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; Effective Church Communications can help.

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.

If you truly care about visitors to your church—keep doing a paper bulletin

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It can be very confusing to guests if they don't know what's going on in the church. Printed, paper church bulletins can help relieve some of that confusion.

I recently attended a church event where I was extremely uncomfortable.

Mind you—I'm a church person, one who grew up in the church, loves the church, is there every week. My father was Catholic, my mother Protestant and I'm comfortable in many types of services.

But I wasn't at this one.

I don't want to go into too much detail because I don't want to embarrass the church, but the reason I was uncomfortable (church person that I am) is that I had NO idea what was going on or what would happen next. It took place on a Sunday morning with additional things going on in their regular service.

We didn't know what was happening; what would happen next; how long it was supposed to go on, what we were expected to do. We had no idea who the various people were who got up to speak (and there were a number of them on this day). We had no idea what they were talking about when they briefly mentioned upcoming events.

What was good about what happened

I got a sense of what it is like for an unchurched person to come into a church. I try in many ways to remind people of how confusing it can be if you did not grow up in a church of any kind to make sense of what goes on in any church.

However, in most instances, a total newcomer is saved because when they come in they are handed what to them is "the Program." Most of us call it the church bulletin, but even if the guest doesn't understand all the terms they have a sense of the cast of characters and the order of the events that are taking place. They also get an idea of what the church is about and what else is going on there.

What goes on may seem odd—perhaps like a play to someone who is unfamiliar with that type of play or the actors, but they can follow the structure if not the details in content. Without a Program or explanation of any kind, the uninformed audience member may walk out.

A printed, paper, bulletin changes all that

Even the most simple bulletins make a stranger to the church at least feel comfortable with a small sense of what is going on, who the people are, and what's next.

But it wasn't changed for us. When my husband went to ask for the bulletin (perhaps we came in the wrong door we thought), he was told, "oh we quit doing those."

I confess to fighting anger and irritation, but I kept reminding myself, "This is what it feels like to not know—to not be one of the "insiders" at this kind of religious meeting.

The result—to encourage you to keep printing church bulletins

I know there are many blogs and chats that tell you they aren't necessary—that everything is digital and nobody reads them anyway (which simply isn't true–just because someone doesn't want to come to something you advertised, doesn't mean they didn't read about it).

But printed bulletins are still important. I don't want to repeat myself more than necessary on the reasons why, but below are links to two FREE e-books about church bulletins and why they are important.

Please read them and consider what they have to say. I'm a church person, I love the church and I'll be back. If I was a lonely, confused visitor, I'm not sure I would be.

Click the link following each title to go to the article to download the book:

 Are written bulletins still useful in the church?   https://wp.me/pDky9-t3
 Archives of church bulletin tips, articles, advice   https://wp.me/pDky9-1Gv

 

DON’T EVER HOST A MONEY-DIVIDED EVENT!!!!

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Don't let your event pricing hurt children
We don't ever want a child to be embarrassed or left out because of our insensitive pricing at a church summer event.

Ed. note: this is an excerpt from a longer article on summer communication strategy, but I feel the topic is so important, I wanted to post it on it's own.

Yes, that is all caps and I am shouting. I'm going to sound very harsh now, but I feel strongly about this and I think the extensive Biblical support for caring for the "least of these" and being concerned about the poor supports my concern.

Here is the situation I've seen in the PR of some churches (and as is the habit of our ministry, we don't name names of bad examples):

  • The church hosts a summer event but states clearly (or sometimes not at all, which is horrid) that everyone is welcome to free popcorn and punch, but there will be a charge for hotdogs and burgers.
  • Or there will be free chips and salsa, but there is a significant charge for tacos.

How do you think that feels for a family that might have taken a huge step to go to the event they heard that was going on at the church  but they have four kids who would love a hotdog or a taco, but then they find out that there is a charge for food (popcorn and chips do not a meal make) and they simply don't have the money for it. What will they do? [Read more...]

What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing

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What Tesla has to teach the church about advertising
Yes, a Tesla is a great-looking car, but did you know they outsell EVERY other luxury car brand WITHOUT any advertising? The church can learn something from how they do it.

Did you know that Tesla sells more luxury cars than any other company?
I think the challenge of that question is so important, I did both a blog and article on it. Below is the podcast and then the continuation of the blog:

I was surprised when I read that statistic, but even more interested when I read how they did it. Let me share the terlerati.com comment on it, a chart that illustrates their success, and then I'll talk about how this inspired me about discipleship and church marketing. Then I've got some spiritual challenges for you and then at the end of this some practical tools you can use to put into practice to make your seasonal marketing more successful than ever.

Quickly, name one advertisement you’ve seen recently from Tesla Motors themselves? OK, name any advertisement you’ve seen from the company, ever? Tesla’s marketing strategy is as disruptive as its business model. It lets you and I advertise for them, for free. . . . . Tesla does not spend millions of dollars in a traditional ad campaign. They let you and me discuss it, rave about it, hate on it, or rejoice in the spirit of going electric in a Tesla, be the catalyst to a viral and brilliant marketing campaign. At the end of the day, Tesla advertising is free.

[Read more...]

My recommendations for your spiritual preparations for Easter—and for the challenging work you do all year long

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Bible 805, podcast and commentary
To do well as we create church communications we need to know our message well and this Podcast will help you do that.

Creating church communications any time of the year is a challenge, but preparing for Easter is one of the most challenging because there is so much to do for the Easter season, starting with Lent and then all the preparations and finally the celebration of the most important event of the Christian year—the resurrection of our Lord.

For this and for all other times of the year I hope this site encourages you and give you practical tools to do your work effectively, but more important than all those things is that you need to ground yourself in the Word of God. For you to do truly effective work as a church communicator, you must be strong in your faith and the foundational way to do that is to know God's Word.

I often describe myself as a "writer and teacher for Jesus" and long before I started teaching church communications (and that was a LONG time ago) I was teaching Bible classes. In the many years, I've done that, as any teacher knows the more you teach the more you learn and I'm learning so much as I prepare my lessons for Bible 805 the class I do live each week at my church and also my PODCAST: Bible 805.

This last week in the process of teaching through the Bible in Chronological Order (which I think is an essential way to study it if you want to truly understand it) I did a lesson on Typology, where you learn how the types or spiritual truths that were shown in partial form in the Old Testament are fully revealed in the New Testament. For example, the lambs were sacrificed as an atonement (a covering) for sin in the Old Testament, but Jesus came as the perfect lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Imagine what it must have been like for the Jewish audience who followed John the Baptist and who for their entire lives had watched lambs sacrificed in anticipation of the coming Messiah to see him look up at Jesus approaching and to say, "Behold the Lamb of God!"

This is only one of the images we talked about and I got to thinking how much richer will be our experience of Easter if we understand the Old Testament background of it.

To strengthen your heart before Easter and to grow in your relationship to Jesus and knowledge of His Word I'd like to invite you to listen to Bible 805. The lessons and podcasts are posted by each Monday after the Sunday morning lesson. You can jump in at any time as the lessons are self-contained, but I pray many of you will join us in our adventure through the Bible. This is the message we all ultimately work so hard to communicate well. We need to do our best to learn it well.