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.
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Canvas Salvation Book, a tangible way to share the gospel

15 January, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Good News 1Note from Yvon:  This is one of the most wonderful and caring ideas I've ever seen on how to share the gospel. For those of you who remember the "Wordless Book," a little booklet that told the gospel story through colors as you explained it, this is an expanded version of it, done up in cloth and decorated with lace, buttons, jewels and decorations. Below are complete instructions as well as pictures of the entire book. There are so many ways this can be used in evangelism at nursing homes, hospitals, many other places.

In addition, making them could be a great project for Ladies Circles and other church groups. Changing production methods in churches make the groups that used to collate the bulletin no longer necessary in some churches, but getting together to work on projects that serve others is always a joy.

I cannot thank enough, Joyce Joseph, who sent these samples, the pictures and instructions. Her mother (age 85) does a lot of the sewing for her.  She told me to please pass on her information and to contact her with questions concerning construction of the booklet at jwjoseph320@yahoo.com.

Canvas Salvation Booklet

Taking a cue from the song “Tell Me the Story of Jesus”, this canvas booklet spells out the ABCs of salvation: admit, believe, commit. Follow the plan below to make your booklet today and start sharing the good news story.

Create A Canvas Booklet in 8 Steps

1. Copy and laminate story cards (found at womenonmission.com). If printing a large quantity, go to a copy center. Otherwise, use the church copier. Lamination can be done at a copy center or school supply shop.

2. Cut 20 14-inch canvas circles. Purchase a 14-inch circle shape, or use a plate or bowl. Duck Canvas is a good thickness and stiffness. Each page is separate and sewn to the page in back of it. Pages need to be made and decorated separately (this step hides stitching) and then sewn together by hand or machine. Again, sew the buttons, jewels, and decorations on BEFORE sewing the book together.

3. Cut two large red hearts.—One for the GOOD NEWS page and one for the HOW CAN I BECOME A CHRISTIAN.

4. Cut nine smaller hearts of the correct colors for the story cards. (See photos on womenonmission.com.)

5. Cut all letters from felt. Use 1-inch, 1-½-inch, and 2-inch letters. Use precut letters or trace on the felt with wood letter shapes or stencils.

6. Cut the correct color shapes on felt for the letters to be sewn on. The exact shape is not that important as long as the letters fit on it and the shape fits on the page. Use your creativity. Search craft shops (JoAnn’s, Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Wal-Mart) for wood shapes that will fit.

7. Decorate the pages with sparkly sew-on jewels, buttons, sequins, etc. Glue-on felt and jewels will work, but they will not be as sturdy and permanent. Make the page attractive, bright, and attention grabbing.

8. Make this a joint effort and project—organizing, designing, cutting, and sewing. Women who do embroidery or appliqué work can really use their imagination.

—Instructions by Joyce Joseph, Tennessee. Contact her with questions concerning construction of the booklet at jwjoseph320@yahoo.com. The booklet has now been translated into Spanish and she will be glad to help you with story cards and photos for that translation.

Use Canvas Salvation Booklets for:

  • Overseas or stateside missions trips
  • Vacation Bible School
  • Children’s Sunday School classes
  • GA® and RA camp
  • Day camp
  • Migrant camp
  • Homeless shelters, women’s shelters
  • Nursing homes
  • Retirement centers/assisted living facilities

Here are pictures of the booklet.
Good News 1Good News 2-3
Good News 6-7Good News 8-9Good News 10-11Good News 12-13Good News 14-15Good News 16-17Good News 18-19Good News 20

__________________________________________________________________________

If you have ideas, project, communication tools of any sort that you would like to share with others to encourage and enable them to better communicate in the church please read about our Great Idea Swap (Click here to so to that section) and send materials via email to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Outreach Samples, Spiritual Tagged With: Evangelism resources, gospel presentation, Wordless book

Operate effectively under pressure

6 January, 2011 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Gayle Hilligoss Picture
Article by Gayle Hilligoss

Ed. note: As we start into the New Year the wonder and joy of the holidays is gone and it seems like we have an overwhelming amount of work to do. Gayle's advice is extremely timely and useful as always. Her words greatly encouraged and inspired me—I trust they will help you also.

There was a time, not really so long ago, when common knowledge decreed it was somehow a good thing for the ministry assistant to be frazzled and stressed, that in some way, looking and acting crazed showed one’s commitment or dedication. Now most of us recognize that is not the case, and a part of our continuing education involves learning how to function effectively when the crunch is on.

Let’s say a major deadline is coming up fast. A series of small emergencies has interrupted your schedule for days. Everyone wants everything now. You can do this!

• Resist the urge to simply head toward the squeakiest wheel. Take a deep breath. Either rework your existing to-do list or make a new list of all the tasks awaiting your attention.

• Go through the list and shift to another day any tasks that can be delayed. Usually these are jobs someone tagged as urgent when they were assigned but, given the current office climate, they are no longer quite so important.

• Next, identify any jobs someone else can do for you. Take time to make assignments, get others going on the work, and check those off your list. Don’t be too quick to say that no tasks fall into this category. Almost always, if you are open to the possibility, you will find at least a few things to delegate.

• What is left on your list are tasks you must do personally and do now. Pick two of the smallest of these important jobs. They might be contacts you need to make to extend deadlines or calls for information on a project. Your object in choosing quick jobs is to establish momentum—to get things rolling and give you a sense of control.

• If you’ve done a thorough job with the steps above, there are only a few tasks left on the list, but they are major. At this point you may need to share with those involved that everybody may not have everything they want when they want it. Give Christian professionals the opportunity to show they understand and appreciate that one can do only what is humanly possible. If you need to create some uninterrupted work time, line up someone to field calls and visitors. If at all possible take yourself out of calling range; have your recruit handle things as if you were out of the country.

• Choose the most pressing task, bite the bullet, and start. Focus on this one job; don’t allow your attention to be diverted to urgencies that pop up. Avoid the firefighting mode; stay calm. Take your lunch hour as well as some occasional breaks. You work more effectively when you are not weary.

• Dealing pragmatically with pressure has enormous advantages. You don’t waste time wringing your hands or bemoaning your situation. You acknowledge what needs to be done, get a handle on your priorities, mentally prepare to tackle the job, set a realistic pace, and follow through. This is the way to get things done.

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Filed Under: Church Office Skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss Tagged With: church office, church office skills, Columnist Gayle Hilligoss, dealing with pressure

Books to download for Web Sample Contributors

30 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Click on any of the books below to download the PDF e-book.

How to Create Websites CoverConnect Card cover newWriting to each book cover

Thank you so much for your contributions to Effective Church Communications!

May the Lord greatly bless you as you serve Him in church communications,
Yvon Prehn

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles

How a limited number of communication channels limited the ministry of a church

24 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

When you look at your church communications plans and goals for all the options you have in communication channels, it would be helpful to look at this question from one church and my response to it:

“We have a website and bulletin, both of which are beautifully done, and we put the newsletter in a PDF email format on the website, and still nobody comes to our events! People say they don't know what is going on. We decided to cut down on the number of communications we were sending out so as not to overwhelm people and now even less people attend events than did before.”

Though I tried to sympathize with their situation I knew immediately what was happening—it’s a common response to shifting technologies that I’ve heard from many church communicators . Like Solomon said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Though church communicators often feel alone because they seldom have the opportunity to talk to other church communicators, many churches have the same frustrations. One opportunity the Lord has given me from traveling thousands of miles every year for over a decade and interacting with many church communicators online, is that I have a bird’s eye view of what is going on in church communications and most of the problems experienced by one church are experienced by many. This situation was not unique--there were several  incorrect assumptions they were making that may have caused their problems .

The rest of this article is an expansion of the advice I shared with them.

Incorrect assumption #1: Assuming less communication is more effective than more communication

Go ahead; read that statement again. It’s goofy.

Imagine trying this in a marriage: "Sweetheart, I think we can communicate better if I only talk to you once a week and only in the way and time I want to."

We know a lack of communication would kill any marriage, any relationship, but it is amazing to me how many church communicators say similar things with a straight face. Less communication doesn't improve any relationship or make any response better.  It doesn’t matter how busy people are who how new and appealing a technology is. In communication, less is seldom more.

Think about it:

  • Do you think direct mail marketers communicate less because mailing less is the best way to sell their product?
  • Do you think a TV advertiser will limit himself to one commercial an hour so that people won’t be tired of hearing about his insurance company?
  • Do you think your spouse will know you love him if you only tell him that once a week so as not to be an emotional bother? Or better yet, never verbally tell him. Or maybe it’s your wife—if she is twenty something and loves the web, you decide the best way to communicate is to post your love for her on a marriage communication Facebook page that you update on a weekly basis. Do you think she'll appreciate your technical expertise in your disciplined, yet technically perfect, declarations of love?

The answers to these questions are obvious and it should be obvious that putting out less communication is NOT the way to be more effective in your church communication ministry. It takes a lot of communications in every available channel to get across the ministry messages of churches today.

Why is it that so many people in so many churches make this statement? I think danger #2 answers that question.

Incorrect assumption #2: Assuming that everybody sees, reads, remembers, and pays attention to every communication you put out

This assumption is wildly far from true. Yes, people might get tired of things if they saw every email, postcard, bulletin insert, and web posting on a topic that we put out, but they don’t.

Studies show that less than 20% of your congregation is at your every week in a month; 30% are able to be there 3 weeks out of a month; another 30% 1-2 weeks out of a month and about 20% of your church people cannot attend on Sunday (often work-related these days). If you only advertise something for a couple of weeks, probably half your people never even see it. Also, do you believe 100% of the people there each week are paying attention to every word you print and every announcement you make? Have you ever tracked how many people come in after the PowerPoint announcements?

For other forms of communication, remember not everyone has email and lots of people who have it don’t read it very often. Not everyone reads all their postal mail. Not everyone can read. This is a sad fact few churches take note of and in addition, some people, who may be able to read in one language, cannot read English well.

That’s why successful advertisers know that repetition, repetition, repetition of the message in every possible channel is the only way to make sure a message is communicated. You may be sick to death of a getting out a message that most of your audience will only hear once or twice.

Incorrect assumption #3: Assuming all your people want to receive communications in the same way you do. In other words, assuming your preferred communication channel is the preferred communication channel of your church members.

This is the big one and a danger many church are falling into today with the best of intentions.  The danger is that they were putting out communications in the channels they preferred (they told me this honestly) – and that preference is the same for many church communicators—primarily web and PDF email.

Though these two communication channels are easy for churches to produce, they are not the channels easily accessible to or preferred by many people. Few folks will wait for a large PDF to download with a dial-up connection. Even if they can download a PDF newsletter, not everyone likes to read them on the screen (especially if the creator of it designed it for paper, not screen reading). If they don’t want to read it on the screen, they may begrudge the ink cost to print out all the pretty colored pictures that are in the newsletter.

Few people will go on to the website to hunt for details of where to go for a church activity, especially if they remember at the last minute. If you have not been totally up-to-date and complete about the times, dates, locations and all important scheduling details for church on your website in the past, people won’t even think of going to it. A postcard or bulletin insert on the refrigerator with all the times and details may be a more useful channel, if not as exciting or cutting edge. Much of this is changing and the web is becoming more and more important, but it takes a long time for any newer technology to be used by many of people in the church. Even as more people are online more, most churches are not up-to-date with even facts on their websites.

For youth events, if the information isn’t accessible by cell phone; it probably won’t be accessed. Cell phones and texting are the primary means teens communicate today and if a church staff member does not have the technology or the skills to use this channel, they will have difficulty communicating with them. Mobile phone accessible websites and information are becoming essential for some age groups. Often this requires design characteristics (much more simple sites) that may not be compatible with the overall church website.

Why it’s easy for churches to fall into these dangers

In my seminars I remind church leaders of the “church office bubble,” the world those of us who work in the church live in. When we are in it, it is so easy to forget what life is like for those who do not live in our familiar bubble. We know understanding and overcoming our tendency to use jargon and talk to ourselves is foundational to outreach communication success, but it is also important that we are aware of our unconscious preferences in communication channels and how these affect the communication of our message.

The issue in choice of communication channels is that those who create communications and those in the church office are included in this, by their natures and jobs are often "early adaptors."  Some love the technology; they want to try all the latest and greatest tools. Some may not love it personally, but their church office manager or pastor does and there is often subtle peer pressure to learn and create with the latest technology. These tendencies are understandable, but we have to be careful that they do not negatively influence our communications by causing us to produce communications that we like to produce, but that are not necessarily ones people want to receive.

The folks from the church referred to at the start of this article, which were experiencing a low response, really liked creating the fancy bulletin, the PDF newsletter, and the website. That’s great that they enjoyed doing those things. But by their own admission, this focus on what they considered simple to do and cutting-edge was not working with many in their congregation.

Bottom line: create what you love because some of your audience will love it also, but in addition, love your church audience enough to create a variety of communication channels so that the people with the slowest computers and those without computers will also hear and have the opportunity to respond to the communications from your church.

Biblical considerations in multi-channel communications

Technology aside, we must always remember that those who name Jesus as Lord must always keep our eyes on Jesus and his Word as our guide for every aspect of our communications.

One theme woven throughout the fabric of the Bible is the concern of our Creator for the poor. There will always be inequalities (in everything from finances to bandwidth) in our fallen world and there is always the temptation of those who have much to ignore those who have little. This is as true in technology as it is in monetary resources. There is always the temptation for those who minds work quickly to be impatient with those who learn slowly; for those who love the new to disdain those who fear it.

If Jesus is Lord, we may create an incredible multi-media website and full-color email blasts; but we make sure there are also postcards, large-print bulletins, and handouts and personal phone calls for those more comfortable with these channels of communication.

Remember, doing this sort of servant work for "the least of these" is doing communication work for Jesus. He who created and named all the stars is not impressed with our technical abilities, but when we pour our hearts out in communication projects, both complex and simple, to make sure everyone is informed and shown love by the time-intensive work required—those channels of communication merit his favor.

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Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications, Website Creation Tagged With: Church Websites, communication channels, Communications, multi-channel communication, yvon prehn

Out with the old. In with the new–tips for a productive church office, part two

24 December, 2010 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Gayle Hilligoss Picture
Article by Gayle Hilligoss

The start of a new year is an appropriate time to evaluate performance, to identify personal practices hindering professionalism, and to replace old habits with new and better ways to work. As Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, “Now is the day, and now is the hour.” Here are three more good habits to acquire in 2011. (to see the first three, click here)

• Excellence

Excellence is not perfection. Anything worth doing at all is worth doing well. Realistically, few things are worth a shot at perfection. The wisdom of spending an hour looking for the “perfect” clipart or typeface for a bulletin insert is questionable. Very likely your responsibilities demand more productive uses of your time. While aiming for perfection is impractical, never settle for mediocre. Excellence is rewarding and attainable.

• Organization

Physical clutter slows everyone down. Time and effort are wasted locating what is needed. Tempers may flare. Mental disorganization perpetuates a cycle of working hard while accomplishing little. Planning where things should be kept, how jobs should be accomplished—timeline, methods, and available resources—encourages effectiveness, efficiency, and smiles.

• Decisiveness

The inability or unwillingness to make a decision about what to do or how to do it absolutely hinders productivity. Often any decision is better than no decision. Fretting over possibilities is a decision in itself, one that creates a backlog of work and frustrates coworkers.

Start the decision-making process by identifying precisely what you want to achieve. Gather and evaluate relevant information. Finally, choose your course of action. Taking days to consider options may reveal a perfectly clear choice, but very likely it will not. When stalled, ask yourself what you will know in a day or two that you don't know now. If the answer is “not much,” trust your instinct, make your decision, and act.

-----------------------
To read the first part of this list, click here.

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Filed Under: Columnist Gayle Hilligoss, Contributors, New Years

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