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; we can help.

“More Than 1 in 5 American Children Live at Risk of Hunger” statistics and fact sites to help us communicate about hunger

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Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:7

Communicating information on hunger and challenging people to alter their lives and give sacrificially or to even give at all is often not one of the most fun communication projects. But caring for the poor is very important to our Lord.

In addition, it has to break our hearts that one in five children is hungry in our land of abundance.

We can't do everything to solve all hunger problems, but we can do something. One of the most important things we can do is to tell the truth and to constantly keep the reality of hunger before our people.

We need true facts to create communications to teach our people.

These three sources give statistics and information on hunger that can help you prepare teaching, PowerPoints or fact-sheets.

Three great resources sites follow

Feeding America
http://feedingamerica.org/press-room/press-releases/fa-children-at-risk-of-hunger.aspx

This site has a Press Release archive with statistics and press releases you can use. Below is one of most recent and serious.

From the Global Policy Forum
http://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/217/46138.html

12 Myths about Hunger
An excellent article that does a great job of showing why these myths are false. It can be reused for research and educational purposes and is an excellent resource for teaching a class on hunger.

Myth 1: Not Enough Food to Go Around
Myth 2: Nature is to Blame for Famine
Myth 3: Too Many People
Myth 4: The Environment vs. More Food?
Myth 5: The Green Revolution is the Answer
Myth 6: We Need Large Farms
Myth 7: The Free Market Can End Hunger
Myth 8: Free Trade is the Answer
Myth 9: Too Hungry to Fight for Their Rights
Myth 10: More U.S. Aid Will Help the Hungry
Myth 11: We Benefit From Their Poverty
Myth 12: Curtail Freedom to End Hunger?

From the Food For All Website
http://www.foodforall.org/hungerstats.html

Below is one of their lists of very useful facts that you can use on teaching and communicating about hunger. This is an interesting site that does a lot of work with grocery stores and other places like that for manufacturing agreements and special events that raise money for hunger. Might be good to check it out for ideas.

Hunger Statistics

Data gathered from the USDA's "Food Security in the United States", 2008 Study

  • In 2008, 49.1 million Americans lived in food insecure households, which includes 16.7 million children
  • Overall, households with children had nearly twice the rate of food insecurity (21%) as those without children (11.3%)
  • 5.7% of households (6.7 million households) experienced very low food security, an increase from 4.1% in 2007
  • In 2008, 8.1% of households with seniors (2.3 million households) were food insecure
  • In 2008, 4.1 % of all U.S. households (4.8 million households) accessed emergency food from a food pantry one or more times
  • Groups with rates of food insecurity much higher than the national average (14.6 %) were:
    • Households with incomes below the official poverty line—$21,834 for a family of four in 2008—(42.2 %)
    •  Households with children, headed by a single woman (37.2%)
    •  Black households (25.7 %)
    • Hispanic households (26.9 %)
  • Food insecurity rate was highest in the South (15.9%), intermediate in the West(14.5%) and Midwest (14%), and lowest in the Northeast (12.8%)
  • According to the US Census Bureau in 2008, 39.8 million people (13.2% of the US population) were in poverty

More coming, send me your samples

I'm going to continue to provide resources and, when possible, samples. The Micah 6:8 Section is where the updates will be.  Please send me samples of anything that you create to communicate to your church about hunger and other poverty and compassion issues. Send original files and PDFs with permission for ECC to use them to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Give your Operation Christmas Child an opportunity to give and expand the joy

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Anyone can give and everyone should have the opportunity to give, as the Apostle Paul reminded us:

And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own,  they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people.  And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us. 2 Cor. 8:1-5

When most of us are working on our Operation Christmas Child shoeboxes, we primarily think about what we are going to give the one child. But you can not only do that, but by the addition of a few items you can also give your child the opportunity to give. This isn't hard or expensive to do.

Here's how:

You can do this by buying and putting into your Christmas child package items that are packaged together and can be broken up and shared. When you do this, you give your Christmas child the opportunity not only to receive, but to share and give to others.

The 99cent and Dollar Stores have packages of these and many other that would be great to put into your shoebox. Many of the items below don't hardly take up any more room--for example, a package of combs or a couple of toothbrushes instead of just one, take up very little additional room.

Here are some ideas of items you can buy to give your Christmas Child a chance to give:

  • Buy a package of colorful combs in various sizes and colors
  • Buy a package of toothbrushes
  • Buy pencils in a package
  • Buy hair ornaments of all kinds in a package
  • Buy several packages of gum
  • Buy soap bundled together

You can copy any of this information and expand this idea to put into a bulletin insert, email or newsletter to pass on the idea to your congregation.

As always, pray for wisdom and that the Lord will lead you to wonderful things. Pray for your Christmas child that he or she would know the joy of sharing and giving in addition to receiving this holiday season.

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If you would like more information about the Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child, CLICK HERE.

Why Marketing isn’t evil—or doesn’t need to be anyway

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As often happens, marketing is currently taking a bashing in some ministry magazines and blogs. Though I am one of the first people to decry the evils of untrue church marketing—in my mind epitomized by the commercial website headers of mostly white, all thin, happy folks—when few folks at the churches I know look anything like that—especially when you look at the church universal and the tragedy of hunger domestically and worldwide...but I digress.

As I was saying, though marketing can be used in untrue, unworthy of the gospel ways, to bash "marketing" with a broad brush as evil is like saying because Jim Jones of Jonestown massacre was a preacher that all preaching is evil.

Chapter Four: Effective Church Communication Marketing

Intro note: The following material is from the book, Ministry Marketing Made Easy, by Yvon Prehn.  A PDF of this material is available as a download, by CLICKING HERE and at the end of the article. You have permission to make as many copies as you need for your staff, congregation, or volunteers.

Some church people are genuinely concerned about marketing and wonder about the appropriateness of marketing in the church. This is a valid concern and an important one to address. This chapter presents a biblical view of respectful marketing and provides biblical and practical examples of appropriate uses of marketing in the church.

I strongly recommend you take time to go over this chapter as a staff and with the leadership of your church. If you don't and people in your church have concerns that are not answered, you can be certain they will come out and often, not in pleasant ways.

You want everyone (as much as is possible) in the church to be of one heart in your communication and marketing efforts. Yes, it takes time to explain why you are doing what you are doing, but the oneness of heart that should be the result is worth it.

Marketing misconceptions defined and defused [Read more...]

What hasn’t been said about Steve Jobs: what he did for church communications

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Steve Jobs and Apple Computers
In his later years Steve Job created incredible things, but his early work made an immense, but often forgotten impact on the church.

In commemorating the life of Steve Jobs much of the media attention this past week has focused on his recent inventions: the iPod, iPhone, iPad and understandably so because they are extraordinary devices. Though beautifully designed, at their core they are merely ways of listening digitally to music, making a phone call, and viewing digital content. Jobs did all these things with more style and features than anyone else, but he didn't invent a new way of interacting with the world in any of them.

For church communicators, however, Jobs totally changed our world

What he did has become such an everyday part of the church office, it is easy to forget what happened and if you are were not around in the days before the personal computer was invented, you honestly have no concept of the extraordinary revolution brought about through the Macintosh computer, the Apple Laser Printer. [Read more...]

Editable Halloween MS Publisher materials, a FREE preview PDF for all, editable files for members

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Cover of Overview of the Editable MS Publisher Files
Click here to download the PDF. It is an overview of the editable MS Publisher files and how to use them for effective Halloween Outreach.

The publications illustrated here cover every aspect of preparation for, what to use during and follow up for effective Halloween outreach including:

***Motivational bulletin insert
***Invitation Cards
***Case-study, volunteer recruitment brochure
***Sign-in cards
***Cards to give out as people leave your event

Click on the PDF for a free overview of all the communications with ideas on how to use them.

Effective Church Communication members can click on the links below to download the two ZIP files that contains editable MS Publisher files for all the publications illustrated. The first file has all the PR, invitation, outreach, sign up and follow up cards. The second file has the brochure. If you are not a member, this is a great time to join and have access to all these files. CLICK HERE to go to the MEMBERSHIP area.

Just download and save the ZIP file on your computer, click to open it and then you can open and edit any MS Publisher file there. You must have a copy of MS Publisher on your computer for this to work.

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Click here to download the ZIP file

Click here to download the Brochure for Trunk or Treat File

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