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.

Foundation of The Five Steps: Disciple-making

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The importance of discipleship for church growthWe all know we should obey Great Commission and that the Great Commission commands we make disciples, but beyond the personal  spiritual significance of that command, it’s easy to forget the practical power of disciple-making in church growth. Building disciples isn’t only what we are supposed to be doing, it’s how to grow people and churches.

Discipleship ministry at first appears to take excessive time to develop a few people when aggressive outreach marketing seems to reach many more people much faster. But first appearances can be deceiving as this article will show you.

It’s important to read this article before getting into the practical nuts and bolts of creating church communications. The purpose of The Five Steps is to fully fulfill the Great Commission and that means to make disciples. If discipleship is your goal, if fully fulfilling the Great Commission is the measure of success in your church communication process, you will approach your communication ministry much differently than if success is measured by how many people you get in the door on Sunday or how impressed visitors are with your website.

Why discipleship is essential for the church to survive —and why your communications are essential to develop disciples

Today we have aggressive atheists who are the darlings of the popular press. When men like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris slander and malign the Christian faith in a way that is not only false, but nasty and vicious, their mockery is quoted and promoted without question throughout the internet and across the globe.

Church leaders who are exposed to public scandal are reported in the in press and individuals Christians don’t fare much better. Studies frequently show Christians behave no differently than non-Christians in morality and that many people who call themselves Christian have little or no understanding of what the Bible says and how it teaches them to act (which is probably why their behavior is no different than that of their unbelieving friends).

I could bore you with reams of studies and statistics, but you know in the quietness of the your heart and the turmoil of your mind that the Christian church is losing ground, so let’s skip the statistics and get to solutions. [Read more...]

Why Marketing isn’t evil—or doesn’t need to be anyway

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As often happens, marketing is currently taking a bashing in some ministry magazines and blogs. Though I am one of the first people to decry the evils of untrue church marketing—in my mind epitomized by the commercial website headers of mostly white, all thin, happy folks—when few folks at the churches I know look anything like that—especially when you look at the church universal and the tragedy of hunger domestically and worldwide...but I digress.

As I was saying, though marketing can be used in untrue, unworthy of the gospel ways, to bash "marketing" with a broad brush as evil is like saying because Jim Jones of Jonestown massacre was a preacher that all preaching is evil.

Chapter Four: Effective Church Communication Marketing

Intro note: The following material is from the book, Ministry Marketing Made Easy, by Yvon Prehn.  A PDF of this material is available as a download, by CLICKING HERE and at the end of the article. You have permission to make as many copies as you need for your staff, congregation, or volunteers.

Some church people are genuinely concerned about marketing and wonder about the appropriateness of marketing in the church. This is a valid concern and an important one to address. This chapter presents a biblical view of respectful marketing and provides biblical and practical examples of appropriate uses of marketing in the church.

I strongly recommend you take time to go over this chapter as a staff and with the leadership of your church. If you don't and people in your church have concerns that are not answered, you can be certain they will come out and often, not in pleasant ways.

You want everyone (as much as is possible) in the church to be of one heart in your communication and marketing efforts. Yes, it takes time to explain why you are doing what you are doing, but the oneness of heart that should be the result is worth it.

Marketing misconceptions defined and defused [Read more...]