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.

Church connection and prayer request cards—the foundation of all other church communications

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Connection Card book by Yvon Prehn
Prayer request cards and connection cards are a great way to connect with visitors and the needs of your congregation.

In church communications, we are often like Elijah-we expect God to speak through the thunder and storm. But what God often uses is similar to how he ultimately spoke to Elijah—through a still small voice.

The place of connection cards and prayer request cards in your church communication ministry is similar. They appear tiny and unimportant in the great scheme of multi-media communications available, but if you don't use them correctly, your church will probably not connect with visitors as well as you could if you used them.

Yes, there are lots of things churches do and communications churches create that connect with visitors, but helpful as most of them are, they fall short in one area. Churches have visitor centers, visitor pads, friendly people but......

Their short-coming is that all of them require the person to reach out to you.

You can't reach out to many visitors because you won't even know they are there. The ability for people to reach back to you, to share their contact information, their needs and questions is the function of  connection cards. The book Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people goes into detail on how to make the most of these essential ministry tool,  but this article will give you a good starting overview of their usefulness.

The purpose of these connection and prayer request cards

We don't create these cards to wow people with great graphic design or to give something for kids to scribble on during the church service. They are created to make a connection and connecting people to God and each other is what the church is all about. We must keep this importance in mind, because having people fill out connection cards is often viewed as an unnecessary interruption to the Sunday morning service and recording and dealing with them is often a bother on Monday. In contrast to these attitudes, if used properly, connection cards and prayer request cards can:

  • have a HUGE impact on growing your church
  • connect people to the life of your church
  • care for and address spiritual needs in practical ways
  • and help your people grow to spiritual maturity

You must move past looking at these cards as merely ministry routine paperwork and see them as essential tools to grow your church and change lives, if you are to make the most of them.

Why this is so important

[Read more...]

How to make Mom really happy, cards that will make you smile and challenge family members

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Don't you wish that the people you love who only come to church on Mother's Day and other special events would come every week? It won't happen by simply wishing it will Come Back #1 IMAGEhappen. You have to intentionally let them know you want them to come back to church. You have to invite them back.

Subtle doesn't work as a communication strategy in our world today. Think of how the secular media bombards us with repeated messages to buy this, come to that, don't miss out on some special sale. Though we don't want to be obnoxious we do have to be persistent and clear.

The cards illustrated here will help you do this. They were designed to make people smile, but they also share a true message—that moms want more than anything to share their faith with their children.

This card above is a PDF sample for you.  To download it, click on the card or click here.

In the section following, you will find ZIP File download that not only has this invitation, but also has the following five invitations. The ZIP file also has the original MS Publisher files, plus a jpg file of each invitation and a ready-to-print file of each one.

For other materials that will help you make the most of Mother's Day, click here: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com/category/seasonal/mothers-day/

Below is a ZIP file that contains:

  • All four Mother's Day Come Back to Church Invitations
  • MS Publisher Original files (you must have MS Publisher to use this file)
  • PDF Files
  • Resizable jpg files

Click the following link to download the ZIP file of the above items: Make Mom Happy MDay Come Back to Church

    After you download the file, SAVE it to your computer, then click on it to "unzip" it and the files are ready for you to use.

Your people, your church greeters–your most important communication tool

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Negative visitor card
This is a copy of a very negative visitor card--this is not how we want visitors to respond. Chris Walker's site will help your church avoid comments like this.

Sometimes we work so hard on our printed and digital connections we forget about the most important one of all--our people. Chris Walker, aka, the Evangelism Coach has a great article here about people who were so upset with the rudeness of church greeters, they wrote it down on a response card. Studies show that for every complaint someone actually takes the time to write about, there are many more upset people, who don't take the time to write.

Check out the article here as well as many resources on Chris' site.  He has excellent training and resources for church hospitality and evangelism. In addition, he's a thoughtful, insightful writer--I highly recommend his material.

CLICK HERE to go to this site: http://www.evangelismcoach.org

Connection Cards for Mother’s Day–essential tools for follow-up

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Mother's Day Connection Card, free card
Click on the image to download a free, ready-to-print PDF of this card.

Connection Cards are vitally important for your Mother's Day outreach success, because if visitors don't give you their contact information, you won't be able to follow-up with them. You might have a huge attendance on Mother's Day, but if the next Sunday is back to your usual numbers, you've missed a great opportunity to connect.

If you give church visitors an opportunity to share a question or a prayer request, you will be amazed at how many people will share with you. If you follow-up promptly and compassionately, you will make a significant connection.

To save you time in this important task, I've created some cards that are ready for you to print and use. The files below are part of a ZIP file below.  For each of the cards illustrated below it has:

  • A PDF ready-to-print file
  • Editable MS Publisher file
  • PNG image (perhaps you want to add it to a PowerPoint announcement and encourage people to fill it out)

Additional designs of Mother's Day Connection Cards

This file is FREE and the link is at the end if the article.

The additional designs: various styles, clipart, photo images, spot color of the Connection Cards that are in the ZIP FILE:

Mother's Day Connection Card, free card

 

 

FREE DOWNLOAD OF ZIP file:

CLICK HERE to download your file.

Connection card corrections for Canada and the world (ZIP FILE included) and the benefits of telling me what I do wrong

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A wonderful illustration of how the body of Christ works and of how desperately we need each other in all our communications work was gently shown me in an email I received right after I sent out my previous newsletter letting all of you know about the Connection Card Templates I'd created to inspire everyone and for immediate use for members.

Members, that is, unless they live in Canada or (and we have members in England, Holland, Australia, Puerto Rico)--for all of you I greatly apologize because I put on the cards "city, state, zip." Great for the U.S., not so much for those not living in states with zip codes. What really makes me upset with myself is that I have spent many, many days, weeks, goodness knows how much time in Canada. My grandfather was from Canada--you would think I would know about provinces and postal codes!

But I forgot.

And a very kind member from Canada reminded me that he had to change all of what I thought were ready-to-print materials.

One tiny change makes all the difference

A new file is added for members, at then end of this article with all the changes made. If you aren't a member—do consider joining, click here to find out more--it is the best $9.99 a month you will spend to equip yourself and your church.

All the files have  one very simple change, but that I will do for all the materials I make up in the future: I simply took out the "city, state, zip" and changed "street address" to simply: Address.

That should work anywhere.

If the kind pastor hadn't shared, I would not have made the change

PLEASE, please let me know if something that I do is not working for you, or if you have additional questions or need things—my goal is to serve all of you so that your churches can more effectively fully fulfill the Great Commission.

If possible—go ahead and put your questions in the COMMENT sections of the articles. That way when I answer, everyone will see the question and answer.

You can also always email me at yvon@effectivechurchcom.com if you would prefer to do that.

Most of all pray for me for wisdom to serve you and our Lord in ways that grow His church and give Him joy.

My blessings to you today!

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Click here for the ZIP file of the 6 Seasonal Connection Card Templates.