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.

Strategy #2: Make the most of seasonal events—grow your church in numbers AND your people in discipleship

This is a big emphasis for our ministry and many of the articles and templates we create for you are inspired by seasonal events. In our post-Christian world today an invitation to come to church has little appeal, but an invitation to a non-threatening seasonal event will often be accepted.

The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing is our strategy to help people from outside the church come to know Jesus as Savior and then grow to mature disciples, but SEASONAL EVENTS are of the way the whole process gets started.

In addition to getting people to the event, you need a way to engage with them at the event and strategies that will bring them back to the church after the event.

Not only are seasonal events a primary way to grow your church, but if used strategically they are also prime times to grow your people in discipleship.

Not only do we have templates and articles on this topic, but our Church Communication Training School has an in-depth course, Successful Seasonal Strategies that with train your church on how to maximize the impact of seasonal events.

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Strategy for summer communications, remember visitors, delete hidden jargon, don’t host a money-divided event

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Summer Image
Your church will have visitors this summer, be sure your communications make sense to them.

LINK to FREE Summer Templates is at the end of this article

Looking ahead to planning summer communications, this summer your church will get lots of visitors, some of whom are friends of church members who might not regularly go to church, others may be from the surrounding community, and we can't forget out-of-town visitors. This is a wonderful opportunity to reach out with the gospel and the love of Jesus and here are some strategic tips to help your communications make the most of this opportunity and some strong cautions about what not to do.

Jargon watch

We know we shouldn’t use church jargon terms like justification and sanctification in our church bulletin, web, or social media when we are writing for people visiting our church, but so much of our church jargon we don’t even see. Using acronyms we don't explain, talking about events that we do year after year and assume everyone knows about, insider jokes, assuming people know times and locations—all these things are confusing and unkind to someone visiting. We don't want our language to keep someone with a free night in our city to miss out on an opportunity to learn about Jesus.

[Read more...]

A free Valentines Day postcard, flyer, or bulletin insert to remind people of God’s love, plus strategy to make the most of it

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St. Augustine quote
Many people today have restless hearts. This Valentine's Day, help them find rest in Jesus.

Today many people have restless hearts. Life may not be what we wanted, dreamed about, or even find tolerable. Our restless hearts may be in many areas of life, but Valentine's Day shines a laser focus on the restless disappointments in our hearts. This flyer or Bulletin Insert might help your church minister to those restless hearts.

A restless heart isn't anything new, nor is the answer on how to fill it, as this quote from almost eighteen hundred years ago from St. Augustine reminds us when he said, "Thou hast made us for thyself oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

You can use his quote and the message that goes with it to reach out to the restless hearts in your community.

There are plenty of them as this time of year we're reminded of every romantic disappointment and broken dream with every TV ad and the gauntlet of flowers, cards, and chocolates when we shop. We may be alone in that we don't have a special someone in our life or the special someone slot may be filled, but we still feel alone. The media tells us we shouldn't ever be satisfied until we do everything we can to find that rush of complete, overwhelming, all-consuming, and satisfying human love, to go along with our perfect bodies and leisurely lives. But few of us live in that media fantasy and even fewer have the energy to try to event try make it real.

What the media doesn't tell us is that no matter how perfect we are, how much money we have, or how single-mindedly we pursue a perfect human romantic partner that no human love, no matter how deep or true or quietly wonderful it might be, (and some are blessed with that) will ever totally fill the place in our heart only God is designed to fill.

Valentine's Day is a perfect time to share the reality of God's forever satisfying love with the people who come to your church and here is a ready-to-print communication to help you do it.

Use this postcard, Bulletin insert, flyer, or however you want to us it to share God's love

[Read more...]

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? Or other seasonal outreach times? Try this Biblical alternative!

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Equip your people --free Easter invitations
You may not want to be this obvious, but when your people believe this and want to tell their friends, it's the most effective form of church outreach you can do.

Ed. note: This is a repeat of what I did last year, but it is incredibly important--because YOUR people are always the most important outreach tool you have. Though you can use every available tool you have and can afford to reach out to people, you don't need to do anything more than encourage and inspire YOUR congregation. 

The Podcast:

What if your church did NO advertising for Easter? No sending out of postcards purchased from some national company that end up looking like the several other churches produce.

Hi I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

Today we'll talk about alternatives that you can do in-house--by your people that can accomplish much more.

As I mentioned in the intro—Far too often,  when a church is planning a major holiday outreach, a catalog of professionally produced postcards are selected, purchased and mailed out by the church. This can cost a lot of money, but sometimes a smaller church desperately wants to try something that might result in growth, so they spend money, that perhaps could have been used for other things and try it.  Statistically, as the companies will tell you a certain number ought to respond and though we rejoice if even one new person comes and ultimately comes to know Jesus as Savior because of that process, let me suggest another strategy that is more biblical, more successful, and that will probably save your church some money also.

A new strategy—Involve the whole church in seasonal communication

Everyone in the church needs to be involved for holiday and special events to be successful. Everyone needs to be part of and feel responsible for the outreach and growth of your church. When Jesus said:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

He did not qualify these commands by saying:

"The command to be my witness and to reach your world is only for pastors and for the communication director of the church.”

No—outreach, witnessing, sharing your faith is every believer's task and seasonal celebrations and special events are a great way to be obedient to Jesus' command to be his witness and reach our world. The tools of technology available to us in ministry today make it possible for everyone in the church to have a significant part in the outreach of the entire church. [Read more...]

Make STRATEGIC use of Father’s Day to grow your church–by targeting YOUNGER Dads

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Reach out to young dads at Father's Day
Fathers Day is a great time to reach out to young dads at your church.

Many churches today have an ideal church member they want to recruit—the younger male, the dad with a young family, and Father's Day is a great time to do a focused outreach to them.

Make sure men are visible at your church

Men need to be greeters, the ones who do announcements, are in the children's ministry when kids are dropped off, and other visual actions at the church. This isn't being sexist--men need to see that men are doing things at the church.

Most likely they are involved in all these areas, but you need to make sure they are front and center on this day.

Invite men back for a service project

Many studies show that younger men are part of a generation that believes in volunteering, in giving back. Asking this group to be part of service projects is a great way to involve them with the men of the church. Here are some ideas: [Read more...]

Christmas Strategy—Christmas Connection Cards—effective tools to get people to return after Christmas

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FREE Christmas Connection Card
Click on this image to download the FREE PDF file.

After all your hard work to get people to come to your Christmas events, you want to make sure you make a connection with them so that they will return to your church after the holidays. To do that you need to capture names and contact information.

These Connection Cards and Registration for Christmas are a simple-to-create, but very useful tool.

At the end of this article is a link to a ZIP FILE that has ready-to-print PDFs of all the images below and editable MS Publisher files of all the cards plus hi-res images of them.

The strategy behind the cards

Churches often put on Christmas events as a gift to the community and some have told me that they don't want to be "too pushy" during that event and so they don't do anything to try to get information from their guests.

Though I understand the thoughts behind this thinking, we need to remember that the kindest and the best thing we can do for our Christmas guests (or church guests at any time of year) is to introduce them to Jesus. We may begin that introduction at Christmas, but what is strategically important to remember is that it takes at least SEVEN exposures to any idea for acceptance. For many people in our world today, the idea that Christmas is about Jesus or that he is more than a baby that inspires kind thoughts and lots of parties this time of year is a totally new idea. [Read more...]