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.
  • Home
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES

Newsletters: from boring and bragging to outstanding outreach

31 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Whether you create your church newsletter on paper, in electronic format or both, periodically, take time to restructure it in ways that turn it from an often dreaded publication chore into one of your most powerful outreach tools. You can do this by evaluating your mission and then identifying your niche ministry targets and creating newsletters specifically for them.

Evaluate your mission

Creating and producing newsletters is extremely costly both in terms of people hours and the money it takes to create, reproduce and send them out. With this in mind it is important to take time to evaluate why you are producing your ministry newsletters.

That “WHY” comes out loud and clear in every issue you produce whether you intend to or not.

For ineffective church newsletters the biggest WHY that often comes out is that the church is doing the newsletter for what I call “family bragamony” purposes. These are publications that only make sense to you if you are part of the current church family. They are primarily focused on how great the people are who are already attending the church and have the effect of saying (even though this is never intended) “this is an insider group, newcomers aren’t welcome.”

If you doubt that is true, look at your newsletter. Do you have contact phone numbers or emails by every event? Do you have announcements like these:  “Men’s Bible study at our usual location.”  “Youth Group, same time, same place!” “The Pot Luck will be great as always—ya’ll come!”

A newcomer has no idea what you are talking about.

While reporting on church family news and giving updates is important, we might want to add evangelism and outreach as additional reasons WHY we do the publication.

This isn’t difficult to do. We can add an outreach emphasis simply by adding an invitation to newcomers. For example, just add something like:

All events of  Our Church are open to EVERYONE!

Please join us if you are new or perhaps have been around a long time, but mostly just attended Sunday mornings.

Each event has a contact phone number and email address and we welcome your questions and would love to tell you more.

One powerful outreach tool— be sure each activity from children’s and youth events to home Bible studies has a contact phone number and email for more information. It’s simple, but essential and sadly, so often left out.

Identify your niche targets and create publications specifically for them

One of the most exciting trends I have seen as I travel around North America teaching communication and marketing seminars to churches is the creation of niche newsletters.

All successful marketing theory tells us that the more narrowly we can niche (divide, segment) our audience into parts interested in the same thing, the more successful our marketing will be. The way this translates into the church is that it can be helpful in addition to doing an overall church newsletter to decide what more narrow audience you want to focus on and reach in your community. Then do a newsletter specifically for them.

Examples of niche newsletters

I have seen some great examples of this in especially in niche newsletters designed for PARENTS of teenagers and children. Note I said PARENTS, not the kids themselves. You still need newsletter to tell the youth group what’s going on, but most churches do something like that. These are a separate publication because the churches who do them  realize that parents need lots of help today. The best ones target a specific age area: parents of grade school kids, high schoolers, etc.

The church creates a newsletter that reaches out to parents, encourages them, gives them helpful tips and ideas. In addition the church also offers resources from the church to help them: youth and children’s programs, mom’s morning out, whatever. It clearly invites everyone in the community to take advantage of these programs.

Another great niche newsletter I saw recently at a large church conference I was teaching at was a newsletter for married professional couples. It was full of chatty tips on how to find time for romance, how to communicate when both of you have a crazy schedule, etc. To be honest the graphics, the layout, the whole “design” of the publication was pretty bad if I was evaluating it from a “design” standpoint. Did I care? NO! I snatched one right up and read every word.

These sorts of publications can be incredibly powerful outreach tools. They position the church as a resource for help; the pastors as resource people and they provide solutions to real-life problems. Which is easier to invite someone to church or to say, “I really found this article helpful with my kids. I think you’ll enjoy it”?

Think through the niche groups in your church—parents of  kids and teens and married couples at all sorts of life stages, seniors—then find some of the spiritually mature folks in that group and ask them to put together a newsletter to help others. Don’t worry about layout (though Microsoft Publisher has great newsletter templates that are easy to use), the content and heart in the publication is what is most important.

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Children's ministry, Church Newsletters Tagged With: church newsletter, church newsletters, church outreach, Communications, Email newsletters, niche newsletters, yvon prehn

Sample Gospel Presentions

26 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Sample Gospel Presentations
Sample Gospel Presentations

It does not take much space to include a  gospel presentation (how to become a Christian, what it means to be a Christian) in your church bulletin or special event handout.

This PDF contains a few examples.

Feel free to modify them in a way that would suit your church.

Though these are a good, brief summary, I strongly recommend that you also add a link to your website where you explain what it means to be a Christian in much more detail. Include links to questions about the Christian faith so people can carefully explore the Christian faith before they make the most important decision of their lives.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Christianity defined Tagged With: Communications, evangelism, Evangelism resources, gospel presentations, yvon prehn

VIDEO: Why I can be happy

26 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

I did this video for a friend who was going through a very hard time, but I have found that I often look at the video to encourage myself. It encourages me because it causes me to remember that no matter how much I mess up (and that is very frequently) that the Lord still loves me and that He is at work for our good and His glory. I trust it encourages you.

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: Christian video, Communications, encouraging video, yvon prehn

Some types tips to make your materials more readable

22 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

A few little changes to how you use type can make a big difference in the readability of your communication as this PDF shows.

Some of the tips below are not what people intially expect. For example, most people think that to put type in a color emphasizes it, but unless the type in color is quite large, colored type is usually harder to read than simple black on white because there is less contrast.

Even though it is very popular today for some blogs to be done all in reversed type (white on a black background), that is always much harder to read. You have to decide—do you want people to read what you have to say or think your site looks really edgy?

What the poster illustrates is how you can use a fancy typeface to catch attention as we did when we did up a flyer to remind kids to donate to a shoe drive, but the actual instructions to the parents are in a plain, clear typeface. This is a good example to follow on the kinds of communications you design for people to put up on the refrigerator to remind them of church events or ministries.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

Misc. type tips

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Typography Tagged With: Communications, typeface choice, typesetting, Typography, yvon prehn

Typefaces that look great for an entire publication

22 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

You can save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you don't keep changing typefaces throughout your print publications. You can use a different typeface for your headers and your body text, but you certainly don't have to. Especially type-setting longer printed pieces, using one typeface throughout and varying the weight and style will give you a timeless and professional-looking piece.

Remember, the type itself should always be invisible—you want people to grasp your message—not notice the type that contained it.

Some of the typeface families that work well for this are shown in the PDF below. To download the PDF, click here or on the image below.

Typefaces that look great for an entire publication

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Tweet
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp
  • Pocket
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Share on Tumblr

Filed Under: Typography Tagged With: Communications, typeface choice, Typography, yvon prehn

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • …
  • 185
  • 186
  • 187
  • 188
  • 189
  • …
  • 205
  • Next Page »
Link to Easter Templates of all sorts

Seasonal Templates

  • OVERVIEW of TEMPLATES for Church Communicators, please read first
  • Valentine’s Day Templates
  • Lenten Templates
  • Easter Templates
  • Mother’s Day Templates
  • Father’s Day and Men’s Ministry Templates
  • Graduation Templates
  • Summer-related Templates
  • 4th of July, Canada Day, and GRACE for All Nations
  • See You At the Pole
  • Harvest Festival and Halloween Templates
  • Christmas Templates

Recent Posts

  • Social media images for Easter with challenging messages
  • From our vault: Everything you need for Easter: Templates, strategy, inspiration and encouragement for all your Easter communications
  • Why just “Come to Easter at Our Church” isn’t enough–FREE invitations with short, but powerful messages
  • ESSENTIAL Christmas Communication advice and free tools to implement it
  • A Free Template of the Christmas Story and short gospel presentation based on “Hark the Herald Angels Sing!”

Most read posts

  • Graduation Templates
  • Church Directories How-to, ideas from church communications
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES
  • A Prayer for Graduates, Free flyer, bulletin insert
  • Summer-related Templates
  • Father's Day Power Point Slides and Videos of inspiring quotes and verses
  • Welcome slides for Father's Day

Misc. Church Communications Templates

  • Church Connection Cards
  • Business/Invitation Card Templates
  • Back to Church for Kids in the Fall Templates
  • Church Bulletin Template
  • Volunteer and Encouragement Templates
  • 2-page Senior Adult Print Newsletter Template
  • Misc. Church Templates
FREE Bible Verses and Sayings in both print and social media format at Bible805Images.com
FREE Bible Verses and Sayings in both print and social media format at Bible805Images.com
  • Home
  • ABOUT
  • BLOG
  • PODCAST
  • FREE PRINT TEMPLATES

Copyright © 2025 · Enterprise Pro Theme On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in