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.

It may not be your fault that nobody shows up for a ministry event that you advertised heavily

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Weight of communications responsibility
Sometimes church communicators feel like the entire weight of the success of a communication is on them, but often it involves reasons outside their control.

Sometimes church communication ministries don't realize the extraordinary responsibilities they have to communicate the message of salvation and the challenges of discipleship to their communities and congregations, but more often church communicators feel a tremendous weight of responsibility.

If an important event or training program doesn't get the response you anticipated, it is easy to blame yourself. You might feel your communications weren't catchy enough or your graphics not gripping or your text not as enticing as it should be.

Maybe those reasons had something to do with it, but probably not. Sometimes the reason people don't show up has little to do with what you communicated. Following are some true examples of times this happened, of course with some details changed so as not to embarrass any member of the Body of Christ.

Unknown scheduling conflict

You may find out the real reason no one comes to an event you advertised is the same as it was when one church launched a Sunday morning class for young parents. They wanted to target this group (what church doesn't), but on the day it launched 2 grandparents and no young parents came to the class. When a few informal calls were made to the target audience of young parents in the church and they were asked why they didn’t come to the class, the answer was that because the new class was at the time of the main service and the children didn’t leave for the children’s program until after the children’s sermon, which was 10-15 minutes into the time the class started. The parents weren’t going to leave their kids in the service alone to go to the class—no matter how well it was advertised and promoted. [Read more...]

Results of the NEWSLETTER Poll

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Yvon Prehn, creator of Effective Church Communications Ministry and website

A big hug and thank you to all of you who responded to the poll asking you which days of the week you wanted to receive the twice a week newsletters from the Effective Church Communications Ministry.

The very clear preference results of the survey are MONDAY and THURSDAY! So that is what we will do!
Your comments were also extremely helpful and the things you asked for gave me great ideas, some of which I will be implementing right away for content. I did not expect the many kind, wonderful, encouraging things many of you said in the final comments and I can't tell you how much joy and strength that gave me.

A new newsletter format is coming

Maybe this week, but by next week for sure I'm going to be changing the format of the newsletter. I have been using AWeber because it allowed me to send out the automatic emails when I created new material for the site.
But I never really liked the program--lots of glitches and problems and plugin conflicts, after looking at various programs I'm going back to Constant Contact, the newsletter system I started out with. I like the things I can do with it a lot and I'm excited to share them with you. Please click on "show images" when you get the new one.
Thanks again for your input on the newsletter and I praise God for all of you!
May He give you joy and strength as you serve Him today!
Yvon

Response to an overwhelmed church communicator

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For a new and overwhelmed church communicator, here is some advice that might help.

In response to the recent poll I sent out, here is what one person said in the comments section:

New to this role, unpaid volunteer for a small church. It all feels overwhelming.

That comment, totally touched my heart and I wanted to share a few things in response. Though helping people in this situation is one of the goals of the ECC Ministry, I hope the following advice is helpful.

Being overwhelmed is a totally appropriate response

You are tasked with making clear the words of eternal life to your congregation and community. Heaven will be different; the eternal destinies of people will be altered by your work. With that reality in mind, here are some things to do that might help.

The first thing to do

When (in 1 Samuel 30) David was under intense pressure and "greatly distressed" the passage goes on to say that he "encouraged himself in the Lord his God [KJV] found strength in the Lord his God. [NIV]" You can do the same. No matter what your tasks; no matter how little training or preparation you have for the job, the Lord is there to help you. Trust him and pray for every aspect of your work.

James 1:5 says that God will give you wisdom when you ask for it. Ask continuously and He will give insight and direction.

The first things NOT to do

Don't overly worry about how things look or your social media wizardry. People do not respond to the messages of your church because of your graphic design brilliance or the wit of your tweets. Of course we want things to look as good as they can and we want to use every channel possible, but don't focus on secondary issues at first.

Three things that are vitally important in all your communications

If your communications have these three characteristics, you'll be effective in communicating the needed messages of your church. The 3 vital characteristics are

Be CLEAR

Explain what you are talking about so ANYONE new to the church will understand (and many who have been coming a long time, but never learned what's going on). Don't use cute names, acknyomns, abreviations that only people who have attended the church for many years understand. Tell people precisely what is happening and why they should bother to be involved or care. Don't publish a picture ANYWHERE (social media or print publication) without a caption. You are in a unique and wonderful place just starting out in communications in that things people may have taken totally for granted that others understand, you can spot them more easily. Speak up; ask; clarify for the sake of your audience.

Be COMPLETE

The most deadly assumption you can make in church communications is "oh everyone knows." They don't. They don't know what time a group regularly meets. They don't know that childcare is always provided or never provided, they don't know that you have to be a church member to volunteer for certain jobs, they don't know how long youth group, or the mission committee or any other group meets.

YOU MUST provide all these connecting details in your communications and if you don't have room to put them in, be sure you have a link to your website that gives them in detail.

You can have the most stunning image, brilliant text, and fascinating slogan, but if people are unclear about the date or time and can't easily find out more, they won't attend.

There is a saying that "the devil is in the details." I would propose a more accurate statement would be that "the devil is in our communications when we leave out details."

These vital, connecting details may be hard to track down—they may be one of the most frustrating parts of your job, but they are extremely important.

Be CURRENT

Without this last characteristic—many vital communication tasks are either undone or only partly successful. This primarily has to do with your website and the fact that you must work EXTREMELY HARD to keep it updated. Your website is the anchor of your church communications and to emphasize some of the points above, it really doesn't matter how it looks (again, yes it's nice, but not the most critical thing)—what matters is that when people come to it, visitors and members that they find the COMPLETE information they want; that it is CLEAR and that it is CURRENT.

If you do that—you will be a rock star communicator because very few church websites are as current as they should be. Finding programs listed that are months or years old, no details on events happening this week, or in a short amount of time, no links to where to find out more—again, looks matter little if these details aren't there. If they are there people will attend the events and either come to know Jesus as Savior or grow in their relationship to him. That is what makes you an effective church communicator.

This is just a start, but I trust a useful one

There is so much to learn as a church communicator, but it is wonderful, exciting, and never boring work! The Effective Church Communications ministry is here to help and our Church Communicator's Training School has an ever-growing list of courses that will help you.

Know that though I can't see your face—I am praying for you and all the church communicators involved with ECC that the Lord will give you strength, wisdom, and joy as you do your work to share the words of eternal life.

PLEASE READ–IMPORTANT updates to Effective Church Communication, we are no longer a Membership site–all content here is FREE

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I apologize greatly for any of you who have come to this site from something that referred to it as a membership site--we've made some big changes that after some initial confusion, will serve church communicators well.

Here is our current status and update:

Though there is additional work to be done, after much prayer and work, here is what I believe is the right direction to go for the Effective Church Communications Ministry and that is to split the ministry into two websites:

The Church Communications Training School—I am extremely excited about this as I've been working to consolidate a lifetime of training in church communications into courses and books. The software and backbone of this system seems very solid and I like how I can upload videos, PDFs, files and resources in a well-organized way. The site is clearly labeled as a ministry of Effective Church Communications.

Currently there are 12 courses on the site (6 Free, 6 more lengthy ones part of the ALL-ACCESS MEMBERSHIP).

IMPORTANT CHANGE—I am shifting the MEMBERSHIPS of all ECC Members to a LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP into the Church Communications Training School Site. You will get an email that gives you the coupon code for a LIFETIME membership. (actually probably several as this will take time and reminders). If you want to sign up before you get the email, the Coupon Code for LIFETIME MEMBERSHIP is MEMBERECC. PLEASE use it to sign up for the site as many of the paid resources will be shifting to it. You only have to do that once.

If you are not a member, I'm offering a special sale throughMarch for yearly membership to the Church Communication Training School of $59 a year (instead of $99) and that price will be good for as long as you stay subscribed to the site. The code for that offer is CHARTERMEMB.

The Effective Church Communications Site, this one will now become a FREE site, supported by the Training Site, book sales and Donations. This was a very difficult decision, but I simply could not handle one more membership software crash, issue, mess up on sign-ups and all the things that were going on. The other site is built from the ground up to handle those things, it is not an add-on to try to fit into a site, payment sites, etc. I felt like I was not supporting members at all with the time and trauma I was having to spend on membership issues.

I will continue to create resources for this site as I have in the past --in fact I made great progress while figuring all this out on the STRATEGY section of this site--lots of articles that I think will be helpful have been written, re-written and organized under accessible categories. There will be quite a few links on this newsletter for them and in the weeks ahead.

In the midst of all these changes, if the ministry has been useful to you, please consider a one-time Donation to the support of this ministry to keep the site ad-free and affiliate-free, help pay the hosting and software bills, and support the creation of Templates and other free resources. This is a costly ministry to keep going and I am committed to it and no matter what as long as the Lord gives strength I will keep producing resources for church communicators.

I do believe that once this site is reorganized (it's close) and the Church Communicators Training School has a larger curriculum and running well (I'm very excited how that is going so far in creating materials, though lots of money has gone out and zero in so far) I can focus totally on this ministry and that is my fervent prayer. PLEASE pray that I have the wisdom and strength to do all that needs to be done

Your DONATION (any amount is appreciated) at this time would help pay for some of the start-up costs and would greatly help as we redo the ministry and launch the school. I've set up a secure PayPal donation link, CLICK HERE to go to it. Thank you in advance for whatever you can do (and if nothing at this time—thank you for listening and praying!). Please let your friends and people in ministry know about the school. I think it can help the church tremendously.

At present, purchases and donations are not tax-deductible, unless for educational purposes, which your tax expert would have to decide.

Telling your friends about the site and our resources and most of all praying for us are extraordinary ways of support also.

Hi from me. I really hate it when people don't update pictures--though the ones I use aren't that old. I took this one of me at my computer a few days after my 69th birthday. No PicMonkey retouching (of course you can't see the weight I gained.....)

Much more on the changes, the school and other ministry news will be coming shortly, but I wanted to get this important update to you by the start of the week.

May the Lord give us all grace and strength as we serve Him in communicating the words of eternal life.

I praise God for your partnership in this exciting ministry,

Yvon

21 FREE image resource sites and a course to help you make the most of them

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Previews of 21 Image Sites
There are thousands of FREE image sites out there today. This course will help you make the most of them!

It's a great time to be creating communications today because thousands of images are available to you for FREE! And this course that was just posted to our Church Communications Training School will preview 21 websites of FREE IMAGES and give you tips to make the most of them!

No matter what some paid sites may tell you, everything you need to create great-looking communications in print and online can be found without spending any money. This course not only will give you a list of sites that will give you what you need, but it will give you video tours of all the sites so you can decide if that source is useful for you before you waste time checking it out.

There are five videos previewing sites

The first one of large overview sites is the longest at about 14 minutes and the others are 5 or 6 minutes.  You can download either the PDF of the course PowerPoint that lists the sites or a PDF list of the sites to make notes on what might be most useful to you. This is one of the best things about the course because instead of getting a random list of sites that may or may not be useful, you can sit back, relax, and have me preview the sites for you.

(Personal note here.....I had NO idea how long this would take to put together. What I thought would be a few hours ended up a few weeks. I've always hated the lists of sites for any recommendation of free this or that or recommended this or that and found that checking them out was always such a huge waste of time because half were useless and obviously nobody pre-screened them. Now I understand why; it'a a lot of work! But I'm committed to doing this for you and the ministry and I trust you'll find it useful.)

In addition to showing you sources for thousands of useful images, this course also has:

Introductory TIPS on images

Images are very important, but they are not THE most important thing in church communications. We'll briefly discuss why, what is most important and how to use images most effectively.

You'll also learn why captions for your images are critical and how without them images have no inherent meaning.

Guidelines and cautions

There is an overwhelming amount of fine print on image sites today. Not only is it very confusing, but as a church communicator you want to do things legally and it's hard to take time to sort through all the rights, usage agreements, and licenses involved.

This course has done all that work for you and all the sites shown are free, copyright free, attribution free, and can be used for commercial purposes (if you create a t-shirt and sell it, that's commercial).

Bonus--quick edit ideas in PicMonkey

Sometimes you want a little more from an image. You may want a different size, focal point, or color. You may wish it had a different mood or effect. A great program that can do that is PicMonkey and the overview of images ends with a short video from Pic Monkey showing how you can very quickly make changes like the ones below. The first image is the original off the site and following are is a less-than a minute change. The video has additional changes of this picture and another one.

This course is part of our All-Access Membership- for the Church Communications Training School, which is a ministry of the Effective Church Communications Site-sign up today and have easy access to thousands of FREE IMAGES for every communication project you can imagine.