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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One purpose of your church website: to explain Sunday services, at least as well as a document does for an oven

27 February, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Answer church questions
People shouldn't leave your church with more questions than when they came in

Gerry McGovern, one of my favorite web gurus, had the following observations on how documentation for products is shifting. I think his thoughts present a challenge to the disconnect between what the picture of Christianity presented on Sunday morning and the reality of what it means to live out the Christian faith.

We need to evaluate our Sunday morning service, website content and everything else we produce to see if it is clear about the content of our gospel--in other words, does the product of our lives and worship back up the documentation of it in God's Word?

[Read more...]

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Filed Under: Church Outreach and Marketing Tagged With: church advertising, church bait and switch, church honesty, Church Websites, Yvon Prehn blog

How a limited number of communication channels limited the ministry of a church

24 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

When you look at your church communications plans and goals for all the options you have in communication channels, it would be helpful to look at this question from one church and my response to it:

“We have a website and bulletin, both of which are beautifully done, and we put the newsletter in a PDF email format on the website, and still nobody comes to our events! People say they don't know what is going on. We decided to cut down on the number of communications we were sending out so as not to overwhelm people and now even less people attend events than did before.”

Though I tried to sympathize with their situation I knew immediately what was happening—it’s a common response to shifting technologies that I’ve heard from many church communicators . Like Solomon said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Though church communicators often feel alone because they seldom have the opportunity to talk to other church communicators, many churches have the same frustrations. One opportunity the Lord has given me from traveling thousands of miles every year for over a decade and interacting with many church communicators online, is that I have a bird’s eye view of what is going on in church communications and most of the problems experienced by one church are experienced by many. This situation was not unique--there were several  incorrect assumptions they were making that may have caused their problems .

The rest of this article is an expansion of the advice I shared with them.

Incorrect assumption #1: Assuming less communication is more effective than more communication

Go ahead; read that statement again. It’s goofy.

Imagine trying this in a marriage: "Sweetheart, I think we can communicate better if I only talk to you once a week and only in the way and time I want to."

We know a lack of communication would kill any marriage, any relationship, but it is amazing to me how many church communicators say similar things with a straight face. Less communication doesn't improve any relationship or make any response better.  It doesn’t matter how busy people are who how new and appealing a technology is. In communication, less is seldom more.

Think about it:

  • Do you think direct mail marketers communicate less because mailing less is the best way to sell their product?
  • Do you think a TV advertiser will limit himself to one commercial an hour so that people won’t be tired of hearing about his insurance company?
  • Do you think your spouse will know you love him if you only tell him that once a week so as not to be an emotional bother? Or better yet, never verbally tell him. Or maybe it’s your wife—if she is twenty something and loves the web, you decide the best way to communicate is to post your love for her on a marriage communication Facebook page that you update on a weekly basis. Do you think she'll appreciate your technical expertise in your disciplined, yet technically perfect, declarations of love?

The answers to these questions are obvious and it should be obvious that putting out less communication is NOT the way to be more effective in your church communication ministry. It takes a lot of communications in every available channel to get across the ministry messages of churches today.

Why is it that so many people in so many churches make this statement? I think danger #2 answers that question.

Incorrect assumption #2: Assuming that everybody sees, reads, remembers, and pays attention to every communication you put out

This assumption is wildly far from true. Yes, people might get tired of things if they saw every email, postcard, bulletin insert, and web posting on a topic that we put out, but they don’t.

Studies show that less than 20% of your congregation is at your every week in a month; 30% are able to be there 3 weeks out of a month; another 30% 1-2 weeks out of a month and about 20% of your church people cannot attend on Sunday (often work-related these days). If you only advertise something for a couple of weeks, probably half your people never even see it. Also, do you believe 100% of the people there each week are paying attention to every word you print and every announcement you make? Have you ever tracked how many people come in after the PowerPoint announcements?

For other forms of communication, remember not everyone has email and lots of people who have it don’t read it very often. Not everyone reads all their postal mail. Not everyone can read. This is a sad fact few churches take note of and in addition, some people, who may be able to read in one language, cannot read English well.

That’s why successful advertisers know that repetition, repetition, repetition of the message in every possible channel is the only way to make sure a message is communicated. You may be sick to death of a getting out a message that most of your audience will only hear once or twice.

Incorrect assumption #3: Assuming all your people want to receive communications in the same way you do. In other words, assuming your preferred communication channel is the preferred communication channel of your church members.

This is the big one and a danger many church are falling into today with the best of intentions.  The danger is that they were putting out communications in the channels they preferred (they told me this honestly) – and that preference is the same for many church communicators—primarily web and PDF email.

Though these two communication channels are easy for churches to produce, they are not the channels easily accessible to or preferred by many people. Few folks will wait for a large PDF to download with a dial-up connection. Even if they can download a PDF newsletter, not everyone likes to read them on the screen (especially if the creator of it designed it for paper, not screen reading). If they don’t want to read it on the screen, they may begrudge the ink cost to print out all the pretty colored pictures that are in the newsletter.

Few people will go on to the website to hunt for details of where to go for a church activity, especially if they remember at the last minute. If you have not been totally up-to-date and complete about the times, dates, locations and all important scheduling details for church on your website in the past, people won’t even think of going to it. A postcard or bulletin insert on the refrigerator with all the times and details may be a more useful channel, if not as exciting or cutting edge. Much of this is changing and the web is becoming more and more important, but it takes a long time for any newer technology to be used by many of people in the church. Even as more people are online more, most churches are not up-to-date with even facts on their websites.

For youth events, if the information isn’t accessible by cell phone; it probably won’t be accessed. Cell phones and texting are the primary means teens communicate today and if a church staff member does not have the technology or the skills to use this channel, they will have difficulty communicating with them. Mobile phone accessible websites and information are becoming essential for some age groups. Often this requires design characteristics (much more simple sites) that may not be compatible with the overall church website.

Why it’s easy for churches to fall into these dangers

In my seminars I remind church leaders of the “church office bubble,” the world those of us who work in the church live in. When we are in it, it is so easy to forget what life is like for those who do not live in our familiar bubble. We know understanding and overcoming our tendency to use jargon and talk to ourselves is foundational to outreach communication success, but it is also important that we are aware of our unconscious preferences in communication channels and how these affect the communication of our message.

The issue in choice of communication channels is that those who create communications and those in the church office are included in this, by their natures and jobs are often "early adaptors."  Some love the technology; they want to try all the latest and greatest tools. Some may not love it personally, but their church office manager or pastor does and there is often subtle peer pressure to learn and create with the latest technology. These tendencies are understandable, but we have to be careful that they do not negatively influence our communications by causing us to produce communications that we like to produce, but that are not necessarily ones people want to receive.

The folks from the church referred to at the start of this article, which were experiencing a low response, really liked creating the fancy bulletin, the PDF newsletter, and the website. That’s great that they enjoyed doing those things. But by their own admission, this focus on what they considered simple to do and cutting-edge was not working with many in their congregation.

Bottom line: create what you love because some of your audience will love it also, but in addition, love your church audience enough to create a variety of communication channels so that the people with the slowest computers and those without computers will also hear and have the opportunity to respond to the communications from your church.

Biblical considerations in multi-channel communications

Technology aside, we must always remember that those who name Jesus as Lord must always keep our eyes on Jesus and his Word as our guide for every aspect of our communications.

One theme woven throughout the fabric of the Bible is the concern of our Creator for the poor. There will always be inequalities (in everything from finances to bandwidth) in our fallen world and there is always the temptation of those who have much to ignore those who have little. This is as true in technology as it is in monetary resources. There is always the temptation for those who minds work quickly to be impatient with those who learn slowly; for those who love the new to disdain those who fear it.

If Jesus is Lord, we may create an incredible multi-media website and full-color email blasts; but we make sure there are also postcards, large-print bulletins, and handouts and personal phone calls for those more comfortable with these channels of communication.

Remember, doing this sort of servant work for "the least of these" is doing communication work for Jesus. He who created and named all the stars is not impressed with our technical abilities, but when we pour our hearts out in communication projects, both complex and simple, to make sure everyone is informed and shown love by the time-intensive work required—those channels of communication merit his favor.

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Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications, Website Creation Tagged With: Church Websites, communication channels, Communications, multi-channel communication, yvon prehn

Ministry opportunities your website may be missing

7 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Every church knows they need a website and most churches have them today. Sadly, however, many churches buy a website creation program and do little more than fill in the blanks needed to make sure that something is on all the template pages.

Sadly that something is often no more than a paragraph, that once entered is often forgotten.

The church can say it has a website, but a website like this misses many ministry opportunities, including:

The staff misses the opportunity to become real people to their community.

Is the pastor a real person? What does he or she really think about God or problems or people? Are they in touch with the real world? If the pastor writes a blog or articles, people checking out the church can get a real sense of what that person is like. Not only the pastor, but Bible class teachers, the staff, ministry leaders, small group leaders, all would benefit from an online presence. People in your community are looking for real people with the answers to spiritual questions. The web provides a priceless opportunity to allow people to get to know you.

One caution: NEVER have your blog written by someone else—blogs or online articles do not have to be perfect literary masterpieces to touch people, but they do have to be honest. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Church Websites Tagged With: Church Websites, Communications, Create your church website, free church websites, Pastor blogs, Website advice, yvon prehn

It’s always personal: how to communicate effectively and professionally as representatives of Jesus

6 July, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Church communication needs to be personal
No matter what channel we use, church communication needs to be personal.

As I was preparing to write this article and introduce the topic of the importance of personal communications, including how we communicate on the phone, my husband who is a bi-vocational pastor (unpaid pastoral position at church, handyman for income) came home for lunch and shared this story with me.

My husband was doing some repairs on the mobile home next door to the home of a Christian man who passed away a few days earlier. The son was in town to take care of the details for the funeral. The mother was frail and both parents had not been able to attend church consistently over the last couple of years because of ill health. The son wanted to hold his father's funeral at the church they had attended for a number of years in the past.

He shared with my husband, over the course of a couple of days, his attempts to reach the church to arrange the funeral. He left messages. He talked to one person and was referred to another. He left more messages. He himself was a pastor and told my husband that the family had over 100 relatives in town who would be coming to the service, most of whom who were not Christians. After a few days of not receiving a call back, he decided to hold the funeral service at the clubhouse of the mobile home community and he, the son, would do the service. Other than being an emotional support and encouragement, my husband was extremely sad and frustrated as he told me the story. I'm making it sound over-spiritual--I think my husband wanted to punch somebody--but knew that would not be appropriate.

Obviously somebody dropped the ball in a big way in this situation, but these days of answering machines in churches that route calls to answering systems of staff, it's not hard to imagine this happening. Who knows why this happened, but what could have been a time to personally minister to a hurting family and unreached friends became a situation of sadness, resentment and pain--all because phone messages were not answered. [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications Tagged With: church newsletters, church outreach, church telephone, Church Websites, Communications, yvon prehn

What makes an effective church website?

1 June, 2010 By Yvon Prehn 3 Comments

The debate is over—churches today realize they need to have a website. The question now is, what makes a website an effective ministry tool for the church? With many companies vying for your website development dollar, this is not an easy question to answer....or is it? Actually I think it is very easy to answer and in this article, we'll not only answer that question, but give you some resources to make a website incredibly effective (and either free or for very low-cost for your church).

The answer is simple: CONTENT

We need to remember when we are creating websites for the church that the purpose of the website is ultimately the purpose of the Great Commission: to help people come to know Jesus as Savior and to grow to maturity in the Christian faith.

Churches create websites for different reasons than secular groups do and we must NEVER forget that if we are to have an effective website. It isn't flashy graphics or the latest technology or how "cool" or "edgy" that our site looks that is most important, it is our CONTENT.

Content that is important

Content that is important falls into several categories:

  • Basic church information: times, dates, locations, all the details about ministries that actually will connect people with the ministry.
  • Overview information about your church: this content answers basic questions, including: Who are you? What do you believe? Are you part of a larger group? Who is that group or denomination? Why is that important and what do they believe?
  • Core content about the Christian faith: What does it mean to be a Christian? How do I become one? What does it mean to grow in faith and how do I do that? Your denomination may have a unique way of explaining this, do that on site.
  • How your church expresses the basics of the Christian faith and what it means to grow to mature discipleship.
  • Articles on how staff members either explain the Christian faith or their approach to ministry.

All of these areas of content are vital. In addition, you need more than just a sentence or two to describe them and they need to be constantly updated to be of any use at all.

You must know how to get this information on your website and how to continuously keep it updated. It isn't enough to buy a website with a fancy front page and then nothing but filled-in forms when people click-through for more information.What would you think of any company that did that for a product you wanted to learn more about? You'd think they were lazy and didn't really know what they were doing. People don't think any better of a church that looks great on the homepage, but is thin on content.

What you probably don't want (but might be doing) on your website

Most of you would probably agree with what I just wrote. I doubt if anyone would say:

  • "No, I want a website for my church that is static, boring, and with almost no content about the Christian faith."
  • "What I really want is a constantly out-dated site so visitors will think we are sloppy and lazy about our information."
  • "I want people to think Christianity is some sort of secret club. That's why I don't want my website to really tell them anything about our church or what our denomination believes."
  • "Most of all, I want people to think we are phony. To do that I'll use stock photos of smiling, happy, perfect people on my home page—people that nobody in our church or community actually looks like."

You may not verbalize any of these things, but it is pretty obvious that many church websites by the content that they have that without meaning to they are sending these messages.

How to get the content you want

Bottom line: you need a website creation system that will allow you to create and keep updated the content that is an important to your church and core to the Christian faith.

I can help you do that! I have a series of webinars that will guide you step-by-step how to do that.

If you want to see my latest real-life church responsibility--my husband a bi-vocational pastor who has recently been appointed  in charge of small groups at our church (smallish church now, been through big trauma, from one of the biggest in city to under 300 now)--you can go to the WordPress blog/website I created for the Small Group Ministry that almost totally died at the church. We are still building and have a long way to go, but this site and the interaction it has generated has been great at the church--here it is: http://smallgrouplinks.wordpress.com

This is a very simple site, I write all the content and send out weekly emails to update small group leaders, but it has really revitalized an almost totally dead ministry. It has lots of CONTENT and it is changing lives--people who never used online tools, or got into theological discussions, or been involved in small groups are going to the site   and commenting to me and the staff about it. It is a very small step, but the content is making a difference.

What the site cost to create—lots of time and NO money

We live in S. California and the economic recession has slammed our church. Our giving is less than half of what it was over a year ago. The church laid off half of the paid staff and more cuts are coming. That is why my husband is bi-vocational (has a handyman business that supports our ministry habits). This site cost zero dollars to produce, so fits well into the church budget now.  Obviously many hours of my time have gone into it, but I'd much rather use my free time to change lives for eternity than in other pursuits.

Even though the site for small groups didn't cost a penny to produce or host, as you can see, it still has a lot of things on it: lots of content, videos, graphics, pages and posts, tag clouds. In addition, the custom nameplate and side-bar video were both created in MS Publisher (the same process as described here).  I could have done much more, but as I said, I did it totally in volunteer free time and as always I didn't have enough time to do all I wanted to.

WordPress.com is what I used to create the site

The site you are on now was created with WordPress.org; the church website with WordPress.com.

You don't have to have fancy, moving graphic images to change lives. Simple sites with rich content can be used greatly by our Lord who delights in using small things for His glory.

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Filed Under: Website Creation Tagged With: church useful, church web creation, church website training, Church Websites, Communications, web, yvon prehn

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