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.

A new look at Lent—baby steps to Christian walking worthy of our salvation

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Lent reminds us to live for Jesus
Lent reminds us of the cost of our salvation and challenges us to live for Jesus.

I confess I was scared into becoming a Christian.—

As a little kid, I heard about hell in church, and I knew I didn't want to go there.

I had a Grandma who loved Jesus, the Bible, and who demonstrated every possible Christian virtue at home and to her neighbors. But wanting to be like my Grandma (which I did) wasn't my overwhelming concern regarding a relationship with God. Every night before I went to bed at the end of my prayers I would always add, "And please God, let me go to heaven when I die and not to hell."

Though we went to church every Sunday, that prayer tormented me until a Good News Bible Club teacher explained if you trusted Jesus as your Savior, you didn't need to worry about going to hell. Jesus' death on the cross paid for the sin that sent people to hell, and by accepting Him, by asking him to be my Savior, I wouldn't ever need to worry about it. I did ask Jesus to save me and never prayed that fearful prayer again.

What this has to do with Lent

As I was putting together the communications for Lent I realized the current public image of Christianity is a happy, happy one complete with the promise that if you become a Christian, life will always go well for you. Even those who don't subscribe to the crassness of the health and wealth gospel (if you give God money He will give you back much more), are shocked if someone in the family gets sick or loses their job. Any disappointment with what we think God owes us provides grounds for walking away from the faith or at least is a justification to be mad at God.

Lent gives us a corrective to that view. Lent reminds us that there are things about the Christian life that are difficult and costly. It challenges us to say “no” to ourselves in minor areas of life to strengthen our spiritual muscles for larger challenges. [Read more...]

Free Lenten Insert, suitable for any congregation

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Lent is a time to reflect and these flyers will give you a variety of ways to do it.

Lent is coming up and here are some flyers you can use to prepare your congregation for it.

During Lent, we begin looking towards Easter as we remember Jesus' time in the desert of his temptation.

Whether your church is liturgical or not, whether you have an Ash Wednesday or Sunday service, this is a great time to encourage people to think more of others and here are two FREE publications to help you do that.

Both of the flyers below encourage self-denial in non-traditional ways: fasting from words, buying, noise, and bad attitudes among other things, plus they encourage positive actions of service to others.

These are all actions we should continually practice as believers and the season of Lent is a wonderful time to remind your congregation of the values of self-discipline and service. Click on either image below to download the PDF you can use to print off the flyers for your church.

I've done additional designs for the first one CLICK HERE to go to them, but if you want this design you must download it here.

Flyer for Lent for different kinds of self-discipline
This flyer or bulletin insert will encourage church members to practice different kinds of fasting other than from food. CLICK on the image to download the PDF.

 

Lenten Practices Bulletin Insert
This flyer or bulletin insert encourages service to others and self-discipline during Lent. CLICK on the image to download the reproducible PDF.

 

A thoughtful challenge for Valentine’s Day from St. Augustine – a cure for empty hearts

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This is one of 8 flyers you can use to remind people that God can fill empty hearts and lives.

Valentine's Day can be fun and fluffy, a time for flowers and candy and silly, sappy cards.

But it can also be seriously sad. If you have someone in your life or not, your heart can feel empty.

As those who know Jesus, we can use this time not only to remind ourselves of how much Jesus does love us, but we can also use it as a time to reach out to people who don't know Him and let them know that there is One who can fill their empty, restless heart.

To help you do that, I created the following handouts ( 2 sets of 4) that you can freely download and give out as mailers, postcards, bulletin inserts or on social media. In addition, below the handouts is a word file of the free verse I wrote that you can put into anything you want to remind people that "our hearts are restless til they rest in him."

Click on the links below the images to download the Zip Files that have ready-to-print PDF images and editable MS Publisher files.

SPECIAL NOTE: if you'd like to know more of the story of St. Augustine, the author of the quote, see the note at the end of the article.

Click the following link to download the ZIP file that contains the files above: MS Pub St. Augustine quote, set #2

Click the following link to download the ZIP file that contains the files above: St. Augustine quote

Written out message

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Instagram Images to remind you of God’s love

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A set of Instagram images to remind us of how much God loves us
We can never have enough reminders of God's love. Here is a set of Instagram images to encourage you.

I created these as an update to some of our templates for Valentine's Day.

I wanted to remind us all of God's love, but as I was working on them I realized that if I didn't put hearts and flowers on them, they could not only be used at this time of year but anytime we need a reminder of how much God loves us.

God's love is our foundation no matter what the challenges of life and forever.

Feel free to download and use these any way you want to encourage yourself and others.

Below are images of the images. In the zip file, below the images, they are sized for use in Instagram. Just click on an image for a larger size preview.

CLICK the following link to download a Zip File of the images: Gods love Instagram Images

 

New FREE set of Connection Card Templates available

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One of a set of Free Downloable Connection Cards
This is just one of a set of free, downloadable Connection Cards for your church.

Connection cards are a humble, but one of the most powerful communications your church can produce. With them, you can, of course, respond to visitors and in so doing grow your church, but when you include an invitation to share a prayer request, these cards are also a powerful way to pastor your people.

Below is a set of simple connection cards in two sizes. Yes, you can make them much more complicated and there might be times you want to do that, but similar to how marketers have found that people sign up for email lists more when they are only asked for the most essential information (name and email) than when they need to answer more questions. Below is a free set of forms for simple connection cards. Below them, a link to a FREE KINDLE download of my book on Connection Cards.

To download the Free Template file that includes ready-to-print PDFs and editable MS Publisher files, CLICK the following link:  2 Sizes Basic Connection Cards