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; we can help.

Summer seasonal PR for 4th of July and Summer Events

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This entry has a number of materials that are useful for connecting with people for special summer events.

One is a bulletin insert that takes the line from the song, "America, America, God shed his grace on thee," and turns the word GRACE into a prayer. It is useful for our American audience, but we haven't forgotten the members and visitors to this site who do not live in America.

In addition is a Postcard for summer outreach and a fantastic brisket recipe. The Summer outreach postcard will work for any summer event (personalize with your own details on the back); the Brisket recipe is a great handout or give-away card for any time of the year.

This entry also contains a download link for a zip file of the jpg images and ready-to-print PDFs for all three of the publications illustrated below. It also contains editable MS Publisher files for both the Summer postcard and the Brisket Recipe. It does not have an editable MS Publisher file for the 4th of July insert because I did not have permission to do that with the artwork I used.

You can download just the PDF of the 4th of July Bulletin insert, by clicking here or on the flyer image.

Below the images is the link to the ZIP file of all the publications:

Here are the images in the file:
4th of July imageRefreshing postcard imageBBQ recipe card

To download the ZIP file that contains all the jpgs, PDFs, and MS Publisher Files, click on the link below.

 

 

Click here to download the ZIP file. Save it to your hard drive and click to open it and use the files.

 

to download the ZIP file. Save it to your hard drive and click to open it and use the files to download the ZIP file. Save it to your hard drive and click to open it and use the files.to download the ZIP file. Save it to your hard drive and click to open it and use the files.

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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For Successful Fall & Winter Outreach Publications: Clarify and Coordinate for greater lasting impact

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welcoming people
If you are planning a fall or winter outreach event at your church, these tips will help you have lasting success from it.

Fall and winter are two prime times for churches to plan outreach events for their communities. Large amounts of time and money are spent on these events and often the church gets a great community response to the free Harvest Festival or Family Thanksgiving Dinner or Community Caroling and Hot Chocolate Party. But seldom do these activities generate the kind of continuing church involvement a church hopes for. I'd like to offer some suggestions on how to CLARIFY and COORDINATE your message for greater lasting impact.

If you don't want to waste your time and money the following tips are essential!

To help you understand how important this is and to give you a sense of how futile it is to hold events without good communication to clarify and coordinate your message, primarily for the ladies reading this, think about when you buy cosmetics at the department store or online and you are given some free samples. (The gentleman reading this may or may not have some sort of similar situation, regardless the example will make sense.)  The company that makes the cosmetics don't have the samples in the middle of the mall set up on a pretty display that says, "FREE FOR ALL." No, you go to the specific cosmetic counter and you know without a doubt who is giving them to you. [Read more...]

What Tesla can teach us about successful church marketing

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What Tesla has to teach the church about advertising
Yes, a Tesla is a great-looking car, but did you know they outsell EVERY other luxury car brand WITHOUT any advertising? The church can learn something from how they do it.

Did you know that Tesla sells more luxury cars than any other company?
I think the challenge of that question is so important, I did both a blog and article on it. Below is the podcast and then the continuation of the blog:

I was surprised when I read that statistic, but even more interested when I read how they did it. Let me share the terlerati.com comment on it, a chart that illustrates their success, and then I'll talk about how this inspired me about discipleship and church marketing. Then I've got some spiritual challenges for you and then at the end of this some practical tools you can use to put into practice to make your seasonal marketing more successful than ever.

Quickly, name one advertisement you’ve seen recently from Tesla Motors themselves? OK, name any advertisement you’ve seen from the company, ever? Tesla’s marketing strategy is as disruptive as its business model. It lets you and I advertise for them, for free. . . . . Tesla does not spend millions of dollars in a traditional ad campaign. They let you and me discuss it, rave about it, hate on it, or rejoice in the spirit of going electric in a Tesla, be the catalyst to a viral and brilliant marketing campaign. At the end of the day, Tesla advertising is free.

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TWO of FIVE TRENDS that will reshape media in 2019

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2019 a new time to try new things
The start of the year is a great time to challenge assumptions and do new things!

MarketingWeek.com, a marketing group from England just published an article on their Five Trends that they believe will reshape media in the coming year.  Amid rather obvious ones like e-commerce will grow, so will video, and Instagram is becoming more useful than Facebook for marketing, were two interesting quotes with implications for church communications and marketing in the coming year. Below are the quotes, my comments, and implication and ideas for church communications that were inspired by them:

First QUOTE:

Consumers will call brands out if they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.

Darren Campbell, Dr Martens

IMPLICATIONS & IDEAS:

When a church uses social media in their outreach, how does it come across to people outside the church (assuming they see it)?

This quote got me wondering how much of what churches put out there comes across as simply selling something— “Come to this event!, Bring your Kids HERE!!, Don’t miss out on this!!!

We may protest that we aren’t asking them to spend money (not yet, they must become more involved to be approached with that), but we are asking them to spend time and attention in exchange for our message. We want them to buy into what we are selling.

The bottom line is that is what we want, for them to buy into what we are selling—we want them to come to know Jesus as Savior, have their sins forgiven and live a life serving him. But what if our audience has no idea this is of benefit to them? Or why they should even come to a place that has a pre-packaged life-plan for them to accept?

What is the alternative?

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