Blog | Effective Church Communications

TWO of FIVE TRENDS that will reshape media in 2019

6 January, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

2019 a new time to try new things — The start of the year is a great time to challenge assumptions and do new things!

MarketingWeek.com, a marketing group from England just published an article on their Five Trends that they believe will reshape media in the coming year. Amid rather obvious ones like e-commerce will grow, so will video, and Instagram is becoming more useful than Facebook for marketing, were two interesting quotes with implications for church communications and marketing in the coming year. Below are the quotes, my comments, and implication and ideas for church communications that were inspired by them:

First QUOTE:

Consumers will call brands out if they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.

Darren Campbell, Dr Martens

IMPLICATIONS & IDEAS:

When a church uses social media in their outreach, how does it come across to people outside the church (assuming they see it)?

This quote got me wondering how much of what churches put out there comes across as simply selling something— “Come to this event!, Bring your Kids HERE!!, Don’t miss out on this!!!

We may protest that we aren’t asking them to spend money (not yet, they must become more involved to be approached with that), but we are asking them to spend time and attention in exchange for our message. We want them to buy into what we are selling.

The bottom line is that is what we want, for them to buy into what we are selling—we want them to come to know Jesus as Savior, have their sins forgiven and live a life serving him. But what if our audience has no idea this is of benefit to them? Or why they should even come to a place that has a pre-packaged life-plan for them to accept?

What is the alternative?

Personal note—once again fires raging in California

14 November, 2018 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

After the fire — What remains of a mobile home park that burned. From parks like this to the homes of movie stars, once again fire tore through our area.

Last Thursday afternoon a phone call came, “Camarillo Springs is on fire.”

Camarillo Springs is a mobile home park not far from Ventura where we live, and we have several elderly friends there. They were told to evacuate. We were texting them and their families and though it was scary for one lady in a huge traffic jam with 2 trembling little dogs with her, everyone made it out OK.

That mobile home park was spared, and they were able to return. But many homes were not. From older mobile homes in the canyons to the mansions of the rich and famous in Malibu, the fire tore through to the ocean with what we call the “Santa Ana winds,” scorching 30-50 plus mph winds that come through our area in the fall.

When I was much younger the Santa Ana winds were a pleasant diversion as the weather turned chilly this time of year. Yes, anything below 50 we consider chilly in S. California. Now they are dreaded because they fuel hellish fires in bone-dry areas and can turn an ember in minutes into an entire hillside erupting in flames—as happened in several places this morning.Continue Reading

The silent, destructive communication war between Boomers and Millennials

26 July, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

There is a silent war going on in churches today. Nobody talks about it and many in the church are not even aware it is going on, but it continues day after day and the injuries, both to individuals and to the Kingdom of God, are immense. This is the war of communication expectations between talking on the phone, email, and texting.

Though this conflict can happen between any members of the church, for purposes of this article, I’m going to over simply it by sharing what I’ve seen happen many times between Boomer and Millennial age groups. Though I’m using these two groups as examples, read into them “Boomer and older” and “Millennial and younger”.

I’ll first give some examples and then suggestions for ways to improve the situation.

Here are some typical skirmishes:

Situation #1:

A Boomer congregation member places a phone call to a Millennial Youth Pastor and leaves a message. No response. Boomer tries email. No response. Sunday comes around and Boomer angrily confronts Millennial, "I was going to give two scholarships to Winter Camp, but since you didn't have the courtesy to respond to my offer, the scholarship money has been donated elsewhere."

Millennial responds, “I’m really sorry. I didn't get any of your messages.”

Situation #2:

Millennial Youth Pastor texts the Boomer age people in the church who have said they want to be part of the prayer team for youth. She is excited with the list she received from the church office and then sends them a series of Instagram links to images showing the kids they will be praying for at an upcoming strategy session at Starbucks.

When the time comes for the strategy session, only one person out of the 15 she sent multiple text messages to shows up. On Sunday, when she tries to be kind and ask why various Boomer individuals didn’t show up, she gets a combination of blank stares and replies of “You never contacted me” in response.

What is going on

In both groups, the person sending the message felt they were doing all they could to communicate. However, just sending a message is not the same as communicating a message.Continue Reading

What do your church communications say about the priorities of your church?

25 June, 2018 By Yvon Prehn 3 Comments

Summer communications — Because we have the opportunity to do different things in the summer, what we choose and communicate about reveals the true priorities of our church.

Jesus told us that "out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, (Luke 6:45)" and we know that's true. If we are angry with someone, it always comes out. Maybe in nasty, little snide comments, maybe in screaming. If we love someone, we can't help but smile when we are with them or thinking about them.

We may want to hide either emotion, but it seldom works. No matter what we say, "I'm not angry, just frustrated" or "No, he's really just a friend" our words and actions will always show what is in our hearts.

It's the same with your church. You can have the most biblical, Great Commission-centered mission statement ever. Your leadership board can decide that this year the focus will be on outreach and discipleship and the congregation can agree those are great goals.

But are these truly at the heart of your church? Do you honestly care about reaching unchurched people with the good news of Jesus and growing your current members into mature disciples? Do these convictions result in action?

It doesn't matter what you say in meetings, what does the voice of your church, your communications, say are your priorities?

This is very easy to evaluate. Look at the recent communications—your bulletin, newsletter, social media. What are they about? As I write this, it's the start of summer and I had the opportunity to compare two sets of church communications. The defining details are changed so as not to embarrass any member of the Body of Christ, but here is a summary of each one from an overview of their summer communications.Continue Reading