church outreach | Effective Church Communications

Follow-up after a church holiday outreach event: speed dating or relationship building?

13 May, 2019 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

Church visitors, speed dating or relationship building? — How do we treat our visitors? Like speed dating or do we work to build a relationship? This article will help you see the difference. Image from Flicker, Gangplank HQ

What kind of relationship do you have with someone, if you meet them, have a great time, and then walk away, never to call, talk, or see the person again? Not much of one is it?

In contrast, what about a relationship where two people meet briefly but then keep in touch through letters, emails, phone calls, and other get-togethers? What if they take time to interact and get to know each other? We’d label that a meaningful relationship.

If we want any kind of relationship, friendship, or romance to progress, we know we’ve got to expend some effort to grow the relationship.

As a church, we begin relationships with the people in our communities when we host outreach or holiday events. Sometimes they develop into a meaningful, long-term relationship with visitors, but in the majority of cases, they don't. Take time to consider some of the following thoughts and evaluate how your interactions with visitors.

Make your church outreach events more than Speed Dating

Unfortunately, instead of taking time to develop relationships with the guests who visit, many church outreach events are similar to the Speed Dating popular today. If you are unfamiliar with Speed Dating, this is where single people spend a few minutes with a potential romantic interest over coffee, dessert, or some shared activity (one recent speed dating event for farmers had folks weeding a field together) and then they move on to the next person, spend a few minutes with that person, and on to the next one.

Though lasting a bit longer, some churches offer a sort of speed dating experience to unchurched members of their communities. With fall events as an example, the church invites the community to a Community Thanksgiving Service and Christmas Caroling and Hot Chocolate. The visitors are hustled through the event and then leave, hopefully with a nice feeling about the church. The church staff breathes a big sigh of relief to have that activity over for the year.Continue Reading

TWO of FIVE TRENDS that will reshape media in 2019

6 January, 2019 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

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?

Don’t be a Secret Saint—a better way to do outreach and connect people to your church!

14 November, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Have you ever been in a situation where you do outreach activities or acts of kindness as part of your church, but you never see anybody come to church because of it? Well, I've got some ideas for you that can change that. That's the topic of this podcast. You can either listen to the podcast here or on many aps listed HERE.

For FREE templates that you can use to create communications that will help identify your church and bring people to it after your event, check out the templates for the holiday or special event you are celebrating. You can reach the overall Template section by CLICKING HERE.

Welcome to a Better Way for Church Communicators! I'm Yvon Prehn and our topic today is “Don't be a Secret Saint, a better way to do outreach on the holidays or anytime to effectively reach people for your church and Jesus.”

Below are the show notes, a transcript of the podcast

Here's a true story about a lost opportunity in a situation just like this in our area. One church often does a compassionate outreach at a laundromat in an area of town where many homeless people do their laundry. My husband was recently talking to a young man who had taken advantage of it and he heard him talking about “some guy who paid for my laundry.” My husband asked him asked him who did it and what they talked about, and the young man responded “Well, the guy didn't say anything. He and his wife just sat in a corner for two hours. I would have talked to him, I would have talked about anything with him. I kind of waited for him to come over, but he never said anything to me! But the guy put in 10 bucks for my laundry.”

Now, my husband and I both thought how sad to pay for washer and dryer use for people who must choose sometimes between clean clothes and a decent meal is a fantastic way to demonstrate caring in the name of Jesus, but only if people know that you're doing it in the name of Jesus.

You see it really isn't fair to them or to your church or ministry if you are a secret service Christian.Continue Reading

Church Invitation Cards, business cards with an eternity-altering purpose

13 May, 2018 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Free church invitation. — Make up cards like this for your church members to invite others to church. Links to a FREE copy of this one and others is at the end of the article.

How do you get unchurched people into your church?

Despite all the high-tech and expensive advertising methods available today, one method remains the most effective way to get new people to come to your and that is a personal invitation. Your members inviting their friends to church beats any advertising campaign at any cost.

While it is sometimes sadly true that once someone becomes converted, they soon have few friends who are not believers, no one totally withdraws from the world. Most people still work at secular jobs. Everyone has many contacts a week with people in the business community: the waitress or waiter at the coffee shop, the Starbucks employees, the clerks at various stores, the person standing next to them in lines at the grocery store, airports, or the driver’s license bureau, the person sitting next to them on the bus or subway.Continue Reading