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.
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Church Halloween Celebrations: why simply having fun and not sinning is not the point of why we do what we do

1 October, 2023 By Yvon Prehn 4 Comments

Halloween is about more than fun, it's an opportunity to share the gospel
If the reason for your Halloween outreach is only about kids having fun and getting lots of candy, you've missed a great opportunity to share the gospel.

Is having fun what defines a Christian? Is FUN what makes a church even worthwhile? Is fun why we do what we do (whatever it is) in the Christian life?

When you look at many church communications, you'd assume the answer was "yes." A recent scanning of material on the web as I was researching alternative Halloween events overwhelmingly advertised events or promoted activities where the FUN promised is promoted as the primary reason people should attend. Though the focus of this article is on the combination of Halloween communications and the emphasis of FUN (intentional shouting with the all capital letters), the same concerns and cautions apply to our communication of many church outreach events.

How fun becomes the primary motivation for Halloween alternative events

Much of the thinking process behind many of these "Christian" alternatives to Halloween on the web seems to go something like this:

  1. Halloween is evil.
  2. To take part in a traditional secular celebration of Halloween is evil and sinful.
  3. Christians shouldn't do evil and sin.
  4. Instead Christians should have good, clean fun.
  5. Therefore our church will do a fun event for Halloween.
  6. People will see we are Christians by our fun.

I don't have a problem with the list up to #3—much of traditional Halloween celebrations are evil. Maybe not as evil as some timid folks fear, but probably not activities that would fall into the class of edifying Christian activities. Dressing up as demons and witches and glorifying magic is not what Christians ought to be doing. Sending your kids out alone to beg for candy in most areas today isn't safe. But the alternative to fighting evil or working to fulfill the Great Commission is not to simply have safe fun. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Fall Festival and Halloween Tagged With: Alternative Halloween, Church Halloween, Is Halloween evil?, Trunk or Treat

A Case Study to help you be more successful in recruiting volunteers, using Trunk or Treat as an example

8 September, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Sucessful fall church outreach
Fall is a great time for church outreach and the ideas here will make sure you get enough volunteers to make your event successful.

Yvon's note: though this material and the video is several years old, it has some extremely useful material that will help you be successful in your fall outreach. Consider the production values and artwork a retro memory and learn from the timeless principles represented.

Recruiting enough volunteers is always a challenge for any church event and few are the churches that report they have enough. When the event takes place and there are not enough people, not only is it tiring for the staff and the volunteers that are there, but it is spiritually trying also. When this happens, we ask ourselves:

Why didn't more people help?
Don't people care about their neighbors?
Doesn't outreach matter?

These and many other questions haunt us and make us hesitant to be enthusiastic about upcoming events.

In evaluating many instances of this kind, I've put together the online Video below that has a Case Study with specifics and samples that I trust will help you be more successful in recruiting people for your next church outreach event.

As you can imagine (this being a church communication ministry) I believe that the primary problem with not getting enough volunteers is in the communication that comes from the church—the problem is not in our people, but in us. Often we don't communicate nearly as well as we think we did to let people know how much we needed their help or even, as you'll see in the case of Trunk or Treat, even what the event is about.

This video would be excellent to watch with your church staff. Remember you can click on the little box of arrows at the bottom of the video to blow it up full size on your screen. Simply hook up the computer to a projector and you can show it to the entire staff. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Communication Teams, Fall Festival and Halloween, Volunteer Management Tagged With: Alternative Halloween, church communication teams, church outreach samples, church volunteers, Fall Festival and Halloween, Halloween outreach, recruiting volunteers, Trunk or Treat

Fall Event Registration Cards to make sure people come back to church after your outreach event

16 October, 2017 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Fall Event Registration Card
A registration card like this for a door prize will help you get in touch with people after your Fall Outreach Event.

Fall outreach events typically get large turnouts from your community and here is a tool that will help bring them back to church after the event.

More than a connection card, which people have little reason to fill out at a fun, outreach event, this card is a REGISTRATION for a DOOR PRIZE.

For fall you might fill a big pumpkin with lots of candy and other goodies or a basket of local treats. Do something that is colorful and impressive and have it at a table as people come in, consider using eye-catching table runners, at CV Linens you can find table liners cheap products. Invite them to fill out the card for a drawing. Don't make them have to stay for it if you are doing the drawing at the end of the event and you'll get more cards filled out.

The content on the card is designed for unchurched people and here is what it says:

We are so glad you’re here! Please take a minute to fill out this card so you can be entered into our door-prize drawing and so that we have a record of your attendance and a way to contact you about future events for your family. Be assured this information will not be shared or used outside the church office and you can have your names removed from the list at any time by calling the church office.

It lets them know you will be contacting them again, assures them it is for church use only and lets them know they can have their name removed from your list at any time. At the same time you get all the information you need to follow up with social media or postcards.

Below are a set of designs FREE and are ready to download, print, and use.

The ZIP file below contains a ready-to-print PDFs, editable MS Publisher files and jpeg files of each design. If you aren't a Member of Effective Church Communications, you won't be able to see the download. CLICK HERE for Membership Information or to sign up.

CLICK the link following to download the ZIP FILE for Fall Registration Cards: Fall Event Registration Cards

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Filed Under: Connection Card Templaltes, Evangelism & Outreach, Fall Festival and Halloween, Seasonal communication strategies, TEMPLATES, Thanksgiving Tagged With: Alternative Halloween, Connection cards for fall outreach

FREE Text for Halloween Outreach for invitations, postcards, congregational motivation

9 October, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Halloween Cards to Consider Jesus
This article contains the text-only files for all these communications, free for anyone to copy and use.

Following are the text only files from the Halloween materials. These text files are for anyone who wants to use them to create Halloween outreach materials

If you are an ECC Member you have access to them in finished files, click here to go to the overview page that shows how they are used in church communications and for the download. If you'd like more information on how to become a Member of Effective Church Communications and save yourself the time and work of creating these communications yourself, CLICK HERE.

For everyone, for all the materials that follow, PLEASE simply copy, download and use in any way you want to help your congregation reach people for Jesus this Halloween season.

Motivational text to get your congregation to invite  [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Evangelism & Outreach, Fall Festival and Halloween Tagged With: Alternative Halloween, Churches and Halloween, Evangelism how-to, Fall Festival, Halloween invitations, Halloween outreach, Text for church invitations, yvon prehn

Editable Halloween MS Publisher materials plus a preview PDF for all

20 September, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 1 Comment

Cover of Overview of the Editable MS Publisher Files
Click here to download the PDF. It is an overview of the editable MS Publisher files and how to use them for effective Halloween Outreach.

Ed. note: This is an older collection and the artwork on a number of the pieces could use some updating, but still some very useful ideas and resources for Halloween Outreach. The publications illustrated here cover every aspect of preparation for, what to use during and follow-up for effective Halloween outreach including:

***Motivational bulletin insert
***Invitation Cards
***Case-study, volunteer recruitment brochure
***Sign-in cards
***Cards to give out as people leave your event

Click on the PDF for a free overview of all the communications with ideas on how to use them.

Below you can click on the links below to download the two ZIP files that has editable MS Publisher files for the outreach publications illustrated. The first file has all the PR, invitation, outreach, sign up and follow-up cards. The second file has a PDF of the brochure.

Just download and save the ZIP file on your computer, click to open it and then you can open and edit any MS Publisher file there. You must have a copy of MS Publisher on your computer for this to work.

Click here to download the ZIP file

Click here to download the Brochure for Trunk or Treat File

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Filed Under: Fall Festival and Halloween Tagged With: Alternative Halloween, Church Halloween Samples, Churches and Halloween, Halloween invitations, Halloween outreach, Halloween Templates, Predone Halloween communications, Trunk or Treat, yvon prehn

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