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.

A reminder of the features and flexibility of MS Publisher

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MS Publisher for Churches
MS Publisher is a great program for churches and this e-book shows many of the reasons why.

I just finished an article for Ministry Tech magazine (if you haven't signed up for the FREE subscription to it, CLICK HERE) and as part of that article talked about how and why years ago I switched from using primarily Adobe PageMaker to MS Publisher to teach and equip church communicators.

As part of that explanation I mentioned an e-book I created years ago to illustrate all you can do with MS Publisher and how in many ways it can equal the design capabilities of far more expensive graphic design and layout programs. I wanted to share the e-book and you can download it by clicking here or on the image at the start of this article.

Some of the material in the book is a little out-dated, as Publisher has continued to improve, but it is still a useful reminder of how flexible and useful this program is for church communicators. [Read more...]

How I created an INFOGRAPHIC with MS Publisher

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Infographics are extremely popular today and though a number of free sites on the web that advertise how "easy" it is to create them, I didn't find them useful for my needs in Church Communications. After many failed attempts and frustration, I turned to MS Publisher and was very pleased with the results. You can see the finished graphic at:

Below is a short video that shows how I created it and below the video the resources mentioned in it.

[Read more...]

9 Reasons why MS Publisher is a great program for churches to use for print and graphic creation

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Why MS Publisher is recommended for Church Com teams
MS Publisher is a fantastic program to create not only publications, but graphics for print and web. At the end of this article, you can download this FREE PDF.

When I first encountered MS Publisher in the early days of creating communications with the computer, I would have never imaged I’d be recommending it as the program of choice for churches—and not only so you can create complex print layouts, but also graphics for print and the web.

At that time, if you wanted to create professional-looking publications, you chose Aldus Pagemaker.  Pagemaker gave you layout options and type-setting control, necessary for credible communications for churches, while Publisher’s main claim to fame was the ability to quickly create a moderately tacky-looking postcard quickly. [Read more...]

The Five Steps Strategy #4: Don’t let money be a determining factor

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The Five Steps can (and I have seen examples of this many times) can be implemented in any size church and on any budget. If you have (or are) a faithful communication creator who uses only MS Word, or WordPerfect, or MS Publisher or whatever—wonderful, useful communications can be created. You do not need to use high-end, expensive design programs.

The Adobe Creative Suite, Quark and other high-end programs can produce amazing things, but if you aren’t trained to use them incredibly well, someone who is well-trained in MS Publisher for example, can produce materials of comparable, or even better, quality. It is never the program that determines the quality of the final piece, it is the person who uses the program.

My personal favorite for communication creation for most churches is MS Publisher. Some very large churches with complex print needs may need Adobe CS. I use Adobe products to layout the books I produce because MS Publisher doesn’t handle longer documents as well.

However, book layout is a fairly specialized task and even churches who might use a more expensive program for some church communications, benefit from using MS Publisher to equip their communications team. Lots more about this topic on my website and in other materials, but MS Publisher is a great program, costs very little, and will create just about anything you can think of inexpensively and professionally.

In addition to being able to inexpensively create print materials, creating many web-based communications are FREE!

If you have no money, you can create incredible blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and all sorts of social networking communications for no cost, other than time. You can create great websites and have them hosted for no cost—see my section on my website about Websites for how. Podcasting costs very little (just the cost of a microphone and a $29 one from Target is what I use to record mine) to create and nothing to distribute. Extraordinary artwork, images, and photos are all available on the web, legally and free. You can then create slick, glossy, professional publications and have them printed in days for bargain prices through online publishers. My website, www.effectivechurchcom.com gives you instructions and resources on these areas. More materials are being created that will go into detail in these areas. My next book project is one on creating websites with WordPress and lots of material associated with that.  Be sure you are signed up for my email updates on my website to be notified of its release.

Loving people and Jesus and being in tune with what works for your folks, in your town, at your church, to the audience you are called to reach is far more important than attempting to create communications to meet some generic, professional publication standard, created by slickly marketed, high-end software, or buying communications from some company who tells you they are the answer to your needs if you will just spend a certain amount of money to do things for you. YOU DON’T NEED TO DO THAT!

You will always be tempted to spend more money for some new tool, but the training of your people and their commitment to fully fulfilling the Great Commission are the most important ingredients required to create of communications the Lord can use to change lives and you don’t need much money to do that. If you have extra money, use it to feed hungry kids.

That last statement was not a gratuitous Christian remark. When we stand before Jesus, he will not ask us what software we used to create the glossy, four-color bulletin or if we pulled off a website with scrolling images in the header. We do have to let him know about what we did about hungry kids.