Effective Church Communications

Templates—New and Easier Access to save time and your sanity!

8 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Church Communications Templates are a great resource and one of the best benefits of membership in Effective Church Communications. Check out these videos to be able to access them.

Templates are one of the most useful resources we offer because the all these things are done for you: communication concept, selection of artwork, typeface, layout and the ministry text. They have been the most popular part of Effective Church Communications for years but once people downloaded them initially, it was difficult to find them again.

That was my fault because though I knew you could access them through looking up the category they were under, even if you remembered that, it still took searching through articles to find the template link if all you wanted was to just grab some invitation cards or connection cards for a particular holiday. That has all changed!

I finally came up with a process where I have a system for you to easily find and download Templates.

The video below explains it. Following this short video is a longer one that shows you how Templates work, how to modify them and where to find them.

Two of the most useful things about the Effective Church Communication Templates are:

You do not need Photoshop, Illustrator or InDesign to modify them. They are primarily in MS Publisher, which is an easy-to-use program found in most church offices.

You can DOWNLOAD the Templates, you don't have to work on-line. That makes it easy to take them home and work anywhere without relying on the internet.

Check out the videos below. If you are not a member of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE--this is one of the best benefits and our very reasonable membership cost will more than pay for the time you save!

Templates, New & Easier Access!

Templates, an Overview

Templates: 1 Corinthians 13 Bulletin Inserts, true love defined

2 February, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

1 Cor 13 Bulletin Insert — This bulletin insert shares not only how we should love, but reminds us of how God loves us.

First Corinthians 13 is the love chapter of the Bible. Not only does it challenge us with how we should love, but we often forget that the perfect love in this chapter describes how God loves us. Take a minute away from your work to think about that and praise God for its truth.

With those reminders in mind, following are Bulletin inserts (or postcards or however else you want to use them) that quote 1 Corinthians 13 that you can use for Valentine's season or any other time people need a reminder of God's love. On the back of the cards you can put links, lessons, or activities your church has to teach people about God's love.

Below the images of inserts is the ZIP file for Effective Church Communications Members to download both PDFs and editable MS Publisher files. If you aren't a member you won't be able to see the links. For more information and to join Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE.

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

31 January, 2017 By grhilligoss@gmail.com Leave a Comment

Valentines Door Hanger — A door hanger like this is a wonderful way to reach out to your community and invite them to church.

editor's note: I wanted to republish the article below because as I was going through my past articles on Valentine's Day outreach, her ideas are some of the best I've seen. I liked them so much, I created two Template collections for you to make Valentine's Day Outreach Door-hangers and Postcards. The links to them are at the end of the article.

Gayle Hilligoss, our wonderful columnist who writes so many helpful articles for us, also volunteers her time to help the communications at her church.

She recently sent me two WONDERFUL samples and I'm sharing them below. First is her brief explanation of them and then images to inspire you. I LOVE the idea of using door hangers as a Valentine's outreach for your church—what a happy way to invite people!

Gayle's email:

Did I ever send you these? The first is printed on door hanger stock.
We are putting them on 300 houses in a subdivision near the church.

The second is a postcard being sent to prospects, visitors, absentees, etc.
We are printing extras for our members to share as they have opportunity.
A couple of the projects of our new Outreach Team : )

[Read more...]

Are you sharing the most important message of your church?

29 January, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

The Gospel of salvation in Jesus is our most important message. — Are you clearly sharing the most important message of your church? People shouldn't have to search for it.

Note: I was recently asked for the location of my past article on "The Most Important Message of the Church." Following is the original article with links to the updated e-book and video presentation of it. It constantly amazes me how many churches are not clear about what it means to be a Christian and how to become one. Please take time to read this and look at the video to be sure your church isn't missing out on THE most important thing.

What is the most important message of your church? Obviously the answer to that is that the message of Gospel--of forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus.

But do people know that after visiting your church? Stop a minute and think about it. When people spend an hour with you did you share with them:

great music?
inspired preaching?
information about activities for the family?
special events invitations?
small group or recovery ministry opportunities?

You probably did and these are all good things, but did you share the most important thing? Do they know that your church can help them find salvation in Jesus? Did you mention that at all in your sermon? Is it even hinted at in your bulletin? Or announcements?

I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty--but when I was recently collecting samples for an ebook, Gospel Presentations in Church Bulletins, I was surprised at how many (by far the majority) of both church bulletins and websites do not tell people how to get saved. Somehow the most important thing we are about gets lost in the announcements and events that fill the life of a church. Please don't think I'm saying that any of these activities in church or during the week are bad, but as the subtitle of the e-book says:

What does it profit a person to have clear directions to the potluck, but lose their own soul?

Correcting this is easy to do

[Read more...]

Templates: “Save the Date” Postcard, Bulletin Inserts, or Flyers

26 January, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

A member of Effective Church Communications asked if I had any "Save the Date" postcards templates. I didn't but I created some in response to her request.

Of course there is very little text on them as each church needs to add their own content, but you can do that in the MS Publisher file that is part of the ZIP file at the end of this post.

I made these half of an 8 1/2 by 11 page size so they could be printed used as either church bulletin inserts, flyers, or postcards. Often these will be posted on the refrigerator as a reminder so be sure to keep the most important information on one side of the card.

They are in a variety of styles for various ages and groups.

PLEASE let me know what church template sets you want to see created. I can't promise how quickly I will do them, but part of this site reorganization I'm doing is to organize and create more templates. Email me with what would be useful to you at yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.