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.

Triage, a model for responding to connection cards

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Triage your connection cards
In a medical emergency, the first responders immediately triage victims to see who needs immediate care. That's a great examples to follow on processing connection cards.

Ed. intro: When you host a special event or seasonal celebration, you'll have lots of visitors and you'll be collecting lots of visitor cards from them. But you've got to do more than just collect them if you want them to make a difference in your church. You'll learn what to do from this excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

It is critically important to respond to the connection cards received each Sunday and all special occasions, but not every card needs the same timeliness or intensity of response, but how do you decide what needs what? The concept of triage can help.

First, here is the history and definition of TRIAGE from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia:

TRIAGE
The term [triage] comes from battlefield or natural disaster situations. When the wounded are brought in there are three categories in which the wounded are immediately placed:

Red / Immediate
They require immediate surgery or other life-saving intervention, and have first priority for surgical teams or transport to advanced facilities; they “cannot wait” but are likely to survive with immediate treatment.

Yellow / Observation
Their condition is stable for the moment but requires watching by trained persons and frequent re-triage, will need hospital care (and would receive immediate priority care under “normal” circumstances).

Green / Wait (walking wounded)
They will require a doctor’s care in several hours or days but not immediately, may wait for a number of hours or be told to go home and come back the next day (broken bones without compound fractures, many soft tissue injuries).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

How to apply triage to connection cards

Though you aren’t dealing with actual battlefield situations, this model is useful in responding to the connection cards you will receive from those fighting spiritual battles each week. Following are suggestions for how to apply the three levels of triage in how you respond to the people turning in connection cards: [Read more...]

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...]

Still useful: archive articles on Church Bulletins

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Church bulletins remain one of the most important pieces of church communication and this book features PDFs of articles by Yvon Prehn Cover Of Bulletin Archive bookall on the topic of how to create and use them most effectively. In addition to theory, this book has quite a number of articles that illustrate how to layout your bulletins for maximum readability and for ease in scanning.

These come from our archives, but still, have many relevant tips and ideas for church communications today.

The content of your bulletins is also discussed as is one of the most contentious areas of church communications: the bulletin insert—prepare to be challenged in your thinking about them.

This e-book is a free download by clicking the link below.

Click here to download the PDF of the Bulletin Book.

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

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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. [Read more...]

Will Your Visitors Become Members?

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Make it easy for people to become part of your church.
Make it easy for people to become part of your church.

An indisputable fact: Across the United States, and perhaps in other countries as well, church attendance and membership have been steadily declining over the past several years.

Researchers and scholars offer scores of societal changes as the reason: busy lifestyles,  disintegration of family, more mobile populations, growing demands on time, religion being viewed as irrelevant—and on and on. There are, no doubt, elements of truth in all these findings. But my experience leads me to believe there is another factor, one much closer to home. Just how welcoming are our churches? Do we put our best foot forward? Can we see ourselves as a visitor might? Do we display hospitality? Are we willing to embrace others and encourage them to become a part of our fellowship?

Moving to a new community and looking for a church home gave me a fresh opportunity to be a visitor. Some observations on things churches can do to attract visitors and encourage them to come back—

• advertise in the local paper; make sure times and directions are clear

• provide visitor parking convenient to the main entrance

• have adequate and attractive signage for parking, entrances, the nursery, restrooms

• train greeters in the art of offering a friendly and meaningful greeting

• provide an attractive and informative bulletin

• provide a greeter who walks visitors to the sanctuary doors and directs them to seating

• equip pews with visitor cards—and sharpened pencils

• give a general “welcome visitors” from the pulpit

• provide an opportunity for visitors to meet the pastor after the service

• offer a “Meet First Church” brochure to visitors; at least have them in pews

• provide a little memento of their visit: a pen, notepad, booklet

• absolutely send visitors a letter!

Unless yours is a very small congregation, your church may have more visitors than you realize. Sometimes visitors slip in and out with no recognition at all—no handshake, no smile, no greeting. Some have been invited by members.; others have sought you out on their own. All are seeking. We don’t know all their reasons for coming, but we can safely assume they want to feel valued, accepted, welcome. These arepeople—not numbers. Treat them as you would like to be treated. Take an interest in them. Show by your words and actions that you care about them.

Each visitor comes away with an impression. This is not a matter of being judgmental. Visitors are often deciding if this is the church for them. Is this where they will fit in, where they will find a place of service, where they will grow in their faith and have opportunity to make a difference.

There are fair, better, and best ways of extending a welcome. Would you rather be asked, “Are you visiting?” or greeted with a friendly “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Ann Smith.” Whether the person is a visitor or not, this greeting gets people acquainted.

One thing not to do: In an attempt to extend a welcome, some churches ask visitors to stand and introduce themselves. A good intention, perhaps, but it makes many visitors uncomfortable.

Even in the friendliest church, the cue for hospitality must come from leadership. Someone, the pastor or an assigned person, must lead members to be aware of new faces and to personally greet those with whom they are not acquainted. Greeter training is essential, but few things are more noticeable to a visitor than a pastor who sets a positive example. Staff and members who stay involved with one another or with family and friends—at the expense of welcoming newcomers—miss a great opportunity. It may seem quaint, but visitors (not to mention members) appreciate a personable pastor.

Those who sing in a choir or as a praise group play an important role in creating a friendly environment. It is such an attractive thing when folks singing praises to God allow their faces to show joy. And such a distraction when they don’t. Week after week some singers look positively unconvinced of the message they sing. What a missed opportunity to be a positive witness.

As important as a friendly welcome on the day of the visit is a personal written welcome arriving within the week. In this time of digital communication, a real letter makes a statement. Using a template is fine, but personalize it with the visitor’s name and adjust as necessary. Enclose a brochure about the church ministries and any other printed material that may be of interest—a small flyer about VBS, a special study, or whatever. One church sends along a neat little memo book/calendar. Very nice.

The pastor’s added handwritten note (“So good meeting you” or similar) is gold!

Next Lord’s Day try to put yourself in the mindset of a visitor and see your church through his/her eyes. You may find some things you can do differently to encourage visitors to become members—and to encourage your members to invite others. Details do matter.