Effective Church Communications

We could all use good news now and here is the best news—all about salvation in Jesus

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Good news is found in Jesus
When so much of the world is filled with bad news, there is good news to be found in Jesus. Check it out and be encouraged!

Pandemic, crazy weather, racial injustice, and political turmoil—wherever we turn, bad news fills our world. There is one place the news is good—in the good news about Jesus. Many call this the gospel.

There are two reasons why it’s essential to explore the gospel now. First, for those of us familiar with the gospel, we do well to remember what great news that is, no matter what else is going on. And for those who aren’t familiar with it, this news has implications for you far beyond the hysterical headlines that currently fill your news feeds. The gospel is good news, the best news ever.

Why the gospel is GOOD NEWS

Good news. That is the dictionary definition of the term gospel. The question to answer next is, of course, “What is the good news?” or “Good news about what?”

The best answer to that question is in the Bible, where John 3:16 tells us that: “God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

The good news is that God didn’t sit up in heaven, watching humanity make a mess of their lives and their world. He did something about it with extraordinarily important implications for people both now and eternity. To explore the good news in more detail, let’s look at our situation and what God did for us.

Without God, making a mess of our lives is pretty much what we do.

It doesn’t take unique insight to know our world is a mess right now. But now, let’s look away from the world. [Read more...]

What is your church all about? Your communications tell the truth

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bounch house and summer challenges
Summer can be a great fun time, but is what you advertise what you are really about? Here are some things to consider.

What is your church about? Why do you do what you do?

Many churches would answer by pointing to either their church slogan or mission statement. Typically churches spend a tremendous amount of time and prayer coming up with these. Here are some random ones from the web:

Church Slogans:

  • We exist to reach the unchurched and grow the church
  • Reaching out to the World...Preaching to the Unsaved...Teaching the Saved to Serve
  • We strive to pattern our daily lives after the example of Jesus Christ and to lead all members of the body toward this goal
  • Committed to spreading the Gospel of God’s kingdom both here and abroad
  • To reach people in our city and in the unreached nations of the world with the life-giving message of Jesus that they might become fully devoted followers to Christ.

Church Mission Statements:

  • First Baptist Church is a fellowship of believers that purpose to know God through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, to equip believers through discipleship. Showing God's love, we strive to reach a hungry world with Jesus Christ through obedience to the Great Commission.
  •  To bring God's healing love to hurting people. To bring the joy of being a Christian to a sad world. To bring wisdom and knowledge to an unaware world. To bring good news to the poor. To bind up the broken-hearted. To set free the captives. To preach peace, as Jesus did.
  • To grow in faith and share our faith in God with the world around us. We will: Provide opportunities for service, outreach, and improvement in our community as well as in the global community of which we are a part. --Model the body of Christ in our inclusiveness of the gifts of all persons and in our relationships with one another as a covenant community, as well as in our daily living.

But what are you really about?

All of the slogans and statements above are inspiring and worthy of our Lord.

The challenge is what are you doing in your church this week to fulfill them?

I just finished looking at a church summer newsletter that was sent to me (I get sent lots of things from all over the world, so don't think it was from your church) and if I was going to tell you what the church was about from their summer newsletter I would think it was about:

  • Having fun with kids.
  • Summer activities for kids.
  • The senior pastor's vacation and what musical programs will fill in while he's gone.
  • Getting people to volunteer for summer programs and making them feel guilty if they don't.

Nothing evil or sinful and some nice things there, but this was a church with "Bible" in its name and there was nothing anywhere about where or when you could study the Bible, learn about the Bible, be in a group that studied the Bible or even what the upcoming sermon topics were going to be.

The challenge to all of us

What are we really about? If we say, as one of the mission statements above did that the church wants "to equip believers through discipleship" it won't happen automatically. To grow people to Christian maturity as disciples takes tremendous amounts of work, lots of pieces of communication, and lots of time. CLICK HERE to go to an article that describes the importance of discipleship in growing your church.

Regardless of what your stated slogans and missions of your church, take some time to check out if your communications and your actions honestly reflect them.

Resurrection Cookies, a Free recipe that will teach children and parents about Easter, and it’s something you can do at home now

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Res Cookie Bunny Verstion
Resurrection Cookies are a wonderful way to remind both children and parents of the real meaning of Easter--the Resurrection of Jesus. Plus it's a fun and yummy project!

For a great strategy to teach children about Easter, involve parents, and provide an outreach tool, NOTHING beats Resurrection Cookies.

When you make the cookies, you visually illustrate Jesus suffering, burial, death and resurrection. Because you are doing it with cookies, it is much less intimidating for people who don't go to church to be involved with it.

In other years you can do this with friends and neighbors. This year with everyone staying home it is a wonderful activity for a family.

Below are pictures of a variety of designs for the Recipe. To see larger images of the pages, click on the first image and a larger slide show will come up. The file below them has both PDFs and MS Publisher files for you to download.

Various designs for Resurrection Cookies:

To download the Resurrection Cookie File, click the following link: Church Bunny Resurrection Cookie Files

Later in this article is the text for the handouts, including the introduction, recipe, and Bible verses if you choose to create your own verses of the handouts or if you want to put the material on your website or in a church newsletter. You have my permission to use it freely. The text is the same for all of them—choose a style that suits you best or use the text below to create your own version. [Read more...]

Valentines for Church Communication Creators, what church leaders need to do

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Valentines Day, a reminder of God's love
Gifts are wonderful, but at Valentine's Day the most important thing is how we treat each other.

Valentines for Church Communication Creators, what church leaders need to do

(For pastors, church business administrators, church communication directors, and anyone else who oversees people who create church communications--this is addressed to you)

by Yvon Prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com

Valentine’s Day is a wonderfully Christian holiday in that it is all about love and loving is what Christians are to be about. We celebrate it by giving gifts, often flowers and candy, to those we care for—but flowers fade and candy adds on pounds. For those you in a leadership position, who want to show caring to the people in your communications ministry, whether paid staff or volunteers, below are Five Valentines you can give that will have lasting, positive results. Print this off and discuss it during a staff meeting for a Valentine's Day that is a real gift for growing our relationships with each other.

Gift #1—Give them authority

In church communications, the church leadership should decide on basic themes and messages and perhaps even the overall look of publications, but seldom on layout, or the final editing of articles or announcements. The people actually doing the creative work need the final authority in these areas. Have a meeting to discuss and clarify these issues and then publicly announce and print your decision. You might say something like this:

"Jenny Smith, our communications coordinator has final editing authority on the layout, deadlines and content of materials that go into the bulletin, newsletter, website and church social media (and whatever else you want to list). She has posted her guidelines and submission deadlines on our website. Please support her decisions and deadlines."

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Complete details in all church communications are essential for people to connect with church events

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The importance of each link
If only one link is broken, the entire chain fails. The connecting details in our church communications work the same way.

UPDATE editorial note: I've recently downloaded software that was attractively and appealingly advertised. Then I tried to use it and found that the creators apparently used all their energies in selling the software, but almost no time in the hard work of showing how to USE it. We can do the same if we have a splashy advertisement for a church event, but don't do the work to put in the connecting details that will get people to the event. This article from our archives will help you to avoid that mistake. We always must remember that our task is not to simply wow people with our witty, brilliant designs and catchy phrases about upcoming events, but to simply get them there so God can help them grow in their spiritual lives.

"He that is faithful is that which is least, is faithful also in much," (Luke 16:10), is a biblical principle we are all familiar with. It is also an important principle to remember in your church communications when you want people to respond to your church communication with concrete action. We don’t do church communications for people to think they look fantastic or to impress them with our technological prowess—we do them so lives and eternities will be changed. The details must be included for people to be able to respond.

If you don’t include the little details (time, date, location, duration, contact information) completely and consistently in every church communication you produce, the great design, writing, typography choices, and graphics will not mean anything. All of these design issues that many church communicators work so hard on, are virtually useless if you don’t have the details included that will actually connect people to the church events. This not to discount the importance of good design. Good design is important, but similar to James reminder that "faith without works is dead," so too, great-looking design is useless if it doesn't result in actions.

In the rest of this article I’ll talk about why we leave out church communication details and then I’ll give you a list of the details that are essential to include. PLEASE  take time to read/review this article for maximum results from the hard work you do in your church communications. Pass it on, make copies of it for your staff to discuss.

Why we leave out the details in our church communications

Our default mode when creating church communications is to leave out connecting details. We do this for a number of reasons and here are some of the most common reasons why we leave out essential details in church communications:

Over-familiarity

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