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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

Chris Pratt, a Gospel presentation at MTV awards, and a challenge to us all

20 June, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Chris Pratt can preach! — We don't usually think of Chris Pratt as a preacher, but his MTV Awards speech has challenges for us all. Image by Gage Skidmore.

When the Bible tells us that when Jesus spoke, “people heard him gladly” and “the large crowd listened to him with delight,” various translations of Mark 12:37, I often wonder what that meant. This passage and others contrasts Jesus way of speaking with that of the religious leaders of the day.

Sadly, there are few Christian leaders or preachers today who people “listen to with delight.”

And then there is Chris Pratt. His job description as super star actor (Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic Park, Parks and Recreation) doesn't automatically include preacher to the people—but last night at the MTV Awards he was just that.

He framed his words as his 9 Rules for Living. I’ll share them below, but I highly recommend you listen to them online, not only for the words, but more importantly for the audience reaction.

Here is what he said:

"I'm going to cut to the chase and I am going to speak to you, the next generation," Pratt said. "I accept the responsibility as your elder. So, listen up."

"Breathe. If you don't, you will suffocate."
"You have a soul. Be careful with it."
"Don't be a turd. If you are strong, be a protector. If you are smart, be a humble influencer. Strength and intelligence can be weapons, so do not wield them against the weak. That makes you a bully. Be bigger than that."
"When giving a dog medicine, put the medicine in a little piece of hamburger and they won't even know they're eating medicine."
"It doesn't matter what it is. Earn it. A good deed. Reach out to someone in pain. Be of service. It feels good and it's good for your soul."
"God is real. God loves you, God wants the best for you. Believe that, I do."
"If you have to poop at a party….(sorry I’m leaving this one off—it’s online, but this is my “G” rated blog).
"Learn to pray. It's easy, and it is so good for your soul."
"Nobody is perfect. People will tell you that you are perfect just the way that you are, you are not! You are imperfect. You always will be, but there is a powerful force that designed you that way, and if you are willing to accept that, you will have grace. And grace is a gift. Like the freedom that we enjoy in this country, that grace was paid for with somebody else's blood. Do not forget that. Don't take that for granted."

Again, listen to his speech, not only for his words, but for the audience reaction. They are clapping and cheering through it. Obviously they heard him with delight. It’s worth analyzing why. The truth statements (rules 2,5, 6 and 9 especially) are incredible distillations of biblical reality put into contemporary language—we are not perfect and we need grace, grace purchased with somebody else’s blood. When was the last time you heard a congregation clap at the mention of grace?

He does a masterful mix of humor and truth—very hard for most of us to manage, so I don’t recommend trying, but you can take his words and use them as discussion starters, especially with the younger people in your life: What did they think of it? What is grace? Why is it important to know you aren’t perfect?

#9 is an extraordinary contemporary translation of “for all have sinned” “by grace you are saved.” Discuss his challenge that we not take that for granted.

And for you and your church, can you lighten up a little bit while still being true to who you are and the respect due the gospel? How can we translate Biblical terms into the language of today so people will hear eternal truth? How can we bring joy back into sharing our faith?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but they are challenges worth discussing. And while doing that pray for the many who heard Chris Pratt’s message that they hunger to find out more about the God who loves them and paid for them with Jesus’s blood.

Pray you will learn to share the words of eternal life in way your audience will hear you gladly.

Marketing is not inherently evil–and why content makes all the difference

19 June, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

You don't have to do crazy things to involve people in ministry and church activities.

Marketing is not inherently evil any more than talking is inherently evil. The content makes all the difference.

We can talk in a way that exaggerates, misleads, and is obnoxious or we can talk in a way that is gentle, kind, and informative.

This morning I received two emails that illustrated this difference and I want to share them here and then comment on their implications from them ministry marketing in our churches.

Editorial clarification: I published this initially a couple of years ago and just found it again and thought it might be useful as so much marketing on the web continues to be of the overly pushy, loud, in-your-face type. This isn't necessary and we shouldn't copy it. I don't know if the obnoxious site still exists, but Lightstock still does wonderful work, check them out.

Here is a short video of both video links and after the video, my commentary on them. Please remember Effective Church Communications does not take advertising or take part in affiliate programs. If I like or dislike something it is my opinion related to ministry usefulness, not to any monetary agenda. Check out the video below and then read the commentary:

A tacky and obnoxious marketing example

The link below is an example of the now overly popular squeeze or landing page. If you are not familiar with these communication tools, here is a good definition:

Landing page is pretty much synonymous with sales letter. It's a hard sell page that pitches a product with several calls to action.

from: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.phpf?857520-Squeeze-page-vs-landing-page

The link here is attempting to sell some software that will automatically link content on your websites to various social media sites. There are many problems with this approach including that though automatic linking to social sites can be useful. I use a tool that links the headlines of the articles on this website I write to my Twitter account (http://www.twitter.com/yvonprehn) but that tool is free and bundled in WordPress, the system I use to build my website. Given the skimming nature of Twitter (and I don't check it often and seldom interact through it), I feel like this is an honest representation of the level of involvement I want with it and feel is useful for the ministry at present.

In addition, the basic premise of the pitch for this product is faulty—automatic links, if solely used, come across as phony, automatic links and they often don't make sense.

People aren't stupid and Google isn't stupid. Automatic spamming of anything no matter how efficient, isn't a useful communication tool.

A tasteful and helpful advertisement

This example is from http://www.lightstock.com. I don't have the link to the specific ad because that came to me via email (that's why I did the video above) but here is what I like about this advertisement:

No hype, it simply presents what the company has to offer
It is beautiful and restful to look at
It makes the product offerings clear and links to the products if you want more
It both has material that is free and material for sale
It respects the viewer—if their product is something the viewer wants, he or she will click-through and buy. If not, they have given the viewer a few minutes of visual inspiration.

If you didn't look at the video, please do visit their site http://www.lightstock.com and take advantage of their free weekly images and video clips.

Ministry communication implications

When you want people to attend an event at your church or take part in any ministry opportunity, don’t feel like you have to pressure them or hard sell them.

Be clear, be concise, be kind, be complete in your message. Do the best you can to tell about the ministry truly and from a Biblical perspective. Having done that, get your message out in as many channels as you can, as many times as you can and trust the Lord to speak to the people He wants to draw to your church.

For Graduates: Celebrate but also challenge

3 June, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Free Graduation Prayer — Graduation is a time for celebration, but don't miss out on it as a time to challenge your students.

Warning before reading: this is one of my more cranky blogs, but for what I hope is a good reason. I know that the following challenges to youth programs based primarily on fun and positive messages do not describe all youth programs, and please forgive me if your program takes equipping youth with Biblical values and a passion to serve Jesus seriously. However, in the lives of the teens close to me I see very little of this today. It makes me especially sad because I know it doesn't have to be like that. I was a youth leader for many years and even then I often doubted if I was doing the right thing because my program was not the most fun one around. It was filled with lots of Bible lessons, challenges, active service to the poor, mission awareness, and very high expectations. It was a large group, friends were invited, the church was pleased—all the outward measures of success were there—but I still wondered. The years have passed. My kids have gone on to become pastors, staff in Christian organizations, community and government leaders reflecting Biblical values, I pray their time in the not-always the most fun youth group contributed to that. So with another prayer that this cranky blog prove beneficial, I offer it to you. You have been warned.

Celebrate, but also challenge your graduates

In preparing for this series of posts and resources on graduation (links at the end here), I searched Google to see what other churches were doing for graduation. Overall, the emphasis was on celebration, honoring the students, remembering all they've done, along with advice on making sure names were pronounced correctly. All fine and good, but for a generation of students who have grown up with constant reminders of how wonderful they are, but I think we do them a disservice by sending them off with one more "you are fantastic and the world loves you" message.

Though we want to take time to celebrate students and their accomplishments, we don't want to miss the opportunity to challenge them to a deeper commitment to their faith. This may be one of our last opportunities to do it.

Particularly for high school students, graduation is the start of serious spiritual challenges. Many churches rightly bemoan students drifting from their faith after high school, but if we've spent years telling them life is a big party and Christianity is lots of fun (or how else would we get them to come to youth group?), we shouldn't be surprised.Continue Reading