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.

Planning, Measuring, Evaluating Church Communications, links to articles, tips, training videos

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Nothing is worse than working incredibly hard on something and to later find out your efforts accomplished little. All of you who work in church communications, work very hard at what you do and you want to make certain your hard work results in eternal life changes. To help you do that, the following resources will help you plan, measure, and evaluate your work.

Over 2,500 years ago, Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." I would propose that an unexamined church communications program isn't worth all the hard work you put into it.

Measure and evaluate your work so that it won't be in vain, but will accomplish all it can to bring people to Jesus and to help them grow to Christian maturity in Him.

Plan, Measure, Evaluate your Church Communications

Following is a list of links, click on the title to go to each one. These materials are useful for you personal learning, but to make a difference in your church, they should be shared with and discussed by your church staff.

For Effective Church Communications Members, (CLICK HERE for Membership Info) keep in mind that your membership is for your entire church--your one username and password can be shared with staff and volunteers. You have permission to print out ebooks (both free downloads and purchased ones) and to make as many copies as you want.

Planning Book Cover
We all want to be good stewards of our communications money and ministry. This book will help you do that.

Foundational Book, essential reading for effective church communication

Newly revised and updated Book: Church Communications Planning, Measuring, Evaluating done a new way—big is busted, try tiny!
Essential book for church communication leadership. This link provides access  to both an immediate download and to amazon.com paperback version

Articles: the following articles are useful for staff discussion

Print copies, share and as a group, look at what you are doing and how you can evaluate your work. For this to work effectively, you must have pastors, business, admins, and church communication creators involved. One person evaluating church communications alone can turn into a private complaining session--the church staff taking some time to look at it together can make significant changes.

Article: Don’t only master church communication technology—measure results

Article: Why you shouldn’t plan too far ahead in church communications

Article: The disappointing results when you jump into church communications production without planning and how to change them to positive ones

Article: Measure success correctly—or why a big turnout doesn’t necessarily mean a successful event

TEMPLATES:  either print off the PDF or modify MS Publisher files

TEMPLATE: Church Communication and Technology Survey

TEMPLATES: editable church communication planning and evaluation forms, plus PDFs

VIDEOS: nothing helps more than a training video to show how and why planning and evaluation is important.

The following videos are normally for Effective Church Communication Members. However, for our newsletter and Facebook page friends, we are making (LIKE US here if you haven't as yet--and get special Facebook UPDATES)

For ECC MEMBERSHIP information, CLICK HERE. These four videos will give you both excellent theoretical reasons to do church planning, measuring and evaluating, but they will also give you the practical resources you need to carry out a successful church planning, measuring and evaluating program. All of the videos come with a PDF of the notes that go with the video. This makes them useful for Lunch & Learns, staff and volunteer training. You need to get access to them through this website.

VIDEO: How to plan, measure, and evaluate church communication effectiveness

When you have advertised a church need, such as when you want volunteers to help with a ministry in the church, if you don't get the response you want, how do you respond?

Many churches respond by assuming that: 1) by simply doing the PR they communicated the need and that people will respond; 2) that if people did not respond that the church needs to improve the way the message was presented, e.g. be more cutting-edge, catchy, or interesting; or 3) that people simply don't care about others or helping the church these days.

As this video will show you none of these assumptions are correct and through careful planning and evaluation of your church communications you can make a huge difference in how people will respond to your church communications.

This is an extremely important video for your church staff to watch as a group—it is guaranteed to bring up some lively discussion that should result in a more effective communication program for your church.

VIDEO: How to create and use church communication surveys, how to decide what really works

Because we all tend to communicate in ways that are most comfortable to us and because, as church leaders, we make decisions for people, in this time of changing communications, we may be totally missing out on what the types of communications our audience needs for them to hear the gospel message or our challenges to discipleship growth.

How do your various audiences take in your messages? What communication channels do they access the most?

Most of us if we are honest really don't know. This is where a survey can be extremely helpful. This webinar/video will show you how to do one for your church.

One bit of advice--before you do the survey, pray that the Lord will make your heart open to make changes whatever the results might be. Nothing hurts your credibility more than asking people for their opinion and then ignoring it totally when they give it to you.

This VIDEO has two BONUS features for ECC MEMBERS: a ZIP file that contains the original PowerPoint File, as well as an editable MS Publisher file of the church Survey Form.

VIDEO: Church Communication FORMS: to help you plan, measure, and evaluate communication effectiveness

This video goes over a set of forms that will help you be more effective in your church communication ministry. It shows you step-by-step how to use them and explains why they are useful for ministry.

Many problems in church communications planning and management can be solved if the church uses forms because forms take opinions about communications and helps you effectively evaluate the validity of your opinions.

For example, if someone says: "The web is the best way to advertise!" and another person on staff responds, "No, nothing beats bulletin inserts and postcards!" the use of forms puts this discussion into an objective evaluation of what works best.

VIDEO: How to create online polls with Poll Daddy, Webinar On-Demand

Online Polls are a useful and fun addition to any website. This video shows you how to create them quickly and easily using the free Poll Daddy software. Poll Daddy Software is free and it allows you to create a variety of polls and surveys.

 

Don’t only master church communication technology—measure results

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How did your church do this last year in church technology? Did you finally get involved in new social media beyond Facebook and Twitter? Did you make your website smartphone and tablet-friendly? Did you create an app for your church? Did you move back-up files to the cloud? Though these accomplishments might count for bragging rights at church geek gatherings, there a more critical question for Christian geeks, techs and communicators and that is:

How did your church communication technology help your church fully fulfill the Great Commission?

Though we all love technology, the foundation for all we do in tech, communications and life is found in Jesus command to us:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matt. 28:18-20.

Our Great Commission, the command to share the good news of salvation in Jesus alone with others and to help them become mature disciples is what it means to fully fulfill the Great Commission. This is not only the North Star and measure of success in our Christian lives; it should be our measure for success in everything we do in our church technology and communication ministry.

Just because you love Jesus and want to serve Him, don't automatically assume that your hard work in technology, especially in the church communications area, which is vital to the spiritual success of any church, is contributing to fully fulfilling the Great Commission. Though it isn't always easy to measure precise spiritual growth, we can measure whether our audience is accessing the communications we create with the intention of  helping them come to know Jesus and grow to discipleship maturity. To begin to measure our spiritual effectiveness, a good place to start is to measure how much people access our communications. However. . . .

Humans are notorious in our ability to deceive ourselves

We do this all the time. "Donuts aren't really fattening on Sunday—this is the only time I eat them and besides, they are in pieces and everyone knows that the calories drain out in cut-up donuts." is one of my favorite self-deceptions. This is closely followed by, "A big meal after church and/or on Sunday night is OK because I'm doing it for fellowship in ministry."

Another one that is easy in church communications and technology is: "We've just finished redoing the website and people will love it and access it a lot." A close one to this is: "Facebook and Twitter and oh my, my Google Circles really keep our church connected." Or "Our videos are greatest -- people are looking for humor when they want to find a church--and they are smart phone accessible!"

Honest measurements help keep us honest

I may love my Sunday donuts and overeating in the name of ministry, but I am also attempting to lose weight and when Monday comes around, there is one infallible way to test my Sunday food assumptions: I step on the scale.

If we want to be honest in how well our technology preferences result in real ministry impact in the lives of church members and the people outside the church, we need a scale to decide whether our assumptions are true or not. One scale that is useful is to take a Technology and Communication Survey of your congregation. Following is one you could use. At the end of this article is a link to a ready-to-print PDF of it and other resources on Church Communications Planning.  Using the survey is like stepping on the scales--it can give a useful shot of reality in how impressed your audience is with your communications, how often they use them and if they are helping them grow in their faith.

 You want an honest measure and to help you get that, the following two guidelines are very important:

  1. The ONLY way you will get enough answers for it to matter is for you to hand it out on Sunday morning (yes, gasp), have people immediately fill it out (it will take no more than 5 minutes) and immediately turn it in.
  2. It has to be totally anonymous.

If you don't do BOTH of these, don't bother—you won't have a true representation of your church and/or it won't be an honest response.

Formatting note for the sample survey below-- the PDF and editable MS Publisher file of this survey has boxes where the bullets are.

Church Technology and Communication Survey

What technology do you have to receive messages from the church? Check all you have; put a star by the ones you use frequently.

  • Computer at home
  • Computer at work
  • Computer at school
  • Laptop
  • Mobile phone
  • Smart phone
  • Tablet computer

Which of these channels do you regularly access for church information or teaching? Check the box.

***Please a star by the channel or channels YOU PREFER to get your information from.***

  • Church Email newsletter
  • Church Website
  • Sermons online/podcasts
  • Church or pastor's blog
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google Circles
  • Printed Church Bulletin
  • Printed Church Newsletter
  • Others (please put in any other communication channels you use here)

Three additional questions, please be honest in your answers:

How well informed are you about church events? How can we do better?

Do the church communications encourage you in your Christian life, help you grow as a Christian, and teach you to share your faith? How can we do better?

Anything you'd like to ask or tell us about the technology or communication ministry of the church? Overall, how can we serve you better in technology or communications?

What this will help you learn

A survey like this will put your excitement about what you are sharing on the scales of reality and will help you answer and analyze some of these questions:

How many people in your congregation have the technology to receive what you create?

It is easy to forget that not everyone has the same tech tools you have. For example, creating videos for mobile phone access and QR codes might not be time-justified if very few people have phones that can access them.

In my own experience in a church that has been hard hit by the recession, I know several pastors and leaders with iPhones and Blackberries, but the congregation members who are out of work or underemployed and who are concerned with their ability to pay for one phone line of any kind greatly out-number them. But that's my church—yours might be completely different. You won't know unless you survey them.

How often do people in your congregation access the church information in the channels you send out?

This is important for you to know how often you need to update your material—but this also needs to be paired with the additional comments people make because your responses may be a little circular in results. What this means is that if you frequently update your website and social media, people will probably access them often. If people don't access them or if they are not starred as something they access frequently, even though you may update them often, it may say more about  the quality of your information.

If you update things often and your people don't access them, take some time for one-on-one conversations and in a nonthreatening way try to find out why they don't.

What is your congregation's preferred method of receiving information from you?

It's great if the way they want to hear from you is what you are doing. If not, it may be they don't know how to use the channel or they don't understand why it is valuable to them. If that is the situation, you may want to do a demonstration on "How to use our Facebook page" or "How to receive Twitter updates from the church" or "What our church website has for you."  After you do some training in these areas, track to see if it makes a difference in who is accessing these areas. One great thing about websites and social media is that we get statistics on access, which is one more way of stepping on the scale for a reality check. You may think you have the most clever and interesting twitter feed ever, or the most clever church Facebook page, but if your stats are flat or declining, your congregation may not be as impressed as you are.

Beyond the channel, evaluate the content

The questions following the check boxes on the survey above, specifically:

Do the church communications encourage you in your Christian life, help you grow as a Christian, and teach you to share your faith? How can we do better?

are one of the most important parts of the survey because people don't go to a church website for fun or entertainment value. They go there looking for help in their spiritual lives.

That help is most often expressed by a simple desire to find out, for example, what small groups are available and when they meet, or what the pastor is like as a person as revealed from his or her blog, how to become a Christian, or how to grow in your Christian life. If your website  or other social media don't have significant, useful content, it doesn't matter how many images scroll on your home page or how fancy are your images.

Fancy moving images are everywhere on the web.

Significant, eternity changing content is hard to find. No matter what channel you use or how technically advanced it is, if the content is challenging, useful, uplifting and spiritually helpful, your people will access it. If it is just a pretty shell, they'll bypass it.

Make your content worthy of the Lord and reflective of Him. Use your content to help people come to know Jesus and grow in their faith and not matter what channel you use, your people will access it.

Don't lose track of your North Star

Technology has its challenges and it can be great fun to learn new technologies and to create new communication systems. But we must never lose sight of the people we are creating the communications for. We must always make sure that we are serving them and in doing that fully fulfilling the Great Commission given to us by our Lord.

_____________________________________

 CLICK HERE To go to the PDF of the survey, an editable MS Publisher file of it and a png image (so you can use it on a PowerPoint to tell your congregation what you want them to do).

 

 

 

 

 

Why you shouldn’t plan too far ahead in church communications

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Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so cautiously.
Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so with wisdom and prayer.

At the start of the year, it's natural to want to do some planning, but planning can be both a positive and a negative thing. It's always challenging as I was reminded when several churches have asked how to create a communication plan for the next five to seven years. Each of them has mentioned that new technology can be costly and they want to be prepared, in their budgeting and for training. Though I admire their desire to be good stewards, planning ahead for five years in church communications, especially when it involves trying to figure out technology needs, is futile.

Could you have envisioned your communication world today five years ago?

Think about it. Five years ago, could you:

  • Have  imagined or planned for the iPhone and iPad?
  • Known texting would be a major way your youth group would communicate and your youth pastor would need a high-end mobile phone?
  • Have known that skill with Facebook  would be useful, if not essential, when you hire a church secretary?
  • Imagined that Tweeting would be a skill your senior Pastor might want to learn? Even known the meaning of Tweeting or that social media in any form would be able to overturn governments and raise millions for charity? [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...]

Planning Overview: articles, videos, templates for Effective Church Communication Planning, Measuring, Evaluating

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In many churches communications are done because “we’ve always done it that way” or as a response to a pressing need for PR to advertise a church event or recruit helpers for a ministry. Though something gets done and it sometimes gets a response, this approach is not the best way to make your church communications support and further the mission and vision of the church.  An unplanned approach to church communications is also usually not a wise use of financial or people resources.

This series of video training, articles, print resources and templates will equip and enable your to do all the planning, measuring and evaluating that your church needs. Some free for everyone and some of the books are for sale in either download or print versions.

Membership in Effective Church Communications is $9.99 a month or $99. a year for any size church. CLICK HERE for more information or to sign up. With membership you get the free book on Planning, Measuring and Evaluating, plus 30 other useful ebooks on effective church communications.

Click on any of the titles to go to that piece of training.

PDF overview articles on Church Communication Planning

These articles that are free for everyone. I highly recommend you print these off and use them for discussion at your next staff meeting. It's so easy to not plan and rush to produce communications, but without planning, you probably won't get the results you want. On the other hand. . . . we need to be careful not to over plan, as the second article advises.

Article: The disappointing results when you jump into church communications production without planning and how to change them to positive ones

Article: Don’t plan too far ahead in church communications

The following videos illustrate the process of planning and evaluation

These four videos will give you both excellent theoretical reasons to do church planning, measuring and evaluating, but they will also give you the practical resources you need to carry out a successful church planning, measuring and evaluating program. All of the videos come with a PDF of the notes that go with the video. This makes them useful for Lunch & Learns, staff and volunteer training. You need to access them through this website.

VIDEO: How to plan, measure, and evaluate church communication effectiveness

When you have advertised a church need, such as when you want volunteers to help with a ministry in the church, if you don't get the response you want, how do you respond?

Many churches respond by assuming that: 1) by simply doing the PR they communicated the need and that people will respond; 2) that if people did not respond that the church needs to improve the way the message was presented, e.g. be more cutting-edge, catchy, or interesting; or 3) that people simply don't care about others or helping the church these days.

As this video will show you none of these assumptions are correct and through careful planning and evaluation of your church communications you can make a huge difference in how people will respond to your church communications.

This is an extremely important video for your church staff to watch as a group—it is guaranteed to bring up some lively discussion that should result in a more effective communication program for your church.

VIDEO: Church Communication FORMS: to help you plan, measure, and evaluate communication effectiveness

This video goes over a set of forms that will help you be more effective in your church communication ministry. It shows you step-by-step how to use them and explains why they are useful for ministry.

Many problems in church communications planning and management can be solved if the church uses forms because forms take opinions about communications and helps you effectively evaluate the validity of your opinions.

For example, if someone says: "The web is the best way to advertise!"  and another person on staff responds, "No, nothing beats bulletin inserts and postcards!" the use of forms puts this discussion into an objective evaluation of what works best.

VIDEO: How to create and use church communication surveys, how to decide what really works

Because we all tend to communicate in ways that are most comfortable to us and because, as church leaders, we make decisions for people, in this time of changing communications, we may be totally missing out on what the types of communications our audience needs for them to hear the gospel message or our challenges to discipleship growth.

How do your various audiences take in your messages? What communication channels do they access the most?

Most of us if we are honest really don't know. This is where a survey can be extremely helpful. This webinar/video will show you how to do one for your church.

One bit of advice--before you do the survey, pray that the Lord will make your heart open to make changes whatever the results might be. Nothing hurts your credibility more than asking people for their opinion and then ignoring it totally when they give it to you.

This VIDEO has two BONUS features for ECC MEMBERS: a ZIP file that has the original PowerPoint File, as well as an editable MS Publisher file of the church Survey Form.

VIDEO: How to create online polls with Poll Daddy, Webinar On-Demand

Online Polls are a useful and fun addition to any website. This video shows you how to create them quickly and easily using the free Poll Daddy software. Poll Daddy Software is free and it allows you to create a variety of polls and surveys.

Materials for purchase

Downloable FORMS ZIP File

Planning forms, ready-to-print PDFs & editable MS Publisher Files

This download has the FORMS illustrated in training videos. They are in both editable MS Publisher format and ready-to-print PDF. Both sets are in a combined ZIP file for immediate download for only $7.50.

BOOK: Church Communications Planning, Measuring, Evaluating done a new way—big is busted, try tiny!

Immediate Download: $6.99, Click here

Print format: $12.99 Click Here

This book is provides practical training on planning, measuring, and evaluating our church communications to help you make sure that your time and money spent in creating church communications accomplishes the goals of your church.

First, the book looks at the details of planning that form the foundation of a solid church communication program. It then goes into the use of FORMS that will help you gather and organize the facts and the information people need to connect with your ministry or event. The forms will also help you measure and evaluate your communications and enable you to understand what is really effective and what isn’t in your ministry communications and marketing. This approach works in any size church, with any budget. While much extravagant multimedia is only possible on a big budget, any church can make use of the tiny, but significant tips, ideas, and changes suggested in this book to make a significant difference in the impact of your communications.