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

28 March, 2011 By Yvon Prehn 6 Comments

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...]

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Filed Under: MS Publisher Tagged With: church communication software, ebook for church communicators, MS Publisher, MS Pulbisher for churches, yvon prehn, Yvon Prehn book

Reality of church communication—challenging spiritual warfare

22 March, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  (Eph. 6:12-13)

Working for the Lord in church communications is hard.

The bottom-line reality is that we are in a war. And in any war, one of the first things the enemy tries to knock out the communications equipment of their opponent. You aren’t just  “doing the bulletin” or some other isolated project. You are the communication center for spiritual warfare for your church. When you got into communications work for your church or ministry you entered one of the most intense areas of spiritual warfare raging today. Satan wants to knock you out.

Troubles with hardware, software, and co-workers are to be expected. Especially people problems should be no surprise because Satan is “the accuser of our brothers” (Rev. 12:10) and one of the easiest ways to cripple you in the battle is to get you fighting with your fellow soldiers. Don’t let him win; don’t take on his job.

Remember also that you are in a war that has already been won. When Jesus died on the cross, he said, “It is finished!” When he rose from the grave, he conquered sin and death.

Because of Jesus’ finished work, our battle resembles the fighting of the resistance fighters in France at the end of WW2. The allies landed on D-Day and basically the war was over, but until Paris was liberated, the war wasn’t over for the French Resistance. The resistance army still had to fight. If you study the history of the resistance, you find that one of their primary weapons was communications. “Freedom is coming—the war is over—hold on until the victors arrive!” That was their message and ours is the same.

We may be involved in spiritual warfare, but we don’t have to fight alone. We can expect help for the battle. Our help never comes ultimately from new equipment, or a more peaceful work situation, or more considerate workers. Our help comes from our Lord and from doing our work according to his Word.

Learn to encourage yourself from the Word of God. If you don’t train yourself to look at the battle you are in as spiritual warfare, if you don’t draw your strength from Jesus, your job will be much more difficult than it should be.

God did not put you in your work to simply survive. Do your work with joy and passion, with your eyes on heaven and know that though the daily battles might be difficult, the war is over, victory is assured, and your King is coming.

from:
The Heart of Church Communications, beyond tools and techniques,
a biblical basis for creating church communications
by Yvon Prehn, available from www.lulu.com/yvonprehn

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: communication as warfare, spiritual warfare, yvon prehn

Webinar VIDEO & PDF handouts: You can do it! You can create all of the communications materials you need, inexpensively, at your church, and by your people

11 March, 2011 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Today everyone is concerned about the costs and the ability of their church to do all the communication they need to do. I firmly believe that every church has the people and ability they need and can afford the necessary training to do all their church needs to do.

This video will give you a flying overview of some of the programs and training that will help your church accomplish its goals. WARNING: it may be frustrating because in many of the areas you'll want me to stop and show you how to use the software or program in depth--that is not the purpose of this video and there is either training on this website in the various areas or there will be. This Webinar/Video was created to show you what is possible.

Here are the PDFs of the handouts for the video.

Handouts for Video There will be a number of additional training materials posted on this site that go into the topics here in more depth. Please be sure you are signed up on our mailing list to receive them.

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Filed Under: Misc. Advice and Articles Tagged With: church communication basics, church communication resources, Communications, how to church communications, you can create church communications, yvon prehn

Webinar: Why your church needs to create Multi-channel Communications, or why you can’t just put your church bulletin on the web and be done with it

7 March, 2011 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

What is the best communication channel for your church to reach people  today? Do you put everything, including your church bulletin, on your website and quit? Or is social media the answer to all your needs? Is print outdated or is it essential? Given that churches have limited time, money, and resources, how can we know we are using all of them in the best ways possible?

This webinar may surprise you with some of the proposed answers, especially with what it has to say about the continuing importance of a printed church bulletin. The webinar would be an excellent one to show during a staff meeting and to discuss following the viewing.

Below the video is a PDF of handouts for the webinar and these are for Effective Church Communication Members only. For ECC Members there is also a link to the ebook: Are Written Bulletins Still Needed in the Church?

Here are the handouts that go with the video.   Print them up ahead of time, so people can take notes.Church Handouts Mulit channel

Just click on the image and the PDF will open on your screen for you to print.

 

 

 

 

 

The ebook, Are written bulletins still needed in the church?, is also free for Effective Church Communication Members. CLICK HERE to go to it.

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Filed Under: Church Bulletins Tagged With: church bulletin inserts, church bulletins, Communications, multi-channel communications, yvon prehn

How a limited number of communication channels limited the ministry of a church

24 December, 2010 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

When you look at your church communications plans and goals for all the options you have in communication channels, it would be helpful to look at this question from one church and my response to it:

“We have a website and bulletin, both of which are beautifully done, and we put the newsletter in a PDF email format on the website, and still nobody comes to our events! People say they don't know what is going on. We decided to cut down on the number of communications we were sending out so as not to overwhelm people and now even less people attend events than did before.”

Though I tried to sympathize with their situation I knew immediately what was happening—it’s a common response to shifting technologies that I’ve heard from many church communicators . Like Solomon said, “there is nothing new under the sun.”

Though church communicators often feel alone because they seldom have the opportunity to talk to other church communicators, many churches have the same frustrations. One opportunity the Lord has given me from traveling thousands of miles every year for over a decade and interacting with many church communicators online, is that I have a bird’s eye view of what is going on in church communications and most of the problems experienced by one church are experienced by many. This situation was not unique--there were several  incorrect assumptions they were making that may have caused their problems .

The rest of this article is an expansion of the advice I shared with them.

Incorrect assumption #1: Assuming less communication is more effective than more communication

Go ahead; read that statement again. It’s goofy.

Imagine trying this in a marriage: "Sweetheart, I think we can communicate better if I only talk to you once a week and only in the way and time I want to."

We know a lack of communication would kill any marriage, any relationship, but it is amazing to me how many church communicators say similar things with a straight face. Less communication doesn't improve any relationship or make any response better.  It doesn’t matter how busy people are who how new and appealing a technology is. In communication, less is seldom more.

Think about it:

  • Do you think direct mail marketers communicate less because mailing less is the best way to sell their product?
  • Do you think a TV advertiser will limit himself to one commercial an hour so that people won’t be tired of hearing about his insurance company?
  • Do you think your spouse will know you love him if you only tell him that once a week so as not to be an emotional bother? Or better yet, never verbally tell him. Or maybe it’s your wife—if she is twenty something and loves the web, you decide the best way to communicate is to post your love for her on a marriage communication Facebook page that you update on a weekly basis. Do you think she'll appreciate your technical expertise in your disciplined, yet technically perfect, declarations of love?

The answers to these questions are obvious and it should be obvious that putting out less communication is NOT the way to be more effective in your church communication ministry. It takes a lot of communications in every available channel to get across the ministry messages of churches today.

Why is it that so many people in so many churches make this statement? I think danger #2 answers that question.

Incorrect assumption #2: Assuming that everybody sees, reads, remembers, and pays attention to every communication you put out

This assumption is wildly far from true. Yes, people might get tired of things if they saw every email, postcard, bulletin insert, and web posting on a topic that we put out, but they don’t.

Studies show that less than 20% of your congregation is at your every week in a month; 30% are able to be there 3 weeks out of a month; another 30% 1-2 weeks out of a month and about 20% of your church people cannot attend on Sunday (often work-related these days). If you only advertise something for a couple of weeks, probably half your people never even see it. Also, do you believe 100% of the people there each week are paying attention to every word you print and every announcement you make? Have you ever tracked how many people come in after the PowerPoint announcements?

For other forms of communication, remember not everyone has email and lots of people who have it don’t read it very often. Not everyone reads all their postal mail. Not everyone can read. This is a sad fact few churches take note of and in addition, some people, who may be able to read in one language, cannot read English well.

That’s why successful advertisers know that repetition, repetition, repetition of the message in every possible channel is the only way to make sure a message is communicated. You may be sick to death of a getting out a message that most of your audience will only hear once or twice.

Incorrect assumption #3: Assuming all your people want to receive communications in the same way you do. In other words, assuming your preferred communication channel is the preferred communication channel of your church members.

This is the big one and a danger many church are falling into today with the best of intentions.  The danger is that they were putting out communications in the channels they preferred (they told me this honestly) – and that preference is the same for many church communicators—primarily web and PDF email.

Though these two communication channels are easy for churches to produce, they are not the channels easily accessible to or preferred by many people. Few folks will wait for a large PDF to download with a dial-up connection. Even if they can download a PDF newsletter, not everyone likes to read them on the screen (especially if the creator of it designed it for paper, not screen reading). If they don’t want to read it on the screen, they may begrudge the ink cost to print out all the pretty colored pictures that are in the newsletter.

Few people will go on to the website to hunt for details of where to go for a church activity, especially if they remember at the last minute. If you have not been totally up-to-date and complete about the times, dates, locations and all important scheduling details for church on your website in the past, people won’t even think of going to it. A postcard or bulletin insert on the refrigerator with all the times and details may be a more useful channel, if not as exciting or cutting edge. Much of this is changing and the web is becoming more and more important, but it takes a long time for any newer technology to be used by many of people in the church. Even as more people are online more, most churches are not up-to-date with even facts on their websites.

For youth events, if the information isn’t accessible by cell phone; it probably won’t be accessed. Cell phones and texting are the primary means teens communicate today and if a church staff member does not have the technology or the skills to use this channel, they will have difficulty communicating with them. Mobile phone accessible websites and information are becoming essential for some age groups. Often this requires design characteristics (much more simple sites) that may not be compatible with the overall church website.

Why it’s easy for churches to fall into these dangers

In my seminars I remind church leaders of the “church office bubble,” the world those of us who work in the church live in. When we are in it, it is so easy to forget what life is like for those who do not live in our familiar bubble. We know understanding and overcoming our tendency to use jargon and talk to ourselves is foundational to outreach communication success, but it is also important that we are aware of our unconscious preferences in communication channels and how these affect the communication of our message.

The issue in choice of communication channels is that those who create communications and those in the church office are included in this, by their natures and jobs are often "early adaptors."  Some love the technology; they want to try all the latest and greatest tools. Some may not love it personally, but their church office manager or pastor does and there is often subtle peer pressure to learn and create with the latest technology. These tendencies are understandable, but we have to be careful that they do not negatively influence our communications by causing us to produce communications that we like to produce, but that are not necessarily ones people want to receive.

The folks from the church referred to at the start of this article, which were experiencing a low response, really liked creating the fancy bulletin, the PDF newsletter, and the website. That’s great that they enjoyed doing those things. But by their own admission, this focus on what they considered simple to do and cutting-edge was not working with many in their congregation.

Bottom line: create what you love because some of your audience will love it also, but in addition, love your church audience enough to create a variety of communication channels so that the people with the slowest computers and those without computers will also hear and have the opportunity to respond to the communications from your church.

Biblical considerations in multi-channel communications

Technology aside, we must always remember that those who name Jesus as Lord must always keep our eyes on Jesus and his Word as our guide for every aspect of our communications.

One theme woven throughout the fabric of the Bible is the concern of our Creator for the poor. There will always be inequalities (in everything from finances to bandwidth) in our fallen world and there is always the temptation of those who have much to ignore those who have little. This is as true in technology as it is in monetary resources. There is always the temptation for those who minds work quickly to be impatient with those who learn slowly; for those who love the new to disdain those who fear it.

If Jesus is Lord, we may create an incredible multi-media website and full-color email blasts; but we make sure there are also postcards, large-print bulletins, and handouts and personal phone calls for those more comfortable with these channels of communication.

Remember, doing this sort of servant work for "the least of these" is doing communication work for Jesus. He who created and named all the stars is not impressed with our technical abilities, but when we pour our hearts out in communication projects, both complex and simple, to make sure everyone is informed and shown love by the time-intensive work required—those channels of communication merit his favor.

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Filed Under: Multi-Channel Communications, Website Creation Tagged With: Church Websites, communication channels, Communications, multi-channel communication, yvon prehn

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