Effective Church Communications

Canva’s remove background tool–absolutely WONDERFUL!

9 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This is the greatest tool ever to help in creating church communications! If you have ever tried to remove background around an image, you know how difficult it can be.

With Canva it is almost magically easy and then you can export the image to use in any program you want.

I had heard about the tool, but I didn't get around to using it until one Sunday morning my pastor (now sort of retired, but still preaching at times) HAD to have a flyer for a service he was doing later that afternoon. The video below shows how Canva came to the rescue to help me create what I needed.

The silent, destructive communication war between Boomers and Millennials

4 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

There is a silent war going on in churches today. Nobody talks about it and many in the church are not even aware it is going on, but it continues day after day and the injuries, both to individuals and to the Kingdom of God, are immense. This is the war of communication expectations between talking on the phone, email, and texting.

Though this conflict can happen between any members of the church, for purposes of this article, I’m going to over simply it by sharing what I’ve seen happen many times between Boomer and Millennial age groups. Though I’m using these two groups as examples, read into them “Boomer and older” and “Millennial and younger”.

I’ll first give some examples and then suggestions for ways to improve the situation.

Here are some typical skirmishes:

Situation #1:

A Boomer congregation member places a phone call to a Millennial Youth Pastor and leaves a message. No response. Boomer tries email. No response. Sunday comes around and Boomer angrily confronts Millennial, "I was going to give two scholarships to Winter Camp, but since you didn't have the courtesy to respond to my offer, the scholarship money has been donated elsewhere."

Millennial response, “I’m really sorry. I didn't get any of your messages.”

Situation #2:

Millennial Youth Pastor texts the Boomer age people in the church who have said they want to be part of the prayer team for youth. She is excited about the list she received from the church office and then sends them a series of Instagram links to images showing the kids they will be praying for at an upcoming strategy session at Starbucks.

When the time comes for the strategy session, only one person out of the 15 she sent multiple text messages to shows up. On Sunday, when she tries to be kind and asks why various Boomer individuals didn’t show up, she gets a combination of blank stares and replies of “You never contacted me” in response.

What is going on

In both groups, the person sending the message felt they were doing all they could to communicate. However, just sending a message is not the same as communicating a message. [Read more...]

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

2 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

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

1 February, 2020 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

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

28 January, 2020 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

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.