Effective Church Communications

Yvon Prehn's Church Communication Blog

The Bible tells us that “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, (Luke 6:45)” or as the J.B. Phillips translation puts it “For a man’s words will always express what has been treasured in his heart.”

My goal in these blog entries (actually in all of the ECC Ministry, but particularly here) is to give your heart and mind a biblical viewpoint and foundation in church communications, so that your communications, whatever form they take, will reflect God’s Word and not primarily secular marketing or current cultural views, fears, or attitudes.

I used the word “primarily” quite intentionally in the previous statement because though we learn from secular marketing and contemporary culture, these influences should not be primary in our work. The primary influence on our work is God’s Word. God’s Word informs the Effective Church Communication ministry in our goal, which is to help church communicators create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Learning from, observing, and sharing other sources, while staying true to a biblical perspective and providing useful commentary is a challenging path to walk. No doubt I will often make mistakes, but to serve you in this way is my goal in these blogs.

The PERFECT VACATION—FREE Instagram and other media–and an encouragement for your congregation, when you can’t do traditional vacations

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The Perfect Vacation in Jesus, images and commentary
Though it might be challenging to take the vacation we'd like, in Jesus, we can always find the true rest and renewal our soul needs.

Staying at home isn't so hard when it's windy or rainy and there are schoolwork and chores to be done.

But it's a whole different situation when school is out, the sun is shining, and it's time for a vacation! We want out! We want fun! We want anything but feeling guilty about leaving the house.

But. . . . . . no, the virus is not going to magically disappear. So what do we do when everything in us screams we want to get out of the house, but our sensible mind, considerate of long-term health and family, says, stop and think a minute?

This is very real to me

After being a virtual prisoner in my home for almost two years because I couldn't walk, after my surgery to fix things, I couldn't wait to get out.

But. . . . . .

I won't give away my struggle and spiritual resolution (that's in the Caption/Commentary below), but it motivated the Media Made for You set included today. I am going to be moving these to a paid section of the website in a while, but I'm still moving pretty slow so it's all free for now. Below are

  • Thumbnails of the images. These are available in ZIP files with formats and sizes for Instagram, Pinterest, Presentation size, Facebook post, 600 x 600 jpg files, and MS Publisher Ready-to-Print PDFs.
  • A copy of the Caption/Commentary I did for Instagram. You have my permission to use this in any way you want if you want to use the images on a newsletter, print, or email or whatever. Please, however, if you use it, do not edit it. I am going to be doing more of this. Somehow the images and the microblog format of the caption space works for what I feel the Lord wants me to communicate now. It isn't the usual use of INSTAGRAM for many I know and I'll be experimenting with it. If you want to simply capture and share the image and caption, you can follow my INSTAGRAM account: https://www.instagram.com/yvonprehn/
  • Of course, you can also use the images in any format you want and write your own caption or commentary, or not even use one if you don't want.
  • Below the commentary are the ZIP Files for you to freely download

[Read more...]

A walk through the “valley of the shadow of death” and an update on my (Yvon Prehn’s) hip surgery

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Jesus as shepherd
When knowing Jesus as my totally trustworthy Shepherd moves from a mental construct to palpable reality, it is worth any challenge.

Wonderful church communicators,

As you many of you know, on June 25, I had hip replacement surgery after numerous postponements because of the virus. Thank you so much for your prayers and kind emails going into it.
All went well during the surgery. Despite the severity of the situation, the surgeon told me just before it, he had no idea how I stood it for so long—I told him it was because of the prayers for me, afterward, he said he was very happy with the reconstruction.
However, after a physical therapy session on Friday the 26th, in the midst of respiratory therapy, something went terribly wrong—and I crashed, or more accurately my heart crashed.
What happened next was like a scene out of a movie (odd how we relate so much to movies, but that's what it seemed like to me as I was vaguely aware of what happened next).

[Read more...]

Free Instagram images and commentary for a comforting message for times of tragedy—a Welcome Home

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Welcome Home, our assurance now and forever
On earth and forever, "Welcome Home" is a comfort and joy when we hear it from Jesus.

Sometimes it seems like we are living in a nightmare with no way out. I'll be in the midst of working on a project and my mind briefly thinks, "I want to eat somewhere or run to the store." Then I remember, I can't do that.

We are living in a pandemic, I remind myself and I wake up mentally and get back to work. But once again the feeling of a waking nightmare flows over me when I think about what so many are experiencing far beyond the momentary frustration of not being able to run to Trader Joes without thinking. Many people have family members and friends who are hospitalized and perhaps dying.

I've been working on things for church communicators to share during this time, what I hope are encouragements, below are links to some I've done:

FREE Spiritual Endurance Encouragement verses in every imaginable format for you to share: Instagram, Facebook, Postcards and more!

A tiny response to a time of turmoil--Media Made for You Encouragements from Romans 8; an idea for appropriate images for today; free images in all formats [Read more...]

A tiny response to a time of turmoil–Media Made for You Encouragements from Romans 8; an idea for appropriate images for today; free images in all formats

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FREE Social Media message and a video from Romans 8
We're all getting tired of many things, but God's Word is there to encourage us and give us hope. Here are social media images for you to use PLUS an encouraging video.

There is a lot going on. The pandemic isn't slowing down. We are all getting very tired, but our work continues.

This week I tried something new to perhaps contribute to a less color-prejudiced world. I'm not sure if it worked or not, you'll have to let me know.

I wanted to do something to encourage everyone with God's Word. We sometimes forget that the Apostle Paul was persecuted in large measure because he associated with people who weren't Jews. Contemporary prejudice is nothing new. In his day, he was beaten and imprisoned for associating with the "wrong" people and even suggesting that there was equality before God. That persecution was a constant in his life and so when you read his words in Romans 8 and trust in God, remember what he faced.

You can use the files below in social media, print, make up postcards and send them out, however you'd like

But I didn't want to simply repeat his words, I wanted to try something new in illustrations I share with you. In many churches it is a challenge to represent all God's people. Much church artwork is too white; and some that aren't look forced, for example, five different racial groups in one small group setting or website banner. Forgive my cynicism.

In addition, almost all people are young, thin, and healthy. Where do they get these people I often wonder because nobody at my church looks like them. I digress, but wonder what if we only used pictures of the real people at our church?

A possible solution—posturize!

Below are some images in the current Media Made for You collection I did on encouragements from Romans 8. They are all in greyscale and started out looking very different than the final images.

I hope next week to get done a video showing you how I created these images. I'm still working on the school project and this is part of it. Without a tutorial, what I did with the images of people (and not using recognizable full-faces), is I took each one and then posturized them in greyscale. What this does is blur out any skin color and you simply have highlights and shadows. Here is what I came up with:

I also did a video on the series of verses with me reading them to you. It follows. Below the video are links for your files of the images to use however you'd like. For the ZIP files, download, save and unzip the files to use however you want. Just download and use the PDFS.

JPG Images Romans 8: JPG Meditation on Romans 8

INSTAGRAM Images Romans 8: INSTAGRAM Romans 8

FACEBOOK Images Romans 8: FACEBOOK Romans 8

PINTEREST Images Romans 8: PINTEREST Romans 8

MS Publisher and PDF Images Romans 8: MS PUBLISHER & PDF FILES Romans 8

POWERPOINT size PDFs Romans 8: POWERPOINT Romans 8

Changes in image usage—the “free” sites may not be what they seem and what you need to do about it

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What to do when disappointed with image usage rules
What it feels like when you are excited about images you think you can use and then you find out the rules changed and you can't. What do about it is what this article is about.

Sometimes it is hard to do the right thing, but as disciples of Jesus, we must try.

As I’ve been working on getting lots of material ready for launching a new Effective Church Communications Membership that includes online Courses, Ebooks, Templates, and an Idea Bank of materials, some new guidelines have come to my attention about the “free images” on sites such as Canva, PicMonkey, and Snappa, where you can use the images they have, plus the free images sites themselves such as Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels, and that many of us (me included) use to create social media and templates. What follows does not apply to sites in which you pay for a membership. But since many churches and organizations make use of free sites, it's important you understand the changing rules.

This has put a delay in releasing the ECC Membership of Courses, Ebooks, & Templates, and more importantly, what I learned has some significant applications for how you and your church can use images and I wanted to explain them to you.

The take-away conclusions from my research and limitations to the use of "free" images

I won’t bore you with listing the number of articles I’ve read recently, but following is the distilled research and application takeaways both for how it applies to you as a church and how you use things and for the Effective Church Communications ministry.

Overall, as a church creating communications that you freely give to church members and that are primarily shared within your church, you have much more latitude than I do in Effective Church Communications. Particularly with the new ECC Membership that has a monthly charge, what I create falls in to the “commercial” area and the usage guidelines for that are much more limiting than your non-commercial uses in the church.

I'll summarize my bottom-line recommendations shortly and then give you details from various sites.

However, and this is a big, However—if your church does something as seemingly innocent as selling a t-shirt for camp, or a cookbook as a fundraiser or selling anything else, you are now in the commercial category also. Sadly, there are some professional groups (Getty Images has a reputation in this area) that love to go after churches if they feel their image rights are violated. For these reasons, in addition to keeping you informed as to why I do what I do for you, you need to be as careful as possible in your communication creations and in the media you use for them. [Read more...]