The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.
The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.
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.
People often look to churches for help in hard times and rightfully so as we represent Jesus to them. Here are some things to consider so we don't disappoint.
Yvon's note: I wrote this initially soon after the start of the previous recession. As I was reorganizing the website I found it and realized how similar our situation, challenges, and opportunities are with the current pandemic. With a small amount of editing and updating I trust it will be useful now.
We communicate with more than words as followers of Jesus. The little poem below reminds me of this. It's something I memorized years ago and I'm afraid I don't know the author or title, but here it is:
We are writing a gospel, a chapter each day
By the things that we do and the things that we say.
People read what we write, Distorted or true.
What is the gospel, According to you?
We have an opportunity to live out the gospel during this recession (and now pandemic); to communicate the love and care of Jesus in tangible ways. Let's look at one situation, job loss, and some suggestions on what to do and what not to do as a church to people who are out of work.
When so much of the world is filled with bad news, there is good news to be found in Jesus. Check it out and be encouraged!
Pandemic, crazy weather, racial injustice, and political turmoil—wherever we turn, bad news fills our world. There is one place the news is good—in the good news about Jesus. Many call this the gospel.
There are two reasons why it’s essential to explore the gospel now. First, for those of us familiar with the gospel, we do well to remember what great news that is, no matter what else is going on. And for those who aren’t familiar with it, this news has implications for you far beyond the hysterical headlines that currently fill your news feeds. The gospel is good news, the best news ever.
Why the gospel is GOOD NEWS
Good news. That is the dictionary definition of the term gospel. The question to answer next is, of course, “What is the good news?” or “Good news about what?”
The best answer to that question is in the Bible, where John 3:16 tells us that: “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
The good news is that God didn’t sit up in heaven, watching humanity make a mess of their lives and their world. He did something about it with extraordinarily important implications for people both now and eternity. To explore the good news in more detail, let’s look at our situation and what God did for us.
Without God, making a mess of our lives is pretty much what we do.
It doesn’t take unique insight to know our world is a mess right now. But now, let’s look away from the world. [Read more...]
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).
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 the Bibleverse collection of related ministries some 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.
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. What I create falls into the “commercial” area and the usage guidelines for that are much more limiting than your non-commercial uses in the church. I have changed many things I charged for in the past to free when I wasn't sure exactly of what drifted into the commercial area.
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...]
This is just one of a set of free downloads (3 sets actually) of this saying that you can use to encourage people that God ultimately has our good in store for us, no matter what the challenges.
All will be well. All will be well. All manner of things will be well.
Whenever I read this saying from Julian of Norwich, it puts my heart at peace. I know both theologically and from personal experience, how true these words are.
I created some cards with this saying on them ten years ago. It was during the recession. The company I'd worked with for 17 years had terminated my traveling to teach seminars with no notice and no benefits; I had a serious health challenge. Many people struggled far more than my husband and I did. God got us through as He always does.
It's ten years later and the world has a challenge that makes the previous recession seem minor in comparison.
The good news is that we have the same strong and good God. I was going over some things and remembered this saying and what an encouragement it was to me and others at that time. I have the older file of postcards I did up for people available again, plus I did up some new postcards and Instagram images—all free for you to use to encourage your congregations and friends.
Below are the sets along with the links to download them and then below them is the context of the saying and a little more about the woman who wrote it. Please make them for your people, pass them on and use them as continuing encouragements.
The orginal set of the postcards: the ZIP file for these has ready-to-print PDFs, plus editable MS Publisher files.
Julian of Norwich was a 14th-century mystic and contemplative. She lived through The Black Plague (originating in China, brought to England via the international trade routes of the time), which makes her words even more appropriate for us during this time of the challenges of the Covid19 virus.
Following is the passage she wrote from which the quote is taken: [Read more...]
