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.

Church Communication tools to help people grow to Christian Maturity, a key goal for the New Year

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We need to do more in our church communications than reach out to people to get them to church the first time. You probably had lots of people visit for the first time during the holidays, but you don't want them to come week after week and leave with only nice feelings about the Christian faith.

We need to give them enough information to make an informed decision about the Christian faith and after they become a Christian we need to keep helping them learn about the faith until they grow to mature disciples.

People grow in the Christian faith by learning about God and His guidelines for living as they are taught in the Bible. To grow your people you need to get them into the Bible and to get the Bible into them. Below are some simple communication tools that can help do that.

Bible reading plans

Everything is easier with a plan. Give your people a plan to read through the Bible in a year. To make it more manageable and enjoyable print up the schedule a month or quarter at a time and turn it into an attractive bookmark that people can keep in their Bible and check off for each day they do their reading. You could also provide a link to a read-through-the-Bible –in-a year program on the web.

There are many free Bible downloads or podcasts on the web for people who might prefer to listen rather than read their Bibles. Don’t think for a minute that listening to the Bible is inferior to reading it. For most of human history, the majority of believers have not had their own Bibles to read—join the saints of the past and listen to the Word of God.

This year the adult discipleship ministry at our church that my pastor husband and I lead will be be going through the Bible in a year in chronological order. We are using the reading plan at: www.bibleplan.org. The plan we are using is the Chronological, read in a year. This site has a number of useful features

  • They will send the daily reading to you via email.
  • You can then read it online.
  • Or you can click on the link to the Bible Gateway and listen to it.

Memory verse cards

In many ministries we’ve worked in we’ve used business-card size verse cards to help our people memorize verses. These are so easy to create with any desktop publishing software, such as MS Publisher and the pre-perforated business card stock you can get at office supply stores. Do these up for Sunday School classes, small groups, and for all of the various teaching ministries of your church. For special occasions, you can turn the verse card into a refrigerator magnet. We’ve frequently done that for key verses for ministries or as a holiday gift to ministry groups.

Web site support

For  the Bible reading plans, refer people to a place on your web site where you have additional background on the books of the Bible, the history of the books, profiles of the key characters, how that book of the Bible is part of the overall story of salvation. Add links to other Bible study sites and you have a great tool to encourage your people to get into the Bible more deeply. A good site to start with is www.blueletterbible.org.

Another great site that has both lots of help on Bible studies, yearly Bible reading plans and one of my favorites, the links to classic Bible commentaries is: http://www.ewordtoday.com/  Be sure to go to the bottom of the page because at the end of the page are links to some excellent sites--be sure you go to: http://www.ewordtoday.com/comments/

A key to successful outreach and growth in the Christian faith is not for church leaders to do it all, but for them to equip their people to do the work of the ministry. Technology is a great tool that gives us new ways to equip the saints to do work of eternal value.

Why you shouldn’t plan too far ahead in church communications

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Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so cautiously.
Plan ahead in your church communications, but do so with wisdom and prayer.

At the start of the year, it's natural to want to do some planning, but planning can be both a positive and a negative thing. It's always challenging as I was reminded when several churches have asked how to create a communication plan for the next five to seven years. Each of them has mentioned that new technology can be costly and they want to be prepared, in their budgeting and for training. Though I admire their desire to be good stewards, planning ahead for five years in church communications, especially when it involves trying to figure out technology needs, is futile.

Could you have envisioned your communication world today five years ago?

Think about it. Five years ago, could you:

  • Have  imagined or planned for the iPhone and iPad?
  • Known texting would be a major way your youth group would communicate and your youth pastor would need a high-end mobile phone?
  • Have known that skill with Facebook  would be useful, if not essential, when you hire a church secretary?
  • Imagined that Tweeting would be a skill your senior Pastor might want to learn? Even known the meaning of Tweeting or that social media in any form would be able to overturn governments and raise millions for charity? [Read more...]

Christmas Holiday visitors—how to turn them into regular attenders

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Christmas invitations and how to keep them
Here are ideas to keep your Christmas visitors coming back.

As we go into the holiday season, your church will be holding many events that will attract visitors. You want these visitors to become regular attenders and you can help make this possible not only by the quality of your holiday event, but by the follow-up publications you send out.

Successful follow-up publications DO NOT mean a mass generated “so glad you were here….” letter. Instead, try these ideas:

Position your church positively

Sending out a “so glad you were here” publication is OK to do if you have the time and money, but there is nothing usual or memorable about that. People expect churches to be glad they came and of course a church wants them to return.

What might be a bit more surprising is if your church, instead of asking for something, gave something away. For example, what if you sent out a series of postcards or a series of one-page newsletters and tips that would give people ideas that would help them get through the holiday season. What if those publications didn’t ask for anything, but were genuine servant publications with the motive of honestly helping the people they were sent to.

This would put your church in an entirely different place and a very positive one that would cause people to want to return. Following are some specific publications that could do this:

Countdown to Christmas Postcards/flyers or emails

Depending upon how far back from Christmas you start this, let’s assume you have a list of families who attended your Fall Harvest Festival. You make up a series of perhaps five post-cards,  tri-fold flyers, or follow-up emails in bright colors with topics like this:

Countdown to Christmas

Week #1—some inexpensive, creative, and alternative ideas on how to plan Christmas shopping and gift exchanges, drawing of names, deciding to give to charities in the name of family members, what charity opportunities are available in your community, if any churches (your church?) sell third world gift items.

Week #2—some favorite recipes from your congregation: a favorite fudge, a hot cider mix, a special grandma cookie recipe. Many families today don’t have family members close by and many young families don’t know how to prepare holiday items. Make sure your directions are simple and easy.

Week #3—the meaning of advent and some ideas on how to help families celebrate it. Perhaps offer an advent booklet for free by simply calling your church or requesting one from your church website.

Week #4—Offer to pray for people during this busy and sometimes stressful time of year. Have a prayer line where they can leave requests or an email address. Assure them it is confidential and is a gift from your church to them.

Week #5—An invitation to take part and the times your church offers free baby-sitting so busy parents or especially single parents can shop, locations where your church is doing totally free gift-wrapping.

On all these postcards be sure to clearly give the address of your church, your service times and times for children’s church or education programs, contact phone number and web site. Be sure also to always say something like “Your Local Community Church is there for you and your family, not only at Christmas time, but any time of the year. Please contact us if we can serve you in any way.” If you say something like that, be sure there is a team in place and ready to respond.

You could also do electronic versions of the postcards by creating electronic postcards or emails with the same content. The holiday postcard templates at www.constantcontact.com include wonderful designs that can be very useful in this way.

What it’s really all about

Another option would be a series of cards explaining the meaning of different traditions at Christmas. If you do a Google search on the web you’ll find dozens of pages with explanations of various Christmas traditions.

You could choose one tradition a week and again send out a series of cards. Again, many people today don’t know why we celebrate the traditions we do and you can give them a Christian explanation. Be sure to always remind them, that in addition to the reasons we have candy canes or Christmas trees (both with very Christian historical traditions) the “reason for the season” really is that Jesus, who was fully God, became fully man to grow up and become our Savior.

What’s most important

The most important thing about either of these communication/church marketing projects is not how fancy your clip art is or how stunning the type face that you choose. What is most important is if you create these and send them out with lots of love and prayer for the visitors to your church, you have a tangible way to let them know you care.

Postcards: For Missing Members & how to get people to come back to church

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Miss you CardPostcards are a great way to contact people to let them know they are missed at church and you want them to return.

They work so much better than a letter because they are easier to read—you don't have to open an envelope and even if you don't read the whole thing, chances are you will at least get the message that the church cares about you. If you'd like to see a brief video that discusses this and gives you a preview of the other cards, CLICK HERE.

Click on the image to the right to download the free PDF of this card. It is ready to be printed and you can personalize it on the back.

Editable templates, other versions of the cards in PDF and hi and low resolution images

In addition to the design above, the postcard designs below are available for Effective Church Communication Members. At the end of this article is a ZIP file that contains:

  1. Editable MS Publisher files so you can change them any way you want
  2. Ready-to-print PDFs of all the designs if you want to use them as is
  3. Both hi res (300 dpi) and low res (96 dpi) so you can use the images themselves in any way you want: printed publications including your newsletter, online, on email newsletters or your website.

Here are the additional images available:

Miss you Card #10

Miss you Card #6Miss you Card #3Miss you Card #5Miss you Card #7

Miss you Card #2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Miss you Card #8

Miss you Card #9

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Below is the link to the ZIP file that contains the PDF file, Editable MS Publisher Templates and the hi and low-res images of all these postcards.

 

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CLICK here to download the ZIP File.

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What church technology can do to alleviate world hunger

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Warning, this article is very depressing at the start, but it's written to give you hope and solutions. Tragic facts: almost 16,000 children die every day from hunger-related causes—that's one child every 15 seconds. The famine in Africa worsens with 29,000 deaths so far—at the same time, hunger-fighting groups have their lowest balance of resources in recent years. How do we wrap our minds around facts like these? What can we do? As Christian communicators using computer technology, we can do a lot and this article will get you started . . . .

We forget the power we have

Every church office that has a somewhat new computer has a more powerful computer than NASA had when they put a man on the moon. Any church that has a copy machine has print production capabilities that Reformers and kings could not imagine. Every church with an internet connection has communication abilities with a reach and low costs unimaginable a few decades ago.

We can use these tools to educate, equip, and mobilize the Body of Christ to meet the needs in our world.

I realized, following after night after night of crying every time I saw the news or read about what is happening. I gave what I could, but I knew my tears and meager donations weren't enough. After more tears and prayers, I remembered the power of Christian communicators and how by using the tools we have; we could make a big dent in the needs of the world. I decided to write this article and in addition I've created a section on the Effective Church Communication website called the Micah 6:8 Communication Project.

In case you can't immediately call to mind the verse, here it is:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

   And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

   and to walk humbly with your God.  Micah 6:8 (NIV)

Following are some ways we can use technology to make the most of the resources. In addition to the ideas here, on this website, is a permanent link on the home page that will take you to a section of Micah 6:8 Communication Project resources. All of the resources in that section will be free for anyone to download and use. These resources will be updated week.

I have received some resources from people that will be added this coming week, but we need lots more. I am also researching resources from various groups and I'll be adding new things as I find them.

Your most important tool

The most important tool you have is your ability to communicate continuously for almost no cost.

It is vitally important to teach your people that "doing justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God" is not something we do only for a once a year, at a special event, or only on a mission-emphasis Sunday. Though special events are great for extra giving and focus, hunger and desperate needs are a constant in our world today.

We have the technology to continuously push out ideas, education, tools, resources, stories, links, to our people to keep a lifestyle of giving always in front of them, if we will take the time to do it. Though we no longer have the excuse of cost, we do have the personal emotional cost of a constant focus on difficult subjects. Hunger, poverty, and human trafficking are not pleasant topics to communicate. But one day we will meet Jesus face-to-face and we don't want to be like the man in the story about the Good Samaritan, who didn't want to look at a bloody, beaten man, so he turned and walked away on the other side of the road.

We want to face these issues, communicate about them and encourage our people to take action. Here are some reminders of what we can do:

Create with the computer

How easy it is to forget what it took to create church bulletins, bulletin inserts, postcards and brochures before the days of desktop publishing. If your church wanted to put out a publication that encouraged people to give to hunger projects or any kind of compassionate project, and if you wanted it in full-color, you were looking at a major expense.

Today, all it takes is a little time in MS Word or MS Publisher to create it and a color printer or copier to reproduce it. The list of links on my website or any of your denominational websites will give you materials you can download or modify to provide a continuous stream of materials that remind people of needs and ministries meeting them.

PDF what you don't want to print on paper

You don't even have to spend money on paper if you don't want to—you can create your communication, save it as a PDF and then either email it to people or post it on your website.

Educate and link on your website

Speaking of your website, you can easily create a list of links, call it the Micah 6:8 connection and have a place where people can immediately link to organizations that serve hungry people.

Feature one a month; tell people about the group. Go to a website such as the Charity Navigator: http://www.charitynavigator.org/  and give people the background, statistics and evaluation of the various charities. Some of the statistics you'll find show what various groups, even highly rated ones, spend on administration and other costs. That makes even more amazing the work of the World Hunger Fund, which is supported by the Southern Baptists and administered by them, that gives 100% of donations to the hunger projects. To see one of the most beautifully simple and clear hunger related websites ever go to: http://worldhungerfund.com/
Many of the aid organizations have videos, stories and other educational materials that you can link to. Screen these ahead for what is useful and denominationally appropriate for your congregation and then make the links clear and easy to access.

Preach, teach, and supply devotions on your blog or website

You can't preach or teach every Sunday about hunger and world needs, but you can create devotionals, short articles, devotions and similar content on your website or blog consistently.  I'm working on materials to help with that if your creativity in this area is weary.

Push out links on social media

On a consistent basis, tweet and mention on Facebook what aid groups are doing, the status of current needs, success stories, images or pictures. There are a lot of great things happening—share those stories with quick summaries and links.

For example: one of the most wonderful is a little invention called Plumpy Nut (Google it for pictures—fantastic ones available). It is an incredible nutritional supplement in little packets that tastes like sweet peanut butter and is revolutionizing the ability to restore health to starving children because it needs no refrigerator or reconstituting. A Plumpy Nut picture of the week with links to groups who are distributing it is just one idea of the kinds of things you can do. Here is one story: http://www.worldvision.org/home.nsf/pages/home.htm#/home/main/hunger-drought-horn-africa-1-1374

Share your ideas with me!

Technology has given us incredible tools to use to alleviate world hunger and other pressing pains in our world. The ideas above are only a start of what we can do.

PLEASE send your ideas (bulletin inserts, PowerPoints, how you communicate about hunger or other needs) with permission for me to use them to: yvon@effectivechurchcom.com.

Finally, no matter what organization you give to or what you do, pray lots, give sacrificially, and always: "do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God."