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.

25 years ago Gospel Light produced my first Desktop Publishing Training Video–I just found it and am sharing it

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How some things change and how others stay the same! Below are two training videos from around 3 hours of training in creating communications with the computer which was a very NEW thing when I did the videos. I recently found them and decided to share them because it amazes me how the need for BASIC Training in church communication skills and the inspiration and motivation for why we do it in the church continues to be needed.

Below are the two videos and below them are the descriptions I put on the YouTube site. I know they are lengthy, but I do think they will be well worth your time to watch.

YouTube descriptions and background of the videos

This video, How to Use Your Computer to Make Better Newsletters, Bulletins, and More was made 25 years ago but the basic design principles in it are still useful. The description that follows is the same for both PART ONE and PART TWO of the video.

I recently (August 2021) found a copy of this video set in my files and though there is some outdated content and I have no idea what I did to get my hair to look like it does in the video, the majority of the video content is extremely useful. In addition, basic skills training like what is presented here is very hard to find for church communicators.

For training, you can find lots on the latest social media channel you should be using. How to write in a way that reaches busy people, basic design principles for any media, how to manage and stay strong spiritually in this challenging work is much harder to find. All this and much more is in the two videos. [Read more...]

Effective WEBSITE strategy for Children’s Easter follow-up and a handout to go with it

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Children's Easter Return Card
CLICK on the image above to download the PDF. You can add specific information from your church on the back to help people return after Easter.

Many churches have special events at Easter for children. Many churches have an Easter Egg Hunt. One church in our city has a petting zoo every year. It's a fun event for kids and they serve snacks, play games, and get to interact with baby animals. Lots of unchurched people from the neighborhood surrounding the church attend.

The church doesn't do a petting zoo every Sunday. They don't serve special snacks each week to the kids and they don't have an Easter Egg Hunt each week. Also, the children's ministry doesn't even meet at the same time on a regular basis that they hold the special events for Easter.

Yet somehow, because of the petting zoo, and all the money and time spent on the goodies and the Easter Egg Hunt, the people in the children's ministry assume that the unchurched families in the area surrounding the church will come back to Sunday School the following Sunday because their kids had so much fun.

When they don't, the church staff is often disappointed, but they forget parents aren't mind readers. They have no idea what this church or any church does on a regular basis and no hint of why they should bother to get out of bed early Sunday morning to take their kids to some program they know nothing about.

A flyer like the one here is essential to give out at Easter. On the back you can invite families to your regularly scheduled children's ministry events. In addition to that, a clear link to your website can make a huge difference in ongoing response. Following are some ideas how this works.

How your website can help change this response

If you are a parent of young children, when you see an advertisement for a program for kids, a new game, a special food, anything advertised for kids, what is the first thing you do to check it out?

You will check out the website. On any commercial product or program of any kind, the website is always prominently displayed. That is the next step to find out about the product.

On the site it explains and illustrates the benefits of the product. It will answer questions, tell you where to get the product, and give you instructions on how to contact someone for more information if you have questions.

If this is the obvious that any commercial business does; why do we assume in the church that people will know all about what we offer kids on a weekly basis if we don't tell them? [Read more...]

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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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.