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.

The often-missed evangelism and ministry opportunities of Mother’s Day

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Mother's Day Sunday is the third highest day for attendance in churches in North America, running slightly behind Christmas and Easter. Though most churches know this and work hard to make it a special Sunday, many miss significant evangelism and spiritual growth opportunities for that day-because of the day's exclusive focus on mothers.

Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying churches shouldn't honor mothers on Mother's Day. They should; it is an important time to praise mothers and to thank God for them. What I'm recommending is that churches not make mothers their exclusive focus, but that they take advantage of the additional ministry opportunities made possible that day because of mothers. These are primarily in two areas and they are:

  • The unchurched child and/or spouse outreach opportunity
  • The opportunity to challenge for spiritual parenting

Let's look at these two ministry opportunities in more detail:

The unchurched child and/or spouse outreach opportunity

The reason that churches are so full on Mother's Day is not because it is the only time of year mothers come to church. Most of the mothers at the church are regular attendees. The reason so many people come to church on Mother's day is the unchurched people in the lives of many mothers rarely, if ever, come to church, but they will come on this day to make mom happy. [Read more...]

One Mother’s Prayer, the text and download link

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One Mother's Prayer
This piece is a perfect handout for Mother's Day or anytime you want to encourage people to pray for children.

This short piece, One Mother's Prayer, is a true story that is both an encouragement to pray for children and an assurance of the power of prayer to change a destiny.

It has been published more times than anything else I've written. It was first published in Today's Christian Woman magazine. Then in their Best of Ten Years of writings, it has been reprinted and republished all over the world, and it continues to bring tears to the eyes of any group I read it to. You are free to use it any way you want and share it however you want.

This sample PDF if free to download.You can click here or on the image to download it.

Members will get the all of the additional PDF formats: 2 more 8 1/2 by 11 plus 4 other versions on half sheet size plus the jpgs of the larger files and an MS Word text file if you want to create your own publication. The text file and the link to all the other downloads is after the images below.

This is a great resource not only for Mother's Day, but any time of the year for Mom's groups and prayer groups. [Read more...]

Mother’s Day, communications that will help you make the most of the outreach opportunities, Webinar On-Demand

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Take a few minutes to watch this and you'll never look at Mother's Day at your church in the same way.

Mother's Day has the third highest attendance of any Sunday and it isn't because of all the mothers there. It's because of the unchurched spouses and kids who come with mom!

This is a fantastic day for outreach, but you have to intentionally make the most of it. Below is a short video that will give you great ideas on how to do this. I STRONGLY recommend you take a few minutes in your staff meeting to discuss this and plan how you can make the most of this day for outreach.

Below the video is a PDF of the handouts for the presentation.

HANDOUTS for VIDEO for Mother's day

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Click here to go to a download file that previews ALL of the publications that are in the video. This is a very large file that has all the editable files and PDFs when you download it--but it is a gold mine of resources.

 

Easter return bulletin insert converted to JPG for additional usefulness

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Easter Questions flyer in Jpg format
This image has been converted to a resizable jpg for you to be able to copy and use in your Easter communications.

This website exists to serve you and though I can't answer every request, when you need something in a format that would be useful to you in your ministry, send me an email and let me know.

A kind request from a church communicator was the inspiration for this project. The situation that she described to me was that her church did not allow the use of bulletin inserts and she wanted to know if she could have the file in a format where she could use it without having to recreate it.

In addition, since she had to put the entire piece into the bulletin with only one side showing of course she could not print the "back " material, the website listing there. I did not give the text for that in the other article about this insert. That oversight has been corrected and the text for the back of this insert with the websites listed is in an updated version of the complete article about this insert.

I worked on redoing the insert, sent it to her and it worked!

So I am sharing it with all of you. I will be doing more of these in the future in addition to the downloable PDFs I currently do......of course in the future, these will be for members primarily.

The image here is a jpg, resizeable graphic. Just click on it and when you go to the page with only it on it, copy it and paste it into whatever you want. Download the PDF to the right and it will illustrate the various ways you can use the image.

A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.
A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.use theimage.

You can resize it for a newsletter, handout or your bulletin.

Click on the image at the left to download it; click on the image on the right to download the sheet showing how you can crop and use it.

The importance of involving Children in Easter outreach (don’t just entertain them)

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Strategy for Children's events at Easter might consist of simple publications, but these simple publications can have far-reaching results in how they bring people to your Easter church service and how many return on an ongoing basis. Many people today will come to a church they feel is good for their children. They might not personally be interested but they want something wholesome for their kids. As many churches know this is often a wonderful way to eventually get the entire family involved.

To start, children's invitations to Easter events can and should be very different from the ones you send out to your community and that you give to adults. Many churches have wonderful activities for children at this time of year and children are never too young to learn how to be inviters.

The invitations here offer tools to help them do that.

Both invitations are one-quarter page size and are ready to print PDFs. They would work well-printed on light-weight card stock. A heavy paper would also work well. Make up lots of them and give them out to the children in your church.

Along with giving out the invitations, this is a great time to teach children that church events are not just times to enjoy for themselves. Church events are opportunities to introduce their friends to the church and to Jesus.

Join us for Easter Fun InvitationWhen children invite their friends, when they see families come who have never been to church, when they see the people at your church welcome and enfold visitors and when they see their friends come to know Jesus—these experiences will teach them the joy of evangelism in a practical, experiential way.

No matter how wonderful your children's program for Easter, you don't want people to experience one Sunday and never come back.

You need to give them something as they leave your church or children's program that lets them know what else you have going on and invites them to return. No matter how impressed they were or how much the like you, you need to give them the concrete details that will actually link them to your church events.

Bunny Return Invitation
A Bulletin insert or giveaway to remind people to come back to your children's program after Easter.

This ready-to-print PDF can be personalized on the back with information specific to your church. Please be sure to include your website and be sure that on it you have detailed information about your children's program and contact information if people need more information.

Intentional work will result in eternal life-changes

It is a lot of work to do all that needs to be done in your children's ministry at Easter, but taking the time to intentionally involve the children in inviting and to intentionally create complete follow-up materials will result in eternal life-changes for the people who respond to Jesus through your hard work.

In closing I want to emphasize how important it is that you involve the children of your church in the inviting process. It is so easy for kids to think that Easter is all about the goodies that they are going to get and it is so easy for parent's to expect the church to offer a good time for their children. That attitude misses the point of Easter. Please take the time to teach your children to give as Jesus gave and to take the time to invite their friends to Easter events at your church.

All of these are available in ready-to-print PDFs.

Below is the link to it.

Book Cover For Easter PDFs
This booklet has 40 pages of ready-to-print Easter communications. It is free for ECC MEMBERS.

To download the PDF collection (the kids stuff is near the end), click on the following link: #1 Easter 2010 PDFs COMPLETE