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.

A Christmas bait and switch, sad but true

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Jesus freely gave to us at Christmas, and we should follow his example in our Christmas outreach.
Jesus freely gave to us at Christmas, and we should follow his example in our Christmas outreach.

True story here. A big advertisement on a church website (full color, fancy splashy boxed ad) read: Welcome the Christmas Season with the Messiah. A Christmas Concert and a Christmas Sing-a-long.

A believer who lost a long-term job, who had scrounged enough part-time work to barely pay basic bills and buy minimum food for his family, was wondering how to get through the Christmas season without allowing sadness to overwhelm him. He loved music, loved to sing, though had no time with work demands to sing in a choir. He saw the advertisement about the Messiah and a bit of joy bubbled up as he thought, "This is something I can take my wife and kids to."  In his heart, he blessed the church for providing this opportunity. He clicked on the link to find out more.

The link led to the information page where he found the church was charging $10 a person for tickets. His children were too old for the free ones. In addition, if you did not have your own song sheet for the sing-a-long, the advertisement informed you that you would need to buy a score sheet of the music and that would be an extra $10.

A very quick calculation told him that the total cost of that evening would be more than his family had budgeted for groceries for the week. He closed the computer, thankful that he hadn't shared his initial excitement with his wife or family

His situation is not unique

There are  many brothers and sisters in Jesus who are out every week looking for work and being turned away. There are families who don't know what they will do to feed their families decently in the coming week, let alone how to provide any sort of Christmas celebration. The church could have chosen to give a free concert for anyone in the community. It is a very rich church, one of the largest in the community. But far worse than the selfishness of charging  is what they did in the bait and switch of their advertising.

The church may not have thought of their advertising as bait and switch, but it was

[Read more...]

SIX TIPS to chose paper wisely for the greatest church communication impact

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Paper choices for church communications
It's easy to get buried with paper choices for your church communications, but this article will help you choose what is most effective.

As we go into the holiday season, many churches are tempted to use colored papers to print brochures, flyers, newsletters and other materials. Lots of orange, brown, green and red paper will be used and though these colors might be appropriate to the season, they may not be the best to get across your message and help people show up to your events. Following are SIX TIPS on paper choice for the holiday season and year round to make for more effective church communications.

#1 Remember Readability

The most important aspect of the paper you use is how well it contributes to the readability of your newsletter or other communication. If people can't read your message nothing else really matters.

People don’t judge a holiday communication based on how fancy the paper is, what color it is or if it is slick or not. What matters is how easy is it to read. If a publication is difficult to read, today’s busy, stressed out readers will simply put it aside and won’t read it.

With these comments in mind, let's look in more detail on:

  • Paper opacity
  • Paper color
  • Publication reproduction method

[Read more...]

Clear communications help you create volunteer recruitment and retention

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volunteer instructions
Clear recruitment and training communications make volunteer recruitment much easier.

Ed. note: last week I shared some samples of volunteer communications and this week an article I have an article for you that will help you write effective volunteer recruitment materials.

When it comes to recruiting volunteers, many churches operate on what I call the 20/80 fallacy. We’ve all heard that “20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work.” That is true in many churches, but I call it a fallacy because it does not need to be that way. We forget that statement is merely a business observation—it is not scripture.

The Bible tells us that in the church of  Jesus Christ, we are to have 100 percent involvement. We may be involved in different ways, but everyone has a job to do.

When we believe the 20/80 fallacy, the result is that the leaders of the church do all the work (and often complain about it) and the congregations sit back, watch, and expect to be cared for and entertained. The biblical models of church growth do not support this situation. In the church the leaders job is to “equip the saints to do the work of the ministry” Eph 4:11-13. Leaders are to equip and encourage. Congregations are to practice their spiritual gifts and do the work of the church.

This process will not happen automatically. We can help turn the biblical model into reality in our churches by creating clear and complete volunteer communications. Your church communications can play a vital role in the success of your volunteer programs. Here are some helpful tips on how to create successful ministry volunteer communications:

Volunteer publication planning

1. Make a list of all the jobs you’d like to have filled by volunteers at the church.

2. Don’t assume anything as you prepare to write this publication! You may know what it means to be an usher because you’ve been one for 10 years, but a new believer who might want to try welcoming people to the church may not have any idea what is involved.

3. Ask those in charge of  the jobs to fill out a form that has the following information. It is very important that information be complete and clearly written:  Job title, e.g. Sunday School Teacher, Youth Volunteer, etc. Don’t use church jargon titles that potential volunteers might not understand. For example, write something like “Grade School Age Sunday School Teacher”, not  “Promiseland servant/helper.” [Read more...]

Effective Volunteer Recruitment Communications Samples: advice and PDF examples

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Ideas for volunteer ministry
Some churches do an incredible job of recruiting, encouraging and training volunteers and here is an opportunity to learn from them.

Every church needs a committed and enthusiastic team of volunteers if all the ministries and needs of the church are to work as a healthy representative of the Body of Christ.Recruiting that team, training, and keeping them functioning well are some of the major responsibilities of church communicators. Following is some overall advice and then some excellent PDF samples (click on the image for the full PDF download) of volunteer communications. The samples include a fantastic overall volunteer handbook, two volunteer recruitment and job listing booklets and one of the most complete ministry description brochures I've ever seen for church ushers. This is an extremely useful collection of volunteer equipping sample materials.

Advice for creating effective volunteer communication materials

Unfortunately, creating the communications support to keep these ministries functioning well is usually not at the top of any church communicator's list. It isn't nearly as much fun as doing a flyer for the summer picnic or any other primarily design-oriented piece because for volunteer communications to be truly effective requires: [Read more...]