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.

Halloween Outreach Videos and how to use them to reach unchurched people for Jesus

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Halloween Outreach video
Use this video to get people thinking about Jesus, the only person who conquered death.

Halloween is a fantastic time for evangelism outreach because everyone is talking about death and the supernatural. That makes it a perfect opportunity for you to engage unchurched people in a conversation about Jesus. The following are two versions of the same video that will help do that.

At the end of this article are download links to download HD versions of both videos for you to use in your Halloween Outreach. Do whatever you'd like with them.

The first one is a mellow one with Christian background music and soft fall graphics background.

The second one is a much more in-your-face with the music and a harsher graphics background—different ones for different audiences.

This video was created for you to share with your unchurched audience. Please download, share, link to your website. The other version of it has more mellow, church music if you prefer that.

Soft style of the video:

In-your-face style of the video:

Following is some information you can copy and share on your website after the video. It has a challenge for people to consider Jesus as well as websites for them to go to for more information. You have permission to copy, change, use however you want:

[Read more...]

Why we need to share the gospel at Halloween and the tools to help you do that

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In church communications, we do what we do because we believe that the eternal destinies of people depends on how they respond to Jesus. We know that--but in the midst of long days and overwhelming demands it is easy to forget.

As we approach Halloween, I know this isn't a holiday most people think of as being particularly spiritually challenging, but it really is. At this time of year, everyone is thinking about and talking about the supernatural and that makes it one of the easiest times to bring up the topic of the one person who conquered death--Jesus.

Erasing hell, a great motivational book for Halloween outreach
This book provides great motivation for Halloween outreach because it is a reminder of the eternal consequences of our decisions about Jesus.

Francis Chan's and Preston Sprinkle's book, Erasing Hell. In addition to being a very well-researched and well-written book, I greatly appreciated the tone of the book, which is one of gracious, gentle conviction.

Though the tone is gentle, the topic is about one of the hard issues of our faith--the eternal destiny of people who die without Jesus as Savior. Universalism, the idea that eventually everybody goes to heaven, is the popular answer today (one of the great promoters of this being Rob Bell's book, Love Wins), but popular as the idea might be, as this book shows through careful historical facts and careful biblical exegesis, universalism is simply wrong.

As much as we might wish it were otherwise, the eternal destiny of every person--literally heaven or hell depends on what we do with Jesus. Your job is to make that clear and that is why your work in church communication is of extraordinary importance. We can do that with our church communications and below is a list of communication resources for Halloween.

The purpose of this website is to help you create communications that enable your church to fully fulfill the Great Commission. That is why we do all we do.

[Read more...]

FREE Text for Halloween Outreach for invitations, postcards, congregational motivation

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Halloween Cards to Consider Jesus
This article contains the text-only files for all these communications, free for anyone to copy and use.

Following are the text only files from the Halloween materials. These text files are for anyone who wants to use them to create Halloween outreach materials

If you are an ECC Member you have access to them in finished files, click here to go to the overview page that shows how they are used in church communications and for the download. If you'd like more information on how to become a Member of Effective Church Communications and save yourself the time and work of creating these communications yourself, CLICK HERE.

For everyone, for all the materials that follow, PLEASE simply copy, download and use in any way you want to help your congregation reach people for Jesus this Halloween season.

Motivational text to get your congregation to invite  [Read more...]

Having fun and not sinning is not the point of the Christian life or of Christian communications

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Is having fun what defines a Christian? Is FUN what makes a church even worthwhile? Is fun why we do what we do (whatever it is) in the Christian life?

When you look at many current church communications, you'd assume the answer was "yes." A recent scanning of material on the web as I was researching alternative Halloween events overwhelmingly advertised events or promoted activities where the FUN promised is promoted as the primary reason people should attend. Though the focus of this blog is on the combination of Halloween communications and the emphasis of FUN (intentional shouting with the all capital letters), the same concerns and cautions apply to our communication of many church outreach events.

How fun becomes the primary motivation for Halloween alternative events

Much of the thinking process behind many of these "Christian" alternatives to Halloween on the web seems to go something like this:

  1. Halloween is evil.
  2. To take part in a traditional secular celebration of Halloween is evil and sinful.
  3. Christians shouldn't do evil and sin.
  4. Instead Christians should have good, clean fun.
  5. Therefore our church will do a fun event for Halloween.
  6. People will see we are Christians by our fun.

I don't have a problem with the list up to #3—much of traditional Halloween celebrations are evil. Maybe not as evil as some timid folks fear, but probably not activities that would fall into the class of edifying Christian activities. Dressing up as demons and witches and glorifying magic is not what Christians ought to be doing. Sending your kids out alone to beg for candy in most areas today isn't safe.  But the alternative to fighting evil or working to fulfill the Great Commission is not to simply have safe fun. [Read more...]

Editable Halloween MS Publisher materials plus a preview PDF for all

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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.

Ed. note: This is an older collection and the artwork on a number of the pieces could use some updating, but still some very useful ideas and resources for Halloween Outreach. 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.

Below you can click on the links below to download the two ZIP files that has editable MS Publisher files for the outreach publications illustrated. The first file has all the PR, invitation, outreach, sign up and follow-up cards. The second file has a PDF of the brochure.

Just download and save the ZIP file on your computer, click to open it and then you can open and edit any MS Publisher file there. You must have a copy of MS Publisher on your computer for this to work.

Click here to download the ZIP file

Click here to download the Brochure for Trunk or Treat File