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.

Notes to Boomer church leaders as you prepare for Easter

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We may be shocked at today's culture and amazed at what people don't know about Easter, but we can't let those attitudes make us less effective as we reach out to our world with a clear message about the resurrection of Jesus. This article has some practical tips to help.

You don’t have to be an astute analyst of the culture to understand that we live in a far different world than Baby Boomers grew up in. Many Boomer church leaders may be aware of the changes in life, technology, and culture (“You can show that on TV now?), while at the same time planning for Easter church celebrations the same way they did when Ozzie, Harriet and family was the target audience. Being shocked about TV is one thing, sticking with outdated and ineffective ways to promote and celebrate Easter has far more serious consequences.

If you want share the power of our risen Lord in ways that will change people today and forever, you may need a new strategy, but before we get into that, let me be clear. . . .

This isn’t about Boomer bashing, any age group can make the same incorrect and ineffective assumptions

The mindset that needs a new strategy isn’t confined to any one age group, though many leaders in the Boomer generation seem to be stuck in it. I’m not bashing Boomers, this is my generation  and many of my peers in ministry provided the inspiration for this article. The mindset (not the age range) that I see with Boomer friends and church leaders of various ages, but similar mindset, assumes:

  1. People outside the church know the basics about the Christian faith and what’s in the Bible.
  2. Your community members know the story of Easter and are looking for a place to celebrate it.
  3. All we have to do to get them to get saved and be part of our church is to have the biggest, loudest, most colorful Easter service in town, complete with a petting zoo for kids and brunch served on the premises.

These assumptions range from totally incorrect to ineffective.

As we plan Easter outreach and celebration, we need to realize that contrary to the assumptions above:

[Read more...]

FREE Easter Jelly Bean Prayer for Children’s Ministry

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Jelly bean prayer

By using the colors of Jelly Beans, this prayer is a visual way to share the gospel message to children—and to the adults with the children—sometimes candy isn't nearly as intimidating as a sermon.

It is useful at Easter to enclose in goodie bags, to use as an invitation, use as an illustration during a lesson or children's sermon.

The one to the right is an easy download for everyone, just CLICK HERE or on the image to download a ready-to-print PDF of it. Additional designs are illustrated below.

Additional Jelly Bean Prayer Designs

To see the images larger, click on the first one and a slide show will come up.

To download the Jelly Bean Prayer file, click the following link: Jelly Bean Prayer

At the end of this article is the text for the Jelly Bean Prayer that you can use to create materials for Easter for Children. [Read more...]

My personal motivation for Backpack ministry—my memories and prayers about crayons and little kids in need

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Contribute to back to school ministries.
Few things were more exciting to me as a child than a new box of crayons--and we have opportunities to share that joy with needy kids.

Remember the smell when you opened a new box of crayons? Waxy and warm with a bit of paper mixed in.

Remember what it was like to see all those new crayons? Sometimes there were new colors. The metallic crayons seemed magical. I almost hated to use them, to turn the neat, sharp points into smushy stubs.  But there was always another year to look forward to, another start of school and a new box of crayons.

Crayons were just the start—pencils, notebooks with lines unfilled, sometimes a new lunch box.  Back-to-school was my favorite time of year. I hated summer. I didn't particularly like to play kid's games, especially outside. I wanted to be left alone to read.

We moved every year (my father was in the military and that's what they did then) and the first place I would try to find in any house was some quiet corner to read. My very favorite was at the end of a long closet where there was a window. In front of it were some packing boxes just big enough and at just the right height for an 11-year-old girl to with a book and read and look out the window. Clothes were in front of the boxes, effectively shielding me from the outside world. Still, my mother would find me and make me go out and play. I was obedient, but I didn't like it. [Read more...]

Church Invitation Cards, business cards with an eternity-altering purpose

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Free church invitation.
Make up cards like this for your church members to invite others to church. Links to a FREE copy of this one and others is at the end of the article.

How do you get unchurched people into your church?

Despite all the high-tech and expensive advertising methods available today, one method remains the most effective way to get new people to come to your and that is a personal invitation. Your members inviting their friends to church beats any advertising campaign at any cost.

While it is sometimes sadly true that once someone becomes converted, they soon have few friends who are not believers, no one totally withdraws from the world. Most people still work at secular jobs. Everyone has many contacts a week with people in the business community: the waitress or waiter at the coffee shop, the Starbucks employees, the clerks at various stores, the person standing next to them in lines at the grocery store, airports, or the driver’s license bureau, the person sitting next to them on the bus or subway. [Read more...]

Communications that will get people to come back to church after Easter, why, how to do them, and examples of effective ones

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Note: this is from our archives and many of the publications have updated versions in the TEMPLATES section. However, the overall theory here is an important summary for why you need to do all the things you need to do to get people involved in your church following Easter and I thought it would be useful for you to go through. The PDF download at the end has all the publications pictured.

In most churches their biggest turnout of the year is for Easter Sunday. This doesn't happen by accident-churches pour time, money, and resources into their church communications prior to Easter and it pays off with a full-sanctuary for multiple services. However, few churches have a continuing increase in attendance after Easter.

Brunch Invitation
You may have published a invitation to church or ministry brunch in your bulletin, but why not create a personalized invitation people can give out?

Easter week may have been fantastic, but without intentionally working on developing a continuing relationship with the people who only come at this time of year, we aren't communicating the total message of Easter. Jesus came to earth, died on the cross, and rose from the grave to enable us to have an eternal relationship with him, not just a yearly visit to his church.

For the Easter activities of your church to build relationships, you may need to expand your goals in the communications you create for this time of year. The remainder of this article will give you some ideas on how to do this.

Make Easter a connecting point, not the end result

Invite friends to Easter
A bulletin insert like this will encourage your people to invite friends for Easter.

In the church communication production prior to the Easter season, almost everything is geared solely towards getting people to the Easter week services. Though this is a worthwhile goal, if it is your only goal, you'll not accomplish all you could to make a lasting impact in people's lives and in the growth of your church.

Instead of seeing Easter week attendance as the only goal and end result, consider changing your thinking and strategy. Look at Easter as a connection point between your community and Jesus and your church. You want to bring people into the church Easter week, but you don't want them to go away and never come back-you want them to meet Jesus, to begin and grow in a relationship with Him.  In addition, you want them to get to know your church and to enter into a continuing relationship with your church community.

To accomplish these purposes, you have to be very intentional long before Easter in not only the communications you create to get them there (which you most likely already have in place as you are reading this) but also in what you give people at each event or service during Easter week.

There are two overall areas in which you need to create communications at this time: communications to introduce and connect them to Jesus and communications to introduce and connect them to your church [Read more...]