and church websites that didn't have these things and personally being bothered by them.

The point here is not about my cranky preferences—it is about being all things to all people that we might win some, no matter what technology they use or what age they are.

 

 

 

 

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Social networking, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Tagged With: church outreach, church outreach to tech people, church outreach to young parents, reach younger people for church

Give visitors at events an information/invitation card so they will return

29 September, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Generic Come back to church card
People won't automatically come back to your church if you don't invite them!

Life is busy, people are stressed, and no matter how much we might want to attend an event, if we don't have the details of time, location, directions, about it, it's not likely we'll show up.

Keep your crazy schedule in mind to motivate you to create information, invitation cards to give to people who come to special events at your church. No matter how much they an event you put on, they won't automatically know that you have Sunday School for kids, what time your Sunday service starts, or that you want them to return.

If your outreach was for unchurched people, they might not even know that your church does a regular service on Sundays. True story here: a few years ago I talked to a woman who always attended the outreach events at a local church. When I asked her if she also attended on Sunday, she was very surprised. "You mean they do things on Sunday too?" she said. She did not grow up in a church and she honestly thought that the church just put on nice community events for the holidays.

Don't expect people to return—invite them back!

That's where a card like this is helpful. It gives basic information and warmly invites people to return.

Though it's great if you can create follow-up cards for the specific events you host (and there are lots of examples of them on this website), realistically you don't always have time to do them up for each event. This is where a generic one can be useful.

At our church, we are hosting the simulcast of the Harvest Crusade, next weekend. My husband and I are on the prayer team and whenChurch come back card Church come back card, front we met last Sunday for training, our pastor said they only had booklets to give out afterwards.

I went home thinking about how helpful an information/invitation card would be. We are new at the church (and love it) and I didn't want to be pushy—but I thought if I drafted one up, even if it didn't work for the church to use it, it would be a great training tool to share with all of you.

Everyone can look at the card for ideas—it has all the basic information on one side and a note from the Pastor on the second side. Give one to everyone you can at events and your members can also use them anytime as an invitation for the church. It's one more way to encourage people along the path of coming to know Jesus as Savior.

Below is a ZIP File that has the MS Publisher file you can use as a template to create your own.

CLICK HERE to download the ZIP file. Save it and then click to open and use.

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Filed Under: Church Invitation Cards, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: church invitation card, come back to church card, visitor card

Our communications should reflect the redeeming nature of our Lord, not condemnation

8 June, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Our communications should reflect the compassion of our Lord, not condemnation.
Our communications should reflect the compassion of our Lord, not condemnation.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17)

This verse is a caring challenge to our attitude as communicators. What is the overall tone of our ministry—is it to condemn or to save?

Look at the ministry of Jesus. This verse is part of his talk with Nicodemus, the teacher of the Law who came to Jesus at night asking questions. I wonder if Nicodemus might not have left more confused than when he came. Here was a man people were calling a prophet, but he wasn't like any prophet who went before him.

He didn't call down fire from heaven; he turned water into wine at a wedding—good wine and quite a lot of it. He didn't part the sea or send plagues; he played with children and set out picnics on the beach for his disciples.

When Nicodemus asked Jesus about his message, he didn't retell all the shortcomings of the world he had come to straighten out. Instead he told him that God loved the world, and that he did not come to condemn but to save. He didn't demand Nicodemus do penance for his sins; he invited him to be born again. He didn't even chide Nicodemus for his cowardice in coming to Jesus at night. He graciously answered questions at a time and in a way this fearful leader needed.

Do our communications reflect this redeeming nature of our Lord?

How easy it is to take pen in hand (or today, mouse and keyboard) and to pile on guilt. Not that there is never a time to point out error, but for the most part we do well to remember it is the Holy Spirit's job to convict of sin (John 16:7-9). It is our job to share the good news of salvation and the joy and fulfillment of living for Jesus.

Most people today know they fall short. They aren't sure what of, but a pervasive sense of guilt fills many lives. Alcohol, drugs, food in excess, unhealthy relationships, and overwork are some common attempts to medicate the pain.

People don't need more bad news from the followers of Jesus. They need examples of hope and love. They need clear directions to events that can change their lives and clear communications on what they need to do. We need to pray for clarity in all we create. We need to pray that our tone (in ways we may not even be aware of) always reflects the welcoming, saving love of Jesus.

May your communications be filled with messages of salvation, of the grace and love of your Lord.

_________________________________

Devotions Cover The above material is from: Devotions for Church Communicators. For a complete copy of the book in print and online formats, CLICK HERE. To sign up for our online emails that come out when new information is posted on this site, including when new devotions or Biblical challenges are posted, CLICK HERE. To find past devotions and challenges on this website, CLICK HERE.

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Filed Under: Devotions & Challenges for Church Communicators, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: Accepting church communications, non-condeming church communications, outreach church communications

What will really make Mom happy for Mother’s Day

1 May, 2014 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Mothers Day can inspire Moms to pray.
Mothers Day can inspire Moms to pray.

Flowers and candy are nice and at church praise from the pulpit for all Mom's hard work is always appropriate. But in addition to those things, we've got two others that may have more eternal impact.

Inspiration to pray for her kids: One Mother's Prayer

This short piece, One Mother’s Prayer, has probably impacted more people than anything else I’ve written. It is the simple, but true story of a young man One mothers prayers, cute onewhose life was going very wrong, whose Mother prayed, and his life changed.

It was first published in Today’s Christian Woman magazine. It was repeated in their Best of Ten Years of writings, it has been reprinted and republished all over the world, and it continues to bring tears to the eyes of any group I read it to. You are free to use it any way you want and share it however you want.

It is useful for Mother’s Day, for Moms in Touch and other prayer ministries and to give out in Children’s ministries. CLICK HERE  to go to One Mother's Prayer.

Come Back #4 IMAGEMother’s Day: Come Back to Church Cards

One of the things that will make Moms most happy is for the people they love who only come to church on Mother’s Day and other special events to come every week. It won’t happen by simply wishing it will happen. You  can help this happen for Mom's by providing a way to intentionally let visiting family members know you want them to come back to church. Come Back #1 IMAGE

You have to invite them back.

Subtle doesn’t work as a communication strategy in our world today. Think of how the secular media bombards us with repeated messages to buy this, come to that, don’t miss out on some special sale. Though we don’t want to be obnoxious we do have to be persistent and clear.
The link here will help you do this: CLICK HERE to go to it.

eAdditional resources of all sorts for Mother's Day

Inspirations and how-to videos, ebooks, connection cards and bulletin inserts for Mother's Day are all at this link:  https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/mothers-day-resource-list/ 

 

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Mother's Day, Seasonal communication strategies Tagged With: Free Mothers day church communications, Mothers Day bulletin insert, Mothers day Church Bulletin material, Mothers Day Prayer cards

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