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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Communications for a good continuing relationship with your volunteers

19 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Every church is desperate for volunteers. It's not only important to effectively recruit them, but after they are recruited, it is equally important to work hard to keep them. Unfortunately, the difference between how we treat volunteers when we are recruiting them and after they vol­unteer is sometimes similar to the difference with some couples between courtship and marriage. Before the wedding the groom is all flowers and candy; after the wedding he becomes Mr. Grumpy.

Don’t become Mr. or Mrs.Grumpy to your volunteers. Be as kind, caring and thankful to them when they have been around for 6 months as you are the first week. You can express that thankfulness to them through a variety of church communication  projects such as:

Reminders of meetings or volunteer responsibilities

You may be reluctant to do this thinking that you are unnecessarily bothering people, but we need to re­member that unlike many of us, the lives of most of our volunteers do not revolve around the church. People may volunteer with the best of intentions, but if they did not write down all the details after perhaps signing up in the church lobby to do something, it is so easy to forget all about it.

Sending out postcards or emails  a few days ahead of any volunteer meeting or can be a great way to serve your volunteers. Say something like:

“Thanks so much for vol­unteering to serve on the missions com­mittee! We will be meeting 7-9 PM Thurs­day night, December 8 at the Jones house on 5555 Any Street. We’ll be looking for­ward to seeing you.”

You don’t even have to change the card  or email month to month, just change the date and send them out again. Your vol­unteers will love you. One church secre­tary in my seminars said at the end of each month she took several hours to go over the calendar for the coming month. She made up postcards, mostly just changing the date from the previous month reminding everyone of all the vari­ous meetings going on at the church. It didn’t take long to produce them doing them all at once. After they were pro­duced (mostly just on the ink jet printer with the light weight card stock), she filed them in an index card box according to the day they needed to be sent out. For example on the 5th she might send out no­tices for the coming week for the elders meeting, the mission committee and the choir prayer team. Volunteers loved this and people were much more consistent in showing up for meetings.

You can do the same thing if you send out email reminders. Programs like Constant Contact (and all other bulk email programs today) have a feature that allows you to create emails and schedule ahead for when you want to send them out.

Find out how people want to be reminded

If we could send out only postcards or only emails, it would certainly make life easier for church communicators. But unfortunately, we are in a time of multi-channel communication with lots of ways to communicate and lots of people preferring different methods.

When people sign up for a volunteer position is a good time to find out how they prefer to be contacted: email or print. It is our job to serve them in ways that make it possible for them to serve our church.

Do more than remind people of work to do; thank them

Thank you post cards are great to mix in the mailing of reminders. People love to get a personal note from the pas­tor. One way you can help the pastor is to put a big piece of clip art and preprint something like: “We are SO THANKFUL you are part of the Missions Committee!”  on the card. Just leave a little bit of white space, just enough so the pastor has room to write something short, like “Jim, we couldn’t do it without you! Blessings, Pastor John.”

Emails can also be a great encouragement and some of the online greetings cards are a wonderful way to say thank you. I especially like the ones from www.dayspring.com, though there are quite a few companies out there.

None of these projects take lots of time, work or money, but expressing your thanks in tangible ways through church communications is a wonderful way to improve your working relationship with your volunteers.

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Filed Under: Communication Teams, Volunteer Management Tagged With: Communications, volunteer appreciation, volunteers, yvon prehn

VIDEO: Video review of Cute PDF, free PDF creator

17 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn 2 Comments

PDF stands for "portable document format."

Though there are many uses for PDFs, one of the most practical uses is that if you save a document as a PDF you can transfer it files created in ANY program from a volunteers home to be printed at the church office. For example, say a church communication volunteer only uses PrintShop, another only PageMaker, and the church office only has MS Word and MS Publisher. How do you print communications they create for the church?

This brief little video shows you a great little program you can use to create PDFs. Cute PDF is a free program (it has a paid version, but the free works great). For some specialized uses printers require PDFs be created with Adobe, (which costs $99-$499), but this program works great for most church communication uses

If they all have Cute PDF (which anyone can download for free), they can save the file as a PDF and then email it to the church. The church can print out the publication using the PDF and the church office does not need to have the program that created the communication.

The only negative of this situation is that any corrections need to be made by the original creator of the communication, but if all goes well this is a great tool.

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Filed Under: Production, Skills Tagged With: church print production, church volunteers, Communications, PDF creation, yvon prehn

What church leaders need to do for their church communication creators

12 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

This article is for church leaders and those who oversee church communicators. You are responsible for the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people who create your communications. Their job is vital to the growth and success of the church, but often they do their job under very difficult circumstances.

Please consider the following suggestions to help you effectively pastor and shepherd these vital members of your church team. They do so much for the church, following is what you can do for them:

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Realize the important place communications and church communicators play in the overall strategic success of your church

"What people haven't heard about they can't take action about. Uncommunicated issues DON'T EXIST." Stuart Brand

"Why is communication so vitally important to the health and vitality of the local church? Communication is the means by which we reach our ministry goals. You cannot find a healthy, growing church that is plagued by ineffective communications. Such an animal simply does not exist. If your church is going to maximize its potential, it is  imperative that you understand the communication process and constantly strive to upgrade how well you and others in your church communicate." George Barna, Marketing the Church

No matter how Bible-based, prayed over and passionate you are about your vision for the church, if it is not sequentially, clearly, consistently, and repeatedly communicated to your church, it will not happen. Today, the role of your church communicator in making your vision real has grown in importance because of two primary reasons:

  1. In our post-Christian world people don't have the unthinking understanding of churches that they did in the past. Church is not a part of people's lives today in the same way it was in the past and because of that, your church needs to be much more intentional about its communicators than ever before. This often requires that either a person be hired with the specific role of Church Communicator or Director of Church Communications, or in a church where the administrative assistant or church secretary has to juggle many responsibilities, where the title of Church Communicator is at least a professional part of that person's job description.
  2. The demands of technology and multi-channel communications make it necessary. In the past when the church had one communication tool: the church bulletin and one way to produce it: the typewriter, communication was still extremely important, but it was much easier to manage that task for the church secretary in the midst of the many other demanding tasks in the church office. Today when many kinds of communications produced through many channels: print, PowerPoint, web, social media are needed by churches, the role of the church communicator is more important than ever.

Because the role of church communicator is vital to the success of your church today, you need to support, involve, train, and encourage that person so they can serve the church most effectively. Following are some suggestions on how to do that.

 

Include your church communicator in strategic staff meetings

No matter what the communicators role is in the meetings—whether they can contribute to the discussion or not, whether their input is valued or not, whether they have a part in the decision making process or not, if you want your decisions clearly communicated to the congregation and your community, your church communicator needs to be in the meetings to do their job well.  All of the restrictions or inclusions mentioned above will vary depending on your church beliefs and practices, but if you want your decisions carried out, they need to be there in a listening role at a minimum. However, growing, successful churches greatly value and include their church communicators and churches can benefit greatly from the input of a skilled communicator. Your church communicator can:

  • Advise you on how well your congregation and community might respond to your message.
  • Suggest some ways other churches market or publicize ministry events.
  • Remind you of what was done in the past and the success or failure of communication methods.
  • Give you an evaluation on whether or not your church has the technology and resources needed to carry out your communication goals.
  • Help staff be realistic on the time needed to promote or communicate about events.
  • Help your message be consistent with other ministry messages in the church.
  • Suggest some communication channels that are new to the staff.
  • Provide feedback of program names, slogans, and approaches if you allow them to be honest.
  • Be a prayer partner to contribute to the success of the vision and ministries of the church.

There are so many things beyond this brief list that a well-trained and committed church communicator can do for your church. The rest of this article provides ways for you to help them be and do all they can for your church.

Give them authority

Communications people need authority to have the final say on editing decisions. They know how much space is available for articles and announcements and without authority they are constantly frustrated when someone demands every word is used and no changes made on what goes into the church bulletin or newsletter.

Practical ways to give them authority are:

  1. Make a decision on what they are in charge of and what they need to come to you for. In communications the church leadership should decide on basic themes and messages and perhaps even the overall look, but NOT on layout, or final editing of articles or announcements.
  2. Publicly announce and print your decision. You might say something like this. “Jenny Smith, our communications coordinator has final editing authority on the layout, deadlines and contents of materials that go into the bulletin and newsletter (and whatever else you want to list). She has posted her guidelines and submission deadlines on our website. Please support her decisions and deadlines so we can produce 1 Cor: 14:4 publications, ones done decently and in order.”
  3. Back up your decisions. Invariably people will test you on the rules. I am convinced as both pastor’s wife and communications trainer that inside all of our adult looking bodies is a little junior high school person who never, ever got a paper for school done ahead of its due date.

Invariably when you are instituting new guidelines various church members will come rushing in at the last minute with an article that just HAS to get into the newsletter. When your communications director tells them it is past the deadline—you know what they will do.

The little junior high person in him will bubble up and he will walk right around that person’s desk and in to your office and say something like, “She isn’t being very Christian today—she told me I missed her deadline and you need to tell her to get this article in there!”

If you answer by saying, “She is being very Christian. I have given her authority over that area and to do her job in a way that honors God and the church. I’m very sorry your article can’t go into the bulletin this month. We’ll make copies and have it in the church office, but Jenny’s deadlines are firm.”

Any other answer, or taking back authority or vacillating on this point will not only make the publication creation process a mess, but it will greatly harm your relationship with your communications director.

This approach benefits everyone

In delegating authority and holding your people to it, you are helping them grow up in their ministry responsibilities. Usually the article the tardy person wants  in at the last minute is about something he has known about and been planning for six months, but was not enough of a priority to get the information about it written up in time for the church. That sort of behavior would not be tolerated at the person’s regular job and should not be encouraged at the church either.

Exceptions of course can always be made for genuine emergencies, a family illness or something similar, but these are far less seldom the case than a lack of respect.

Give them protection

Giving your people authority gives them protection from disorganized people, but physical protection is also needed at times.

This doesn’t mean protection against robbery or whatever, but a church secretary with an arm brace because of carpel tunnel is the sign of a pastor failing to properly shepherd his or her sheep in the fields of technology.

Talk to some of your secular business leaders in the church and find out what is needed to make your church office ergonomically correct. Your communications people need proper chairs, wrist rests, and the right kind of mouse or trackball, the computer monitor at a proper height. They need to be protected from doing repetitive data entry; they need to get up and stretch if they have been working at the computer for hours without a break.

Care for their eyesight

Another area that needs to be looked at is the condition of their eyes. Because working with the computer requires the eyes to focus on a mid-range target instead of either distance or close reading, many people cannot adequately see both their screen and the text of a page they are typing from.

In practical terms this means they may need to get trifocals instead of working with bifocals (or no glasses at all). They may need special glasses for the computer work. Without proper eyewear your people will get eyestrain, headaches, neck pain and have a host of problems in creating publications.

I can speak from personal experience in this area. I recently got properly fitted with graduated, no-line trifocals. I can see better now than I have in 20 years. I had no idea that my problems with seeing the computer screen (glasses on, glasses off, focus, out of focus, headaches, etc.) could be fixed so easily.

You must be proactive in this area, because many people who work in the church office suffer in silence. In addition, the church should be financially responsible for decent chairs, wrist rests, and help in the cost of good eyewear, which can be very expensive.

Being a good shepherd means more than simply having devotions with your staff. A good shepherd also cares for the physical needs of the sheep.

Give them training

Training can take many forms. A membership to this site is a great gift if you are not reading this as a member. The books from Effective Church Communications available through this website's RESOURCE Section and the printed resources available at http://www.amazon.com (just do a search for Yvon Prehn)  will help in detail in many areas of church communication.

For training in software programs and website creation, http://www.lynda.com/ is fantastic. Best of all, free up a few hours each week where they can practice or explore new skills without interruption.

Give them adequate tools

Decent tools in terms of an up-to-date and well equipped computer are not a luxury for your church communicator—they are essential for the good stewardship of the person’s time. I’m not going to give specific recommendations here because what is adequate changes so often, but again, this is an area where a board member who has wisdom in the technology area may be able to advise you on what is necessary today to do the communications work needed by your church. For highly technical areas such as video creation and editing, a few hours of a consultant’s time would be wise to help you make adequate purchases.

Be sure that the advice you get matches the communication needs of your church. A small church that creates simple communications (that can still be incredibly effective) does not need the hardware of a larger church doing complex color work and website creation. Be sure your communication person has the equipment and software needed to get the quality of work done that you require.

Give them awards and encouragement

It seems in most churches that the only time the person who does communications is publicly acknowledged is when they make a typo that makes someone really mad. They know their name then, they make everyone aware of it

Don’t let that happen in your church. Award your communications people regularly and publicly acknowledge them. Honor and thank them in front of the church. When a ministry event has been successful, acknowledge their part in it. Know them well enough to know what kind of a monetary reward would be appropriate for them. For some it might be a gift certificate to Starbucks, to someone else a Christian book store gift certificate.

Pay them decently

Find out what the going rate is for graphic designers and webmasters in your area. People know that working in the church they will probably make far less than in the secular world, but if your communications person has become highly skilled in both print and website design they are worth paying decently. If you know your church is paying your church communicator far below what they are worth, at least acknowledge it.

Remind them that what they are doing matters for eternity. Regardless of your ability to pay, remind your church communication creators of the value of their work. It is so easy to forget that value in the midst of doing information cards for 20 small groups or while updating the brochures for all the ministries in the church. Take time to remind them (and yourself) that Heaven will be different because of the work they are doing.

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Filed Under: Communication Teams, Leading & Managing Tagged With: church communicators, Communications, pastor's responsibilities, yvon prehn

How to write visually to reach today’s audiences

12 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

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.

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Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: Christian writing, church communication basics, Communications, Writing, yvon prehn

Give the gift of communication tools to your congregation, at Christmas and any time of the year

12 December, 2009 By Yvon Prehn Leave a Comment

Christmas is the time for giving. This year give to the people in your churches communication tools to help them share the gospel. We all know that Ephesians 4 tells pastors and teachers that their job is “to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.” Communication tools can quip your people to do evangelism for the holidays and all year around.

Communication tools for evangelism

Most Christians know they are to be about sharing the good news of the gospel to people who don’t know Jesus. However, exactly how to do that keeps many people from doing that. Most of them think that sharing the gospel means getting up enough courage to say to a co-worker or stranger, “Are you saved?” and then proceeding to present a 3-minute canned gospel presentation.

God in His mercy does sometimes use that method, but it is probably not the most effective or is it one that most of your congregation look forward to using. In addition, current studies show that in our secular, post-Christian society it usually takes repeated exposures to the gospel message before an unchurched person really understands it and can honestly respond.

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Those repeated exposures usually take place in some church or church-sponsored activity such as a social event or small group. The communication tools you give your people gives them a way to bring friends and invite strangers to church or into a small group where they can get the repeated exposures they need to make an informed decision about the Christian faith. Some of the communication tools are:

Invitation cards

You can turn any standard business card from your church into an invitation card by simply placing a blank line where the name would be on the card and just below it, adding “member of Your Friendly Church.” In another place on the card place the words, “BE MY GUEST”.  On the reverse side of the card put a map of how to get to the church, service times, website, and whatever additional information you might think is important, such as if child care is provided at all services.

Depending upon the size of your church, make up hundreds or thousands of these cards and ask all the members to take a handful of them, carry them around at all times and give them out.

You could also make up special cards for a special series. One idea would be to make up a small fold-over card the size of a business card. On the outside have a simple cross and the words: What if it’s true? Inside invite folks to a series of upcoming sermons at your church, such as: “Is the Bible Really God’s Word?” “Why Do We Say Jesus is the Only Way to God?” “Why Does a Good God Allow Evil in Our World?”

Gospel Presentation Brochures or tracts

You can either create ones specific to your church or use ones that you get from the American Tract Society (http://www.atstracts.org/). You can personalize them for your church by adding an address label on the back. The standard 2 x 3 inch mailing labels from office supply stores fit perfectly in the open space on the back of many gospel tracts. Use the label to invite people to a special event at your church. For example, on Christmas tracts create a colorful label inviting people to your Christmas concert or other outreach event.

CDs and DVDs

It is so easy to create CDs these days and many larger churches (and many teenagers) are quite good at doing it. If you need a professional source to create music CDs for you or CDs in bulk, contact  http://www.discmakers.com/. They create very professional CDs for excellent prices.

If your church is known for its music and if your music the kind unchurched people respond to, create a CD as an outreach piece. Church members can give it to friends and tell them that if they’d like more, your church has wonderful music like that available every Sunday.

The small business card CDs would make great music invitations to youth programs that have bands.

Discmakers as well as local media production houses in your community can also create DVDs from your church videos. You might want to add a new invitation or introduction or perhaps shoot various programs in your church to include short samples on your DVD for various holidays or different groups.

Web site support

For each of the communications above, be sure include your web site on all printed pieces and on the CDs and DVDs.  On the web site be sure to have current  information on all your church events and schedules.

In addition, have links for additional evangelistic  and outreach information.  For example, to back up the invitation cards, you should have more background about your church, perhaps a bio and picture of the pastor and his or her qualifications for teaching that series. For the salvation tracts let people know that on the web site you answer the “Top Ten Questions People Ask Before They Become A Christian” and similar questions.

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Filed Under: Christmas, Evangelism & Outreach Tagged With: Church Connection Cards, Communications, Evangelism resources, yvon prehn

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