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; Effective Church Communications can help.
To touch hearts and change, lives it takes more than a list of facts. We want people to see an image in their mind's eye that will cause them to feel an emotion they can respond to.
A PDF of the article: How to write visually. We want to do more than convey information, we want to create images in the mind's eye so our readers can see the lessons we want to share.
It is not difficult to this, but you have to be intentional about it in your writing. This PDF article will help you.
To download the PDF of the article, click here or on the image.
note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.
The most important thing about newsletters, whether you ultimately mail them out, post them as a PDF on your website, or use an online newsletter to create them, is the CONTENT in the newsletter. People do not read church newsletters to check out the great graphic design skills of the church—they read them to find out connecting facts and inspirational updates, such as:
when and where the youth group is meeting
if the church event has a cost and/or childcare
how to become part of a small group
they read the pastor's column to learn more about him or her as a person
they scan the updates that head of the ministry in which they serve to see has to share this month that affects them
Bottom line: if your newsletter provides relevant, timely, useful content for the people of your church it is effective and successful. [Read more...]
The masthead of your publication can be used for ministry insight and humor as well as simply information. Download this PDF to see an great example.
This publication was done in the early days of desktop publishing, but don't let the outdated look distract you from some great content and a wonderful communication lesson.
What makes this so great came to my attention by accident. I was helping this group evaluate the content of the newsletter and we did a survey asking people what their favorite sections were. The newsletter had columns by very good writers and well-done ministry updates.
To everyone's surprise, the #1 favorite of everyone was not any of the great inspirational writing or the great updates, but the nameplate. Download the PDF and you'll see why—each month the staff gave a brief note about themselves—sometimes revealing some quite interesting information.
A take-away lesson: don't be afraid to make your communications in print and online human. Be who you are.
You don't have to do lengthy, tell-all blogs to allow your readers to get to know you. You can have tiny updates each month on Facebook or Twitter or short blog entries asking questions like this masthead does and bit-by-bit you will form relationships. As this newsletter shows, little phrases can convey big insights.
note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.
Reporter form, a great tool to enable you to get all the information you need for your communications
As a church communication creator, the value of the information that you put out in print, on the web, in your bulletins, newsletters, and other communications is only as good as of completeness of the communication information you are given.
To help you get the complete information, a form like this can be a life-saver. Often people don't give you the information they need because they forget or don't realize how important it is (and sometimes they are just onery, but this form can't help with that).
This form gives them a checklist to fill out and then you can take the information to create the communications you need. Instead of asking people to write things of a specific length or style, you have the facts and you can do up what you need. It might seem at first that this takes longer, but it doesn't and you have far fewer misunderstandings and problems over what might have been left out if you do it this way.
Also, sometimes it is easier to call people and interview them for the necessary information and a form like this enables you to have something to fill out while you are on the call.
note: this PDF is from Yvon Prehn's archives and is the only format of this article available presently. Not the greatest quality to be sure, but shared with the belief that the content is useful.
