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.

Little details are the most important part of your communications

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PDF of an article on the importance of the little details in your church communications
PDF of an article on the importance of the little details in your church communications

The little things are the most important part of your communications because they are the links that actually connect people with the events and ministries of your church.

They are also the most boring, tedious, and difficult parts to include in a communication piece whether it is on paper or online. We'd much rather work on fun illustrations or polishing our catchy marketing slogans or brilliant headlines. As important as these parts of communication creation are, you can have the most brilliant headline and the most appealing images ever, but if people don't know when something starts, how to get there, and if child care is provided—chances are they won't show up.

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And don't expect anybody today to "call the church office for more information." Folks don't take the time to do it and even if they do after being shuttled around through voice mail, they may leave not thinking nice things about the church and certainly not planning to come to an event that might have changed their eternity.

Include the little details in your communications, it can have an impact well worth the hard work it takes to get the details gathered up and put into your communications.

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

Also look at the article and PDF on REPORTER FORMS. It will give you a practical way to collect all the information you need.

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.

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.

Easter return bulletin insert converted to JPG for additional usefulness

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Easter Questions flyer in Jpg format
This image has been converted to a resizable jpg for you to be able to copy and use in your Easter communications.

This website exists to serve you and though I can't answer every request, when you need something in a format that would be useful to you in your ministry, send me an email and let me know.

A kind request from a church communicator was the inspiration for this project. The situation that she described to me was that her church did not allow the use of bulletin inserts and she wanted to know if she could have the file in a format where she could use it without having to recreate it.

In addition, since she had to put the entire piece into the bulletin with only one side showing of course she could not print the "back " material, the website listing there. I did not give the text for that in the other article about this insert. That oversight has been corrected and the text for the back of this insert with the websites listed is in an updated version of the complete article about this insert.

I worked on redoing the insert, sent it to her and it worked!

So I am sharing it with all of you. I will be doing more of these in the future in addition to the downloable PDFs I currently do......of course in the future, these will be for members primarily.

The image here is a jpg, resizeable graphic. Just click on it and when you go to the page with only it on it, copy it and paste it into whatever you want. Download the PDF to the right and it will illustrate the various ways you can use the image.

A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.
A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.use theimage.

You can resize it for a newsletter, handout or your bulletin.

Click on the image at the left to download it; click on the image on the right to download the sheet showing how you can crop and use it.

Don’t just change the music! or why you might need different bulletins for different services as well

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A "seeker-friendly service" involves more than a praise band and upbeat singing. If you really want to reach a variety of people, you may need to change more than the music. Your worship guide or church bulletin may also need some changes.

In recent years many churches have realized that not everyone likes the same sort of music when they worship God. After fussing and fighting for a number of years it seems like churches realize that they don't need to totally change the style of music for the entire church. A much more peaceful and positive response in many churches has been to have different styles of music and worship at various times on Sunday mornings and Saturday night.

In addition to changing the music, if churches are serious about communicating to specific audiences within their churches, the style of communications given to them needs to change also. Many of the announcements and basic messages can be the same, but some modification in design, typeface, illustration style, and some of the content can make a world of difference in communicating effectively  to your specific audience.

If you use the same bulletin for everyone, it would be like expecting everybody to get their news from the Wall Street Journal. Some folks prefer the Journal, but others read USA TODAY and others prefer televised news on CNN or social media. The same news is reported each day, but it's modified to the tastes of each audience. The core of your message and the truth of the gospel remain the same but you might want to modify your presentation in terms of your communication styles.

How this might work out in practice

Let's use as an example a church of about 1200, that has a new pastor with a desire to reach his community for Christ. The church has three services, each of which is designed to appeal to a specific group of people. Below are some possible suggestions for church communications for three different kinds of services. First I'll describe the services, the target audience for each one, and then some suggestions for how you might modify the worship guide or bulletin for each one.

The church services:

The 8:00 service is very traditional, designed for folks who have been coming to the church for many years. The service is the one the majority of the senior adults attend.

The 11:00 service is the contemporary service. The worship leader is part of a contemporary Christian rock group and the music includes a drummer, keyboard, guitars and piano where the worship leaders sits and sings. The motto for this service is:  the 11th Hour: it's never too late for truth, god and rock and roll.

Yes, the word, "God" is in lower case-that alone offends some of the folks from 8 am, but seems normal to an age group where many music covers have all the words in lower case type and text messaging is all done in lowercase.

The 9:30 service not only meets at an in-between time, but the format of the service is a mixture of traditional and contemporary. It's the service attended primarily by families.

Suggestions for the Bulletin or Worship Guide for each service

8:00: a traditional service needs a traditional bulletin.

Whatever your church has been doing in the past is probably primarily what you'll want to do for these folks. When a church is making lots of other changes in services, times, and music there is no need to change the traditional bulletin just for the sake of making changes.

Some possible modifications:

-Consider using larger type that is easier to read for an audience primarily made up of seniors. 12 point would be the smallest you'd want to use and you might even try 13 or 14 points. A little extra leading (the space between lines) makes text easier to read also.

- A serif typeface, (something like New Times Roman or Cambria) is more traditional in look and will probably be preferred by this audience.

-Don't use too many typefaces or a variety of wild and crazy typefaces for this group.

-Section of prayer requests can be more detailed and is often expected by these people who are often the prayer warriors of the church.

11:00 a contemporary service needs a contemporary bulletin

If the person doing the traditional bulletin doesn't like contemporary, Christian rock music, they may not be the best person to design this bulletin-it helps to love the life-style or at least appreciate it to create publications for it.  The inspiration for this bulletin would come from online music covers, publications that appeal to that audience, television channels such as MTV, and the graphic style it uses.

Some possible modifications:

-There are two overall options you could consider for this group. One would be a very colorful look or the other option would be a totally black and white look.

-For either one use lots of images and less words.

-Make the church websites or sections of the web site ea for more information and make the website, Facebook, Twitter or other social networking connections printed on the bulletin.

-Use contemporary typefaces for the majority of the publication. Clean, sans serif faces such as Ariel, Eras, Franklin Gothic (actually any of the "Gothic" styles would work well) or Verdana could work well. Combinations of the regular type with bold have a contemporary look. Many contemporary publications use type at smaller sizes, 9 or 10 points with lots of leading (space between the letters).

-For some groups or advertisements, try the grunge typefaces. These are the typefaces that look like the letters are broken.

-Don't use funky, old-fashioned clip art here. Either use something contemporary like Art Parts, or leave it off altogether. Photographs , especially just a few used more as graphic illustrations can work well with this kind of design.

9:30 a family-oriented service needs a family bulletin

This bulletin or worship guide would probably have lots more information than the others. It's important to remember that the bulletin for this group is key to involving them in additional activities for the church. Also, what you put in this bulletin will let families know how you feel about children at your church.

Some possible modifications:

-In addition to the worship guide or bulletin itself, consider producing a children's bulletin in addition to the one for adults. A fun sheet with Bible games, a place to doodle and perhaps a short lesson, plus a pencil to write with can be a great gift to parents as they come in with their children.

-Be sure to give complete details on all the programs in the church for families.

-For special events, create bulletin inserts designed to be posted on the refrigerator. Many churches now call these mini-billboards, Refrigerator Reminders, because they know for a busy family, if it is on the refrigerator, the family will remember to attend. If the event is just part of a list in a bulletin, it will probably stay in the Bible til next week and the event will be missed.

-For typefaces, Bookman is the classic typeface for children's materials (that's the one the Dick and Jane books were set in), Century is a very easy to read typeface for adults and kids. Comic Sans is a fun face for special events advertisements for kids. A variety of typefaces for different sections or advertisements can work well for this group.

-This would be the bulletin for fun clipart and graphics. Colorful, family oriented pictures of people on the cover would also work well for this group.

There are so many ways you can modify your publications to better serve the various groups you are trying to reach. The above ideas hopefully will serve as inspiration starting points. To figure out what will work for you, observe who attends what service. If possible spend a little time finding out what publications they like to read. Look at them and design your publications in the same style.

Possibly a time to develop a communication team

Yes, it is a lot of work to do different bulletins for each group. This might be an opportunity to recruit and develop a communication team. The members could be volunteers who would take the basic church information and adapt it for each group. From working on the bulletin, the team members might expand to helping create other communications for each group.

If you take the time to do these modifications, it will be one way to illustrate to your people a picture of our caring Lord, who loves each of us individually and who has an individual plan for every life.