Effective Church Communications

Lent is for everyone, Templates, text, and a variety of ways to communicate it

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Observing Lent isn’t about a denomination, or whether your church is liturgical or not. Lent helps us to put the Christian life into a biblical perspective. It’s a time to practice saying “no” to ourselves in little things so we can say a bigger “yes” to God in the bigger decisions of life.

We know the value of discipline to achieve our goals in every other area of life and this time of year reminds us of the importance of discipline in the Christian life.

The PDFs pictured below are appropriate for any church. You can use them as bulletin inserts with perhaps some additional verses on the back side or invitations or reminders about your Easter schedule. You can post them in newsletters or online, whatever works best for you to encourage your people.

These can be used at the start of Lent or anytime during the Lenten season as a devotion or challenge.

Not only are there already finished templates for you in these sets, but at the end of this post is the text content so you can make your own, or copy and paste that into any church publication you want.

CLICK on the first image in the sets below and you'll see a larger one that you can read.

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Links to free Valentines Day templates, ideas, plus a reminder to church leaders to be nice to church communicators

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Valentines to remind us of God's love
We all need to hear how much God loves us. These communications will help you share that.

Here is a list of links to articles and resources to help your church make the most of Valentine’s Day. Though many of the resources are specific to Valentines Day, a number of the cards and ideas are useful any time of year you feel your congregation and community need to be reminded of God’s Love.

Templates: Valentine’s Day Outreach Postcard with room for Church Info

https://wp.me/pDky9-6OU

Valentine’s Day Templates

Below are the sets of Templates with preview images, click on the link at the bottom of the list to go to them.

https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/templates/valentines-day-templates/

Valentines for Church Communication Creators, what church leaders need to do

https://wp.me/pDky9-19E

***PLEASE note—this one is formatted for you to print off (just hit the little print button at the bottom of the page) and give to church leaders. Not terribly subtle I realized, but tell them I made you do it.

Templates: Door Hangers for Valentine's Day Outreach, plus why they work so well for outreach

https://wp.me/pDky9-6OH

Community Outreach for Valentine's Day—a door hanger sample and a postcard

https://wp.me/pDky9-5FQ

These are real-world examples from a contributor and dear friend of our ministry Gayle Hilligoss

Templates: Valentines for believers, remember how much Jesus loves you!

https://wp.me/pDky9-6Oh

 

FREE Door Hangers for Valentine’s Day Outreach, plus why they work so well for outreach

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Valentines Door Hanger Templates
Door hangers are an effective and low-cost way to reach your community with a reminder of God's love.

Door Hangers continue to prove themselves as a low-cost and effective way to increase awareness of your church and invite your neighborhood. Below are TEMPLATES for Valentine's Day that remind people that God loves them. The Templates have room for you to personalize them for your church. In addition, on the back of the door hanger you can include more information about your church and/or invitations to specific events.

Following the images is a downloadable ZIP file that contains PDFs of the images and editable MS Publisher files. After the images are excerpts from the article "Five Secrets to Door Hanger Marketing" that will give you added incentive to create this form of communication for your community.

Combine distributing the door hangers with a Prayer Walk for your community

Distribute them in teams of two and pray specifically for the people in the homes, the neighborhoods, that God would touch hearts and make them open and willing to connect with your church and hear the good news about Jesus. Door hangers are a tangible way to advertise and walking the community to distribute them and pray is a much more personal and involved way to do outreach than impersonal Facebook or other digital advertising. I'm not saying local Facebook or other digital advertising is bad, but our outreach needs to get out from behind the computer periodically for maximum impact.

Door Hangers to personalize for your church for Valentine's Outreach

To download the ZIP file of the door hangers, click the following link:  MS Pub Valentines Door Hangers [Read more...]

Valentines for Church Communication Creators, what church leaders need to do

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Valentines Day, a reminder of God's love
Gifts are wonderful, but at Valentine's Day the most important thing is how we treat each other.

Valentines for Church Communication Creators, what church leaders need to do

(For pastors, church business administrators, church communication directors, and anyone else who oversees people who create church communications--this is addressed to you)

by Yvon Prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com

Valentine’s Day is a wonderfully Christian holiday in that it is all about love and loving is what Christians are to be about. We celebrate it by giving gifts, often flowers and candy, to those we care for—but flowers fade and candy adds on pounds. For those you in a leadership position, who want to show caring to the people in your communications ministry, whether paid staff or volunteers, below are Five Valentines you can give that will have lasting, positive results. Print this off and discuss it during a staff meeting for a Valentine's Day that is a real gift for growing our relationships with each other.

Gift #1—Give them authority

In church communications, the church leadership should decide on basic themes and messages and perhaps even the overall look of publications, but seldom on layout, or the final editing of articles or announcements. The people actually doing the creative work need the final authority in these areas. Have a meeting to discuss and clarify these issues and then publicly announce and print your decision. You might say something like this:

"Jenny Smith, our communications coordinator has final editing authority on the layout, deadlines and content of materials that go into the bulletin, newsletter, website and church social media (and whatever else you want to list). She has posted her guidelines and submission deadlines on our website. Please support her decisions and deadlines."

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A free Valentines Day flyer or bulletin insert to remind people of God’s love, plus strategy to make the most of it

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St. Augustine quote
Many people today have restless hearts. This Valentine's Day, help them find rest in Jesus.

Today many people have restless hearts. Life may not be what we wanted, dreamed about, or even find tolerable. Our restless hearts may be in many areas of life, but Valentine's Day shines a laser focus on the restless disappointments in our hearts. This  flyer or Bulletin Insert might help your church minister to those restless hearts.

This time of year we're reminded of every romantic disappointment and broken dream with every TV ad and the gauntlet of flowers, cards, and chocolates when we shop. We may be alone in that we don't have a special someone in our life or the special someone slot may be filled, but we still feel alone. The media tells us we shouldn't ever be satisfied until we do everything we can to find that rush of complete, overwhelming, all-consuming, and satisfying human love, to go along with our perfect bodies and leisurely lives. But few of us live in that media fantasy and even fewer have the energy to try to event try make it real.

What the media doesn't tell us is that no matter how perfect we are, how much money we have, or how single-mindedly we pursue a perfect human romantic partner that no human love, no matter how deep or true or quietly wonderful it might be, (and some are blessed with that) will ever totally fill the place in our heart only God is designed to fill.

Valentine's Day is a perfect time to share the reality of God's forever satisfying love with the people who come to your church and here is a ready-to-print communication to help you do it.

Use this Bulletin insert or flyer set to share God's love

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