Effective Church Communications

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators. 

The Effective Church Communication ministry from Yvon Prehn provides inspiration, training, and resources to help your church create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission. It focuses on Bible-based and timeless principles and strategies that work no matter what digital or print channel you use to create your communications. The site has links to many free TEMPLATES and other resources, plus links to free TRAINING VIDEOS, and a RESOURCE LIBRARY for church communicators.

Outreach Church Bulletin inserts, an idea you can use all year around

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Church Bulletin inserts can be great outreach tools
Church Bulletin inserts can be great outreach tools--check out the 5 minute video here to see how!

Churches go all out at Easter in outreach and in inviting people back to church after Easter. Though it's wonderful to do this at Easter, outreach needs to be a priority always. Obeying the Great Commission isn't only for special events. Bulletin inserts can intentionally give people information that tells them about the church and gives them a reason to come back. The inserts can highlight programs and upcoming events that might interest visitors.

The short video here shows two samples of real church bulletin inserts that were used at Easter to do this but that could be easily adapted to any Sunday. They were sent in by ECC Members. PLEASE send us any samples you have with permission for us to use them. We all learn best from the experiences of each other. If you have some you'd like to share, please check out our Great IDEA SWAP!

Update note: though the basic flyers are great, Microsoft no longer lets you access clipart (bummer, some of us still like it), but you could find the clip art on other sites and put it in.
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Bulletin Inserts: Back-to-School Backpack Ministry, ways to involve your congregation

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Backpack Image 1
Back-to-school, Backpack Ministries are a fantastic way to care for the children of your community. This article and the one linked to it provide ideas for church bulletin inserts that will communicate your message to the congregation.

Back to School was always a wonderful time of year for me, but for many kids it can be a time of sadness if they don't have what they need. This is a simple, but very powerful ministry your church can do. Below is the introduction to the church bulletins:

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

School is about to start and it’s a time of excitement, fun, and discovery for many children. But for some children, it means showing up at school without crayons or pencils, notebooks or glue, without the supplies they need. Sadly today, many parents can’t pay for them and schools are unable to provide them.

But the body of Christ can. Our church has a ministry where we provide filled backpacks to little kids who need them.

We have four ways you can help:
......and the inserts go on to give specific advice

Last year's bulletin inserts are free CLICK HERE to go to them.

For a personal article on the meaning of this ministry to me, CLICK HERE.

This year, samples for inspiration, editable files for ECC MEMBERS

The samples on this page are new versions of the Bulletin Inserts. At the bottom of this page is a link to a ZIP FILE.

The ZIP FILE contains:

  • PDF ready-to-print files of the inserts
  • MS Publisher editable files
  • MS Word text file if you want to create your own
  • PNG low-res images if you want to promote them on your website
  • JPG hi-res images if you want to print them

Below is the ZIP FILE , now free for everyone, while we are getting ready to redo the site--simply click on it, save on your hard drive, click to open and use as you will!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE ZIP FILE

Last year's bulletin inserts are free CLICK HERE to go to them.

For a personal article on the meaning of this ministry to me, CLICK HERE.

For the bulletin inserts in the video on Sales Tips for Children's Shoe Box, CLICK HERE.

Webinar: Why your church needs to create Multi-channel Communications, or why you can’t just put your church bulletin on the web and be done with it

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What is the best communication channel for your church to reach people  today? Do you put everything, including your church bulletin, on your website and quit? Or is social media the answer to all your needs? Is print outdated or is it essential? Given that churches have limited time, money, and resources, how can we know we are using all of them in the best ways possible?

This webinar may surprise you with some of the proposed answers, especially with what it has to say about the continuing importance of a printed church bulletin. The webinar would be an excellent one to show during a staff meeting and to discuss following the viewing.

Below the video is a PDF of handouts for the webinar and these are for Effective Church Communication Members only. For ECC Members there is also a link to the ebook: Are Written Bulletins Still Needed in the Church?

Here are the handouts that go with the video.   Print them up ahead of time, so people can take notes.Church Handouts Mulit channel

Just click on the image and the PDF will open on your screen for you to print.

 

 

 

 

 

The ebook, Are written bulletins still needed in the church?, is also free for Effective Church Communication Members. CLICK HERE to go to it.

Mother’s Day church bulletin inserts or jpgs for evangelism follow-up

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When unchurched family members come to your church you don't want them to leave without something that directs them to further research of the gospel and what it means to have a relationship with Jesus.

This bulletin insert was created to give them something to take home and using the websites on it, it gives people an opportunity to explore on their own.

PLEASE NOTE: this free sample is NOT a PDF like the other free samples publications  in this series of communications for Mother's Day. It is a jpg file--a graphic file that you can use as is or resize to fit into another publication. Click on the image to download it, when it opens in the other window you can either save it or copy and paste it into a publication like MS Publisher.

If you would like to see  an example of how a church communicator used an image like this in her church bulletin for Easter, click here.

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This Mothers day bulletin insert Version #2is the second bulletin insert.

The Download section has both images, plus the MS Publisher files and PDFs of both that are ready to print and use. It has:

  • All four Mother's Day Bulletin inserts (there are actually two versions of each one)
  • MS Publisher Original files (you must have MS Publisher to use this file)
  • PDF Files
  • Resizable jpg files

CLICK HERE to download the  ZIP file all the materials above

After you download the file, SAVE it to your computer, then click on it to "unzip" it and the files are ready for you to use.