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.

Follow the example of the Apostle Paul—make Halloween a great time for Evangelism and FREE materials to help you do that!

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Or how to use everything that is bad about Halloween as a tool to share the gospel—

If there is a holiday that causes controversy in the church, it is Halloween. Some churches welcome it as a great time to do community outreach with alternative Halloween events; others shake their fingers and condemn churches that even mention the term.

It’s always easier to curse the darkness than to flood it with light, but taking our cue from the Apostle Paul who used the pagan idols in Athens as his bridge to sharing the gospel, I'd like to challenge you to use this time of year to share the gospel.

Following is a brief video of the material that follows and after it the text of it and at the end of the blog, FREE Downloadable materials for you to use in your Halloween outreach. Please make the most of them and don't miss this opportunity!

[Read more...]

Halloween Outreach Materials: postcards, invitation cards, bulletin inserts, sign-in and follow up cards

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Cover of Overview of the Editable MS Publisher Files
Click here to download the PDF. It is an overview of the editable MS Publisher files and how to use them for effective Halloween Outreach.

This publication is from several years ago, yet it has some materials that are also useful and the process is very useful also. You can change images or the media, but the strategy of what to do before, during and after a special event to get the most out of it remains the same.

The publications illustrated here cover every aspect of preparation for, what to use during and follow-up for effective Halloween outreach including:

***Motivational bulletin insert
***Invitation Cards
***Case-study, volunteer recruitment brochure
***Sign-in cards
***Cards to give out as people leave your event

Click on the PDF for a free overview of all the communications with ideas on how to use them. [Read more...]

Why everything sinful about Halloween makes it perfect for Outreach!

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Halloween outreach
How to take what is evil about Halloween and turn it into a reason to share about Jesus!

Lots of churches don't do outreach events at Halloween because they think they are sinful--but this brief video shows you how the very things that make Halloween sinful and repulsive to many church people--the focus on death, the supernatural and similar things are what make Halloween a PERFECT time for outreach.

We can use these topics and the interest people have in them as bridges to conversations about Jesus. The video here shows you how the Apostle Paul did that and how we can use this time of year to do it in our communities.

CLICK HERE TO go to LINKS to motivation and tools to help you share the good news about Jesus at Halloween

Free excerpt of the ebook Halloween, a great time for evangelism

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Halloween & Fall Festivals
This book has articles and advice on how to make the most of this time of year for evangelism.

One of the core teachings of Effective Church Communications is that we can take any seasonal celebration and use it as an opportunity to share the gospel.

It might seem that one of the more challenging holidays to apply that teaching is Halloween but in reality, it is one of the easiest ones. That's because this is the one time of year when people are thinking about the afterlife, of life after death. Granted the secular view of this is distorted, but it does make a great bridge to a discussion about the reality that we are eternally existing souls.

Most people believe they will live forever, but the question is, if we are going to live forever, what neighborhood will we live in?

Halloween acknowledges there is a neighborhood of hellish horror and evil. Though people might make fun of it, they can't help but wonder what truth there is to the existence of demons and everlasting punishment. Along with that is the almost universal belief or wish, if you will, of an afterlife of light reunited with loved ones.

But how can you be sure?

Halloween gives Christians the opportunity to share why they believe that Jesus is the only Savior who conquered death and who can give us eternal life and peace and a home in the neighborhood of joy if we trust Him as Savior.

The book, Halloween, a great time for evangelism is filled with ideas, tips, plans, and communications that will help you do that.

For a free download of an excerpt of the book, click the following link: Pages from Halloween & Fall Festivals

The complete book is part of the Effective Church Communication Library; click the following link to sign up for the ECC Library and download it: https://payhip.com/b/mqoWE

A Case Study to help you be more successful in recruiting volunteers, using Trunk or Treat as an example

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Sucessful fall church outreach
Fall is a great time for church outreach and the ideas here will make sure you get enough volunteers to make your event successful.

Yvon's note: though this material and the video is several years old, it has some extremely useful material that will help you be successful in your fall outreach. Consider the production values and artwork a retro memory and learn from the timeless principles represented.

Recruiting enough volunteers is always a challenge for any church event and few are the churches that report they have enough. When the event takes place and there are not enough people, not only is it tiring for the staff and the volunteers that are there, but it is spiritually trying also. When this happens, we ask ourselves:

Why didn't more people help?
Don't people care about their neighbors?
Doesn't outreach matter?

These and many other questions haunt us and make us hesitant to be enthusiastic about upcoming events.

In evaluating many instances of this kind, I've put together the online Video below that has a Case Study with specifics and samples that I trust will help you be more successful in recruiting people for your next church outreach event.

As you can imagine (this being a church communication ministry) I believe that the primary problem with not getting enough volunteers is in the communication that comes from the church—the problem is not in our people, but in us. Often we don't communicate nearly as well as we think we did to let people know how much we needed their help or even, as you'll see in the case of Trunk or Treat, even what the event is about.

This video would be excellent to watch with your church staff. Remember you can click on the little box of arrows at the bottom of the video to blow it up full size on your screen. Simply hook up the computer to a projector and you can show it to the entire staff. [Read more...]