Effective Church Communications

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.

PODCAST & blog—Your Chaplain of Communications—the unique ways Yvon Prehn and Effective Church Communications can serve you

By Leave a Comment

Comfort from Chaplains needed in church communications
Chaplains comfort and encourage in many situations and I want to be your Chaplain of Church Communications.

There are many useful resources available online to help you in your work as a church communicator. Considering that I was recently thinking about what makes my ministry of Effective Church Communications useful for you—what to expect from me that is unique or different from what is available from other sources.

Though I’ll break it into practical parts for you shortly, overall, I realized a good label for me would be Your Chaplain of Church Communications. This covers what I do, as a chaplain is defined as one—

  • Who provides spiritual care and resources
  • Is a mentor and a reassuring and trustworthy presence
  • Who assists with the spiritual, religious, and emotional needs

Caring for your spiritual needs and providing resources for you as a church communicator is foundational to what I do for two reasons:

  1. The spiritual importance of who you are as a church communicator.
  2. The unique ways I can help you be more effective based on the spiritual, Biblical foundation of the resources of Effective Church Communications.

Let’s look at these two areas in more detail now either by listening to the podcast or going to the blog that follows.

The spiritual importance of who you are as a church communicator

As a church communicator, you have one of the most critical jobs in the church both in terms of the potential impact of your position and the spiritual warfare involved in it. [Read more...]

“You are One of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize,” an encouragement for all church communicators

By Leave a Comment

Church Communicators are the GREAT ones in the Kingdom of God
Your work may seem challenging and overwhelming, but church communicators are truly the Great Ones in the Kingdom of God. Heaven will be different because of the work you are doing today.

It's easy to forget the incredible importance of your work with all the hard work it takes to be a church communicator. The devotion below will help you remember.

You are one of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize

Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (Dan. 12:3)

Often when I ask someone who has come to one of my church communication seminars what they do in the church, they often respond by saying something like: “Oh, I’m just the church secretary” or “Oh, I just help work on the church newsletter” and similar self-deprecating statements.

My heart is broken when I hear that because the person who says it (and you may have thought similar things about yourself) has no idea of their true worth. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story from a scene in C. S. Lewis’ book , The Great Divorce. In this scene the main character is being escorted around heaven. He sees a woman coming toward him magnificently clothed and attended to by a great procession. The book goes on: [Read more...]

Canva—a GREAT way to edit MS Word Newsletter Templates!

By Leave a Comment

Tutorial on how to modify MS Word Templates in Canva
It is incredibly exciting that you can modify an MS Word template, in this case, a newsletter, with Canva. Changes that make it look so much better are SUPER EASY!

I confess, I did not know you could do this!

I was looking up a totally different task and I found a video about using Canva for teachers, and it showed how you could modify an MS Word document in Canva. I tried it, it works fantastically, and I couldn’t wait to share it with you!

I have used MS Word literally since it was invented and though I love it for word processing, to try to do much else with it is an exercise in frustration. Images are a nightmare to try to place, columns do funny things, and any kind of layout with images is a huge challenge.

The “templates” available in MS Word and online might be useful if want to keep something almost exactly the same and only change wording, but sometimes you want to do more than that. When I heard you can open an MS Word template in Canva it seemed almost too good to be true. Then I tried it and was incredibly excited about what you could do!

After a little more experimenting on a newsletter, I created a video to share with you showing how EASY it is to make major design modifications on an MS Word document in Canva.

As always in the Effective Church Communications Canva videos, I’m showing you how to do things with real-world projects, in this case modifying a newsletter, and not simply a demonstration of tools in the program. BE SURE to subscribe and hit the notification bell on the YouTube channel so you'll be notified when I post the new Canva videos as I often get them done a few days before I sent out a newsletter notification.

Check out the video and have fun!

Reality of our situation—challenging spiritual warfare

By Leave a Comment

Devotion #1 for Church Communicators

Do you ever feel like you are fighting a battle when you sit down to do your church communications?

If so, that is a realistic view of your situation because you really are fighting for the kingdom of God!

In this devotion/challenge I want to help you focus on God’s Word, the incredible calling you have to share God’s message of salvation, and to strengthen and encourage you.

Most importantly, I want remind us all that we are involved in spiritual warfare as we create communications that will help fully fulfill the Great Commission.

The reality of our situation—challenging spiritual warfare

And our key verse for it is: 

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Eph. 6:12-13)
Working for the Lord in church communications is hard.

The bottom-line reality is that we are in a war. And in any war, one of the first things the enemy tries is to knock out the communications equipment of their opponent. You aren't just "doing the bulletin" or some other isolated project. You are the communication center for spiritual warfare for your church. When you got into communications work for your church or ministry you entered one of the most intense areas of spiritual warfare raging today. Satan wants to knock you out.

Troubles with hardware, software, and co-workers are to be expected. Especially people problems should be no surprise because Satan is "the accuser of our brothers" (Rev. 12:10) and one of the easiest ways to cripple you in the battle is to get you fighting with your fellow soldiers. Don't let him win; don't take on his job. [Read more...]

How Christians are like Pumpkins—a fun object lesson for adults and kids to grow as Christians together

By Leave a Comment

Pumpkin Carving and faith building project
Use this pumpkin carving lesson as a time to teach children about Jesus.

This is just the cutest, fun thing for Halloween!

But first the serious reasons behind it:

In the Old Testament, Jewish parents were commanded to teach their children about God's law during all of life.

Write these commandments that I’ve given you today on your hearts. Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children. Talk about them wherever you are, sitting at home or walking in the street; talk about them from the time you get up in the morning to when you fall into bed at night. Tie them on your hands and foreheads as a reminder; inscribe them on the doorposts of your homes and on your city gates. Deut. 6:7-9 MSG

In the New Testament, we are all commanded to do a similar thing—

Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. Col. 3;7, MSG

Though we are commanded to make God's Word and doing His will part of every area of life, that isn't an easy command to fulfill.

Holidays can help, even ones we wouldn't normally think would help us to grow in our Christian lives.

How pumpkins can help us understand the Christian life, what Jesus has done for us, and how we can live for Him.

We don't often think of Halloween as a time to learn about the Christian faith, but with a little imagination and creativity, it can be! Here is a pumpkin carving project that will help kids learn about Jesus.  Below is a short video that goes through the project and below the video is a link to a  ZIP file that contains a ready-to-print Pumpkin Project sheet, editable MS Publisher files, jpg images, and an MS Word file of the text if you want to create your own version.

Click on the following link to download a ZIP file that contains a ready-to-print Pumpkin Project, editable MS Publisher files, jpg images, and an MS Word file of the text if you want to create your own version: Pumpkin Project & Poem