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.

Easter return bulletin insert converted to JPG for additional usefulness

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Easter Questions flyer in Jpg format
This image has been converted to a resizable jpg for you to be able to copy and use in your Easter communications.

This website exists to serve you and though I can't answer every request, when you need something in a format that would be useful to you in your ministry, send me an email and let me know.

A kind request from a church communicator was the inspiration for this project. The situation that she described to me was that her church did not allow the use of bulletin inserts and she wanted to know if she could have the file in a format where she could use it without having to recreate it.

In addition, since she had to put the entire piece into the bulletin with only one side showing of course she could not print the "back " material, the website listing there. I did not give the text for that in the other article about this insert. That oversight has been corrected and the text for the back of this insert with the websites listed is in an updated version of the complete article about this insert.

I worked on redoing the insert, sent it to her and it worked!

So I am sharing it with all of you. I will be doing more of these in the future in addition to the downloable PDFs I currently do......of course in the future, these will be for members primarily.

The image here is a jpg, resizeable graphic. Just click on it and when you go to the page with only it on it, copy it and paste it into whatever you want. Download the PDF to the right and it will illustrate the various ways you can use the image.

A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.
A PDF of the various ways you can modify and use this image.use theimage.

You can resize it for a newsletter, handout or your bulletin.

Click on the image at the left to download it; click on the image on the right to download the sheet showing how you can crop and use it.

The importance of involving Children in Easter outreach (don’t just entertain them)

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Strategy for Children's events at Easter might consist of simple publications, but these simple publications can have far-reaching results in how they bring people to your Easter church service and how many return on an ongoing basis. Many people today will come to a church they feel is good for their children. They might not personally be interested but they want something wholesome for their kids. As many churches know this is often a wonderful way to eventually get the entire family involved.

To start, children's invitations to Easter events can and should be very different from the ones you send out to your community and that you give to adults. Many churches have wonderful activities for children at this time of year and children are never too young to learn how to be inviters.

The invitations here offer tools to help them do that.

Both invitations are one-quarter page size and are ready to print PDFs. They would work well-printed on light-weight card stock. A heavy paper would also work well. Make up lots of them and give them out to the children in your church.

Along with giving out the invitations, this is a great time to teach children that church events are not just times to enjoy for themselves. Church events are opportunities to introduce their friends to the church and to Jesus.

Join us for Easter Fun InvitationWhen children invite their friends, when they see families come who have never been to church, when they see the people at your church welcome and enfold visitors and when they see their friends come to know Jesus—these experiences will teach them the joy of evangelism in a practical, experiential way.

No matter how wonderful your children's program for Easter, you don't want people to experience one Sunday and never come back.

You need to give them something as they leave your church or children's program that lets them know what else you have going on and invites them to return. No matter how impressed they were or how much the like you, you need to give them the concrete details that will actually link them to your church events.

Bunny Return Invitation
A Bulletin insert or giveaway to remind people to come back to your children's program after Easter.

This ready-to-print PDF can be personalized on the back with information specific to your church. Please be sure to include your website and be sure that on it you have detailed information about your children's program and contact information if people need more information.

Intentional work will result in eternal life-changes

It is a lot of work to do all that needs to be done in your children's ministry at Easter, but taking the time to intentionally involve the children in inviting and to intentionally create complete follow-up materials will result in eternal life-changes for the people who respond to Jesus through your hard work.

In closing I want to emphasize how important it is that you involve the children of your church in the inviting process. It is so easy for kids to think that Easter is all about the goodies that they are going to get and it is so easy for parent's to expect the church to offer a good time for their children. That attitude misses the point of Easter. Please take the time to teach your children to give as Jesus gave and to take the time to invite their friends to Easter events at your church.

All of these are available in ready-to-print PDFs.

Below is the link to it.

Book Cover For Easter PDFs
This booklet has 40 pages of ready-to-print Easter communications. It is free for ECC MEMBERS.

To download the PDF collection (the kids stuff is near the end), click on the following link: #1 Easter 2010 PDFs COMPLETE

You also communciate by what you don't do—the importance of the people channel

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True story here: a couple had started attending a new church. Excited about it, when the church asked for volunteers to work at various tasks for the Easter service, they signed up, adding a little note telling how they were looking forward to doing this, really wanted to serve wherever needed, would come early to make sure they could be put to work.

A week went by and two. No response from the church via email or phone.

At the Easter service, the person in charge of volunteers by chance encountered them, "Oh, I didn't get around to calling you—I have enough people now, but do you think you could stay after to clean up?"

The couple honestly had a firm commitment to be somewhere directly after the service, but I doubt even without it, if they would have volunteered to help. Sadly, I doubt if they will volunteer for much of anything again.

What you don't do can hurt deeply

I'm sure the person in charge of the big Easter production didn't mean to be unkind, but she was. She didn't mean to make these new folks feel unwanted and ignored but she did.

This illustrates the very important power of the people channel in communication. We pay close attention to our print and digital channels in our church communications, but the people channel is equally important. No matter how great your graphics or content, if you treat people rudely (and to not respond to a request for volunteers is very rude), that is what they will remember.

Never ask for something in a church publication, if you don't follow up. Even if you have to say you have enough volunteers, have the courtesy to call and let people know.

People are far more fragile in their emotions that they will often let on and we must honor every effort they make to reach out to the church. To not do that communicates loudly that you don't care.