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; Effective Church Communications can help.

Communications that will get people to come back to church after Easter, why, how to do them, and examples of effective ones

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Note: this is from our archives and many of the publications have updated versions in the TEMPLATES section. However, the overall theory here is an important summary for why you need to do all the things you need to do to get people involved in your church following Easter and I thought it would be useful for you to go through. The PDF download at the end has all the publications pictured.

In most churches their biggest turnout of the year is for Easter Sunday. This doesn't happen by accident-churches pour time, money, and resources into their church communications prior to Easter and it pays off with a full-sanctuary for multiple services. However, few churches have a continuing increase in attendance after Easter.

Brunch Invitation
You may have published a invitation to church or ministry brunch in your bulletin, but why not create a personalized invitation people can give out?

Easter week may have been fantastic, but without intentionally working on developing a continuing relationship with the people who only come at this time of year, we aren't communicating the total message of Easter. Jesus came to earth, died on the cross, and rose from the grave to enable us to have an eternal relationship with him, not just a yearly visit to his church.

For the Easter activities of your church to build relationships, you may need to expand your goals in the communications you create for this time of year. The remainder of this article will give you some ideas on how to do this.

Make Easter a connecting point, not the end result

Invite friends to Easter
A bulletin insert like this will encourage your people to invite friends for Easter.

In the church communication production prior to the Easter season, almost everything is geared solely towards getting people to the Easter week services. Though this is a worthwhile goal, if it is your only goal, you'll not accomplish all you could to make a lasting impact in people's lives and in the growth of your church.

Instead of seeing Easter week attendance as the only goal and end result, consider changing your thinking and strategy. Look at Easter as a connection point between your community and Jesus and your church. You want to bring people into the church Easter week, but you don't want them to go away and never come back-you want them to meet Jesus, to begin and grow in a relationship with Him.  In addition, you want them to get to know your church and to enter into a continuing relationship with your church community.

To accomplish these purposes, you have to be very intentional long before Easter in not only the communications you create to get them there (which you most likely already have in place as you are reading this) but also in what you give people at each event or service during Easter week.

There are two overall areas in which you need to create communications at this time: communications to introduce and connect them to Jesus and communications to introduce and connect them to your church [Read more...]

Typesetting for kid’s communications

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PDF of Typesetting for Kids publicationsCreating communications for children can be lots of fun, especially with the fun typefaces you can use.

This PDF gives you some guidelines to make your use of them more effective. Though it has some useful tips, the companies cited are no longer in business, but http://www.fontspace.com/ is and below are some of their current fonts that are great for children:

All the fonts above are from:  http://www.fontspace.com/ and are free downloads.

Google fonts also has a great selection of free fonts

One very important guideline to keep in mind is to NEVER use the typefaces that have reversed letters (such as a reversed "e" or "s"). It might seem like that would be a harmless, cute thing to do, but when little children receive a printed piece from a respected person in the church and the penmanship is all wrong, it can be confusing.

Have fun, do kid-friendly things, but always remember the position of authority and influence you have in young lives.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

Great Idea Swap: Samples of Children’s Ministry Communications

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Note: these are from a previous GREAT IDEA SWAP, but are some wonderful samples for Children's Ministry that I thought would go well with the Postcard samples we just shared.

Children's ministry requires a large number of communication pieces for a successful ministry. The following pieces are a from various churches and should give you some ideas for your ministry. These samples are from our Great Idea Swap. A brief description and a few comments goes with each one.

Click on the the image to download the PDF and to be able to see the entire communication piece.

Children's ministry Brochure

This brochure that describes the Preschool ministry at this church is short, sweet and to the point, but it gives you the information you need and how to contact someone at the church for more information.

One other thing I really like is the image used to illustrate the ministry—instead of just a piece of clip art of children (and there is really nothing wrong with that), they used the watering can and water illustrating growth—neat image and I have an idea a really neat ministry also.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image.

Christian growth bookMy Christian Growth Book

Don't let the simple cover fool you, this booklet is a jewel.

It has a detailed, complete program of discipleship for children presented in a systematic, upbeat way, with prizes and rewards as the children work through different levels.  The program includes becoming a Christian, baptism, life-style guidance, learning books of the Bible and the flow of Bibical history, plus a group of key passages and verses for the children to memorize.  You can of course adapt the material to the training of your church, but the important thing here is that this can inspire you to have a discipleship training program for your children.

To download the PDF, click here or on the image. [Read more...]

Use school supply sales to communicate your love for children for backpacks and Christmas Shoe boxes

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Shop the summer sales to get great supplies for Backpack ministries
Shop the summer sales to get great supplies for Backpack ministries and to save for Christmas Shoe Boxes--here are links to free Bulletin Inserts to encourage your church to be involved.

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matt. 25:40

Loving and caring for those less fortunate is a way of showing love to Jesus and at this time of year, you can do that by shopping for school supplies at the greatly discounted prices on the pre-school sales and using them for Backpack Ministries and saving them ahead for Christmas Shoe boxes.

To encourage and inspire the people in your church to take part, Effective Church Communications has links at the end of this article to entries that have church bulletin inserts in a variety of illustration formats that you can use to remind and encourage your congregation to get involved.

Some of the bulletin inserts are  PDFs that you can personalize on the back. There are more designs available in editable MS Publisher format that you can download and modify.

In addition to printed bulletin inserts you can take the same material and use it on your website, postcards, and as email reminders.

The first two links are for Backpack Ministry Inserts, the third one encourages people to shop for your Christmas Shoe boxes when the fall sales are on, and finally a personal article on why this ministry is so important to me.

No matter what else you read, or what you do, take some time and a few extra dollars to love kids in Jesus name by buying supplies they might not have if you didn't care and share.

Click on any title to go to the articles:

Back-to-School Backpack Ministry--an opportunity to bring joy to needy kids

A new set of designs with templates for Effective Church Communications

My personal reasons why backpack ministry is so important to me

Bulletin Inserts: Shop for Your Christmas Child Boxes in August--Samaritan's Purse shopping Tips!