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.
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Overall Church Newsletter Samples #1

24 January, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 5 Comments

Below is a selection of church newsletters sent in as part of our Great Idea Swapalong with brief comments by Yvon Prehn. Church newsletters are still one of the most useful church communication pieces whether they are sent out or delivered digitally and the samples below are shared to help make yours more effective.

These samples are not shared for design and layout ideas alone, but for a variety of layout, content, and style considerations that are highlighted with the brief comments by each one. Study the newsletters from other churches always with the prayer of what you can learn that will help you be more effective with your congregation.

To study each more closely, you can click on the image and it will take you to a downloadable PDF of the newsletter.

Newsletter Out of BlueOut of the Blue
The Blue Ridge Bible Church

This is one instance where the name of the church provides a great name for the newsletter--it doesn't always work out this way, but it's fun when it does.

The editor of this newsletter has a wonderful way with words in other areas of the newsletter:  the children's ministry is called ZONE which stands for: Zeal for God; Oneness in relationships; Nurtured with the Truth; Expressing the Love of Christ. One more: "Why do we dye?" an article about Easter Eggs—great stuff!

To download a PDF of the newsletter, click hereor on the image of the newsletter.

Newsletter from Laurel ChurchThe Family News
The Laurel Church of Christ

Notice how nice and clean the layout is on this newsletter. Though there are lots of colors and images used, the creator stayed within the grid lines. The grid is the invisible underlying structure of your communication piece.

To see what I mean, look at p.3 and notice how each entry stays within the three column lines. Many church newsletters don't do this. They may have similar collections of ads, updates and information, but they scatter them around the page without regard to any underlying structure. Because of that they look much less professional.

To download a PDF of the newsletter, click here or on the image of the newsletter.

Smaller Size NewsletterThe Net
St. Andrews Lutheran Church and Early Childhood Center

You don't have to be big in size to be big in impact. This smaller-size newsletter packs a lot into its pages: articles, church service schedules, birthdays and other special events, plus a number of excellent resources for people attending the church to get a program to listen to the Bible as well as online devotions.

To download a PDF of the whole newsletter, click here or on the image of the newsletter.

East Presbyterian NewsletterThe Eastminster Light
Eastminster Presbyterian Church

I really like the logo of the church in the name of this newsletter and it is another example of using an image intrinsic to the identity of the church (the light) to tie in with the name of the newsletter.

This newsletter does a really good thing in these days of multi-channel communications where the editor uses a printed piece to talk about the website and other forms of digital interaction. Each channel of communication has its own strengths and audiences and our communication is most powerful when we use all we can.

To download a PDF of the newsletter, click here or on the image of the newsletter.

Church Newsletter, plain thoughtfulSaints & Sojourners
All Saints Lutheran Church

Every church has a tone, a style, a personality that says "this is this unique Church." That tone and personality should be the same when someone comes into the church and when they read the newsletter from the church.

The gentle, thoughtful tone of this newsletter is different from some of the ones on this page (all wonderful in their own way) and it's a great illustration of why we should always be ourselves when we create our communications. Read through the different newsletters and envision in your mind's eye the folks who created them—and you will most likely be nearly correct.

You don't want surprises when people see your website or read your newsletter and then come to your church—that's not nice. Not every person seeking God is under twenty and in need of being entertained by lively graphics. Quiet and thoughtful is the still voice that draws many. Be who you are in print and online and allow the Lord to draw to you the people perfectly suited to worship with your church family.

To download a PDF of the newsletter, click here or on the image of the newsletter.

__________________________

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Filed Under: Church Newsletters Tagged With: church communication basics, church newsletter, church newsletters, church outreach, Communications, newsletters, yvon prehn

Newsletter, some basic advice and layout samples

7 January, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Newsletters remain one of the most useful ways to effectively communicate. This PDF will give you some simple, foundational help to create them.
Newsletters remain one of the most useful ways to effectively communicate. This PDF will give you some simple, foundational help to create them.

This PDF is an excerpt from my basic book on church communications. It consists of both overview materials and then a collection of  sample newsletter layouts.

In this PDF, the instruction section reminds us, newsletters are made up of primarily two parts:

1.  News    2.  Letter

News: no lengthy, fluffy writing, all the facts, dates, times, locations. People read church newsletters to find out information, not for recreational reading.

Letter: letters are personal, be yourself, let the personality of your church or ministry come through.

The most important thing about newsletters, whether you ultimately mail them out, post them as a PDF on your website or use an online newsletter to create them, is the CONTENT in the newsletter. People do not read church newsletters to check out the great graphic design skills of the church—they read them to find out connecting facts and inspirational updates:

  • when and where the youth group is meeting
  • if the church event has a cost and/or childcare
  • how to become part of a small group
  • they read the pastor's column to learn more about him or her as a person
  • they scan the updates that head of the ministry in which they serve to see has to share this month that affects them

Bottom line: if your newsletter provides relevant, timely, useful content for the people of your church it is effective and successful.

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Filed Under: Church Newsletters Tagged With: church communication basics, church newsletter, church newsletters, Communications, yvon prehn

Newsletters: from boring and bragging to outstanding outreach

31 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Whether you create your church newsletter on paper, in electronic format or both, periodically, take time to restructure it in ways that turn it from an often dreaded publication chore into one of your most powerful outreach tools. You can do this by evaluating your mission and then identifying your niche ministry targets and creating newsletters specifically for them.

Evaluate your mission

Creating and producing newsletters is extremely costly both in terms of people hours and the money it takes to create, reproduce and send them out. With this in mind it is important to take time to evaluate why you are producing your ministry newsletters.

That “WHY” comes out loud and clear in every issue you produce whether you intend to or not.

For ineffective church newsletters the biggest WHY that often comes out is that the church is doing the newsletter for what I call “family bragamony” purposes. These are publications that only make sense to you if you are part of the current church family. They are primarily focused on how great the people are who are already attending the church and have the effect of saying (even though this is never intended) “this is an insider group, newcomers aren’t welcome.”

If you doubt that is true, look at your newsletter. Do you have contact phone numbers or emails by every event? Do you have announcements like these:  “Men’s Bible study at our usual location.”  “Youth Group, same time, same place!” “The Pot Luck will be great as always—ya’ll come!”

A newcomer has no idea what you are talking about.

While reporting on church family news and giving updates is important, we might want to add evangelism and outreach as additional reasons WHY we do the publication.

This isn’t difficult to do. We can add an outreach emphasis simply by adding an invitation to newcomers. For example, just add something like:

All events of  Our Church are open to EVERYONE!

Please join us if you are new or perhaps have been around a long time, but mostly just attended Sunday mornings.

Each event has a contact phone number and email address and we welcome your questions and would love to tell you more.

One powerful outreach tool— be sure each activity from children’s and youth events to home Bible studies has a contact phone number and email for more information. It’s simple, but essential and sadly, so often left out.

Identify your niche targets and create publications specifically for them

One of the most exciting trends I have seen as I travel around North America teaching communication and marketing seminars to churches is the creation of niche newsletters.

All successful marketing theory tells us that the more narrowly we can niche (divide, segment) our audience into parts interested in the same thing, the more successful our marketing will be. The way this translates into the church is that it can be helpful in addition to doing an overall church newsletter to decide what more narrow audience you want to focus on and reach in your community. Then do a newsletter specifically for them.

Examples of niche newsletters

I have seen some great examples of this in especially in niche newsletters designed for PARENTS of teenagers and children. Note I said PARENTS, not the kids themselves. You still need newsletter to tell the youth group what’s going on, but most churches do something like that. These are a separate publication because the churches who do them  realize that parents need lots of help today. The best ones target a specific age area: parents of grade school kids, high schoolers, etc.

The church creates a newsletter that reaches out to parents, encourages them, gives them helpful tips and ideas. In addition the church also offers resources from the church to help them: youth and children’s programs, mom’s morning out, whatever. It clearly invites everyone in the community to take advantage of these programs.

Another great niche newsletter I saw recently at a large church conference I was teaching at was a newsletter for married professional couples. It was full of chatty tips on how to find time for romance, how to communicate when both of you have a crazy schedule, etc. To be honest the graphics, the layout, the whole “design” of the publication was pretty bad if I was evaluating it from a “design” standpoint. Did I care? NO! I snatched one right up and read every word.

These sorts of publications can be incredibly powerful outreach tools. They position the church as a resource for help; the pastors as resource people and they provide solutions to real-life problems. Which is easier to invite someone to church or to say, “I really found this article helpful with my kids. I think you’ll enjoy it”?

Think through the niche groups in your church—parents of  kids and teens and married couples at all sorts of life stages, seniors—then find some of the spiritually mature folks in that group and ask them to put together a newsletter to help others. Don’t worry about layout (though Microsoft Publisher has great newsletter templates that are easy to use), the content and heart in the publication is what is most important.

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Filed Under: Children's ministry, Church Newsletters Tagged With: church newsletter, church newsletters, church outreach, Communications, Email newsletters, niche newsletters, yvon prehn

Youth newsletter, small in size, big impact

5 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Little youth newsletter
This newsletter has "pages" that are only one quarter page size. Sometimes a unique size and format can make your publication stand out.

Some of the most effective newsletters I've seen targeted to youth came in very small sizes and here is an example of one.

Each "page" in the newsletter was only one quarter of an 8 1/2 by 11 piece of paper.

It looked great and packed quite a lot of information in a tiny space.

When you want to be creative with your communications, in addition to the content, think about different ways you can present things. Sometimes the physical size and/or appearance can make your message stand out.

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To download this PDF, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

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Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Youth Ministry Tagged With: church newsletter, Communications, youth church communications, Youth Ministry, yvon prehn

For church newsletters, there are some things you shouldn’t do

5 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Most of the material on this site tell you what to do; this PDF tells you what NOT to do to create effective newsletters.
Most of the material on this site tell you what to do; this PDF tells you what NOT to do to create effective newsletters.

Newsletters are one of the primary reasons people first started creating communications with their computers.

This article was written primarily for people creating newsletters on paper, but its advice is also useful for newsletters created digitally.

It is so easy to change newsletter format on the computer screen, but the reasons why a lack of consistency is a no-no re as valid for online newsletters as they are for paper ones. This PDF will explains those reasons.

The additional no-no of not printing on colors is even more important online. Having a colored or worse yet, patterned background for an online newsletter is a reader's nightmare.

After reviewing a website with a very hard-to-read background of faded squiggly lines running through a tan and white background, I asked the creator of it why his church chose that background.

"Our communication secretary said it looked like parchment and that would be a cool look for a church online newsletter, " he answered.

It wasn't. Bless her heart, I'm sure the church communicator was thinking very creative thoughts and since she also wrote most of the newsletter and laid it out, she understood what it was about and so her focus had turned to making it look interesting. What I'm sure was put in with the best of intentions was a distraction that made the newsletter difficult to read. Paper or screen, nothing beats black print on a white background for clarity.

One associated bit of advice. White text reversed out of a black background is quite popular with some bloggers today. It does look good, but it is harder to read and quite tiring to read at length. Question for those enamored with this look: what is more important, that people think your site looks edgy? Or that they read what you have to say?

If you have short, snappy, pithy, and precise little nuggets, the reverse might work, but don't expect many to read any indepth teaching shared in that way.

To download the PDF and read about the no-nos in more detail, click here or on the image.

note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.

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Filed Under: Church Newsletters, Email newsletters Tagged With: church newsletter, Communications, newsletter design, online newsletter, yvon prehn

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