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.

Reminder to send out a Christmas follow-up postcard—Because He didn’t stay a baby

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#1MS Pub Editable Because He didn't stay a baby FOLLOW UP POSTCARD
Send out a postcard to the people who visited at Christmas to invite them back to find out more about Jesus.

Right after special Christmas or other holiday events is a prime time to invite people to come back to church to find out more about your church and Jesus.

Here is the message you can put on a card, flyer, social media content or however you want to use this message to get people to come back to church after Christmas. The headline says:

Because he didn't stay a baby. . . we want to tell you the rest of the story.

Hopefully, you collected Connection Cards at your event--now is the time to respond to them with an invitation to return. At the end of this intro is a ZIP FILE with not only the ready-to-print PDFs of all the designs, but editable MS Publisher files, hi-res images and the MS Word text file of the content.

The card here can be used in several ways:

  1. You can send it out with reminders of the regular services offered at your church. If people attended a Christmas Eve event or special event for children, that doesn't mean they have any idea about what your church does regularly.
  2. You can direct people to websites both at your church and other places that explain the Christian faith in more detail and answer their questions.
  3. You can invite them to a seeker Bible study, latte with the pastor or any other event where they can interact and ask questions about the Christian faith.
  4. It can also be left as a gospel tract at restaurants or anywhere else you leave tracts.
  5. You can take the content or the entire image and share it on social media.

Text for the card:

During the holidays you heard that Jesus was the reason for the season. You heard stories, sang songs, and got Christmas cards—all about Him.

In the middle of all that, did you ever wonder, “What’s the big deal about Jesus?” What was there about this baby that split history in two and has the world celebrating his birth?

That’s a great question and we’d love to discuss it with you. On the back of this card are some opportunities to explore this question and we hope you'll check them out.

The additional designs illustrated below are all available in the ZIP file link below the article

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CLICK HERE to download the ZIP FILE, of all the communications shown here, SAVE to your desktop and CLICK to open.

 

BIG Collection of Christmas Communications PDFs and Templates ready-to-modify and use

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The video preview on this site shows a large  group of FREE Christmas PDF and Template that are ready for ECC Members to download, open and modify for your church. One of the most important benefits of ECC Membership is all this work is done for you and at very little cost. 

On this site are articles for specific Christmas communications, with more commentary about each one, but here is a collection of all the types: invitation cards, motivation flyers, Christmas evangelism, connection cards, bulletin inserts, follow-up materials.

I'm working on some new designs for this year, but many of these from previous years are quite nice and even if you used one of them, there are lots of others if you want to get a start on your church communications. The best thing about them is they are all designs you can print IN YOUR CHURCH OFFICE and that you can MODIFY however you want.

The ZIP files contain ready to print PDFs, editable MS Publisher Templates, and hi-res images. There are over 40 pieces of all kinds of Christmas communications: Bulletin Inserts, evangelism letters and brochures, invitation and business cards, postcards in quarter and half-page size and program covers.

The various kinds of communications are in coordinating designs so that invitations have matching connection cards, etc.

Following is a preview video of the designs and below that, just click on an image to download the ZIP FILE. If you are not an ECC Member. For more information on becoming a member of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE.

Preview of the communications that follow

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Don’t hide the real reason why you celebrate Christmas—communicate it!

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Don't forget Jesus is the reason for the season!
Be sure to tell people about Jesus at your Christmas event, don't simply entertain them.

From our archives a useful article as you do your Christmas planning:

Many churches consider the Christmas season a huge success if they have a large turn-out at Christmas events, but sadly, many of them remind me of the line from Macbeth where he describes life as "fully of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That may seem a bit harsh, but it is tragedy to celebrate the birth of the Savior without telling people about Him. Following is a true, but sad story about one such event  and how it could be different…..

Sad, but true story of a city-wide Christmas outreach

As in all the stories I tell on the Effective Church Communication website, this is a true story, but without details, location, people, or church mentioned. I also remind people who because I look at and am passed on stories about communications from churches literally from all around the world (one of our latest members and stories came from a Pastor leading a group of churches in the Australian bush), if you think the story is about you, it probably isn't.

Here is what happened: a church in a large city decided to host a Living Nativity for their community. They were given a large lot with a winding driveway leading up to it in a location near a busy shopping area. Because of generous donations by many members (it was a moderately large, well-off church) they put on an extravaganza. There was a huge turnout every night for the week it was held. And no wonder—they put on quite a show. They had live animals, a full size inn, angel choirs, and leading up the road, Roman soldiers and shepherds in the field. They had 3 shifts of actors in full costumes and make-up. They had cider and cookies for guests as they left.

What was the one thing they didn't have?

[Read more...]

Successful Christmas Outreach Strategy

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Christmas tree
For Christmas outreach to be successful take lots of work and prayer.

For many churches, their idea of successful Christian outreach means finding and buying the best looking, professionally done postcard and then paying lots for mailing lists and a large mailing.

It doesn’t matter how great your outreach marketing piece looks, how flawless the printing, how inspired your slogan, no one piece can carry the weight of assuring a good turnout for a Christmas event. Even if you do get a good turnout, that doesn't mean that the response of the people who attend will be anything more than appreciation for a good time.

This is not to say that these things don’t matter, because they may be steps towards a connection with your church and Jesus, but the key thing to remember if you want your Christmas outreach to be ultimately successful, is that it takes many actions by every part of your church and here are some suggestions:

1. First for leaders and decision-makers in the church, spend time in prayer asking God to impress on your heart the seriousness and the privilege of our opportunities this time of year. Remember, this might be your one opportunity to share the gospel of Jesus with visitors and relatives. The eternal destiny of people can be decided at your church this holiday season. [Read more...]