Preparing this update has been agonizing for me. I am an intensely private person (I think most writers have to be or you’d never get anything done). Then there is my German Mennonite heritage—not exactly chatty genes there. But I’ve had so many folks ask what’s happening and I do feel a responsibility to the dear and precious people who’ve been to my seminars and who continuously read my materials and purchase various products. My ministry has definitely taken an interesting turn, you deserve to know about it and I need your prayers and support.
One other note on privacy, if you notice the date on this is not the actual date I’m writing it (10-29-09) that’s because that way it won’t show up on the front page of my website (that’s what you have to do with WordPress). This is meant only for folks who care enough about the ministry to read my email updates and and click on this link.
So an update with as little about me as possible, but to share some really interesting things God is doing. He is the one in control; He is the one I want to talk about.
Seminar status update:
I always said that my travel and seminars was all God’s doing. And they were. For the last 14 years I’ve been almost non-stop traveling and doing seminars. The RISO corporation sponsored 99% of my seminars and it was a fantastic working relationship. Because of that relationship, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with extraordinary and wonderful people. I was an independent contractor working without a contract or commitments, always trusting the Lord to schedule what, when, and where He wanted me to go.
In addition to my travels I’ve never forgotten that I’d been given the vision over 20 years ago to help church communicators and I had an opportunity to do some of that while traveling and teaching. I did some writing, but I realized that it was almost impossible to do much more than a few articles and books while traveling as your primary job. Traveling, setting up, creating and giving seminars is an extremely demanding job; so is writin. You can’t do both at the same time.
More and more I found myself wanting to work on the writing and creating communication resources. Though I could help a lot of people by traveling and doing the seminars, my website was reaching many more people. I learned how to do web videos and audio and how to create books for download. I had very little time to do them and wasn’t quite sure what to do about that.
This year Riso decided not to sponsor any more seminars. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. No matter what reasons the Riso corporation thinks they had for stopping their sponsorship, (and I have no idea because they told me nothing) ultimately and totally, it was the Lord’s decision.
So my life has turned into a new direction, a new way of fulfilling the calling to equip church communicators to create communications that would fully fulfill the Great Commission.
I don’t want to misled you. It has not been without pain, confusion, sadness, many tears and sleepless nights, I’d be lying if I said I was a happy stoic for the months of trying to figure out what was going on.
But I don’t have to figure things out–I can simply rest and trust in Jesus and press ahead. I think all of eternity will be like that. No matter what, I think Jesus will always have challenges for us we won’t fully understand, (even in heaven, he is God; we are not) but in taking his hand, we can fully trust. I trust him. He is a good God.
A new direction, new challenges
The challenge was/is how to make a living and be able to create needed materials for church communicators, because that calling and challenge has not changed. After lots of prayer, research and thought, it seemed like a membership website would be the best way to do it.
I need to make an income. Not a big one—my husband and I (no kids, I’m not able to have them) live extremely simply and have no desire to live any other way. We live to do ministry. We live in a 30-year-old mobile home (but it’s in S. California—paradise to me), we’ve got one 15-year old van my husband uses for work. I don’t drive to save on gas and distractions. My husband has a handyman business and does bi-vocational pastoring for churches and ministries that don’t pay. We have great 99cent stores for most groceries and household needs (better produce than you can ever imagine—again S. Ca is like that). But still, even a simple life needs a bit of an income.
The membership site seemed like the best idea because I wanted to create all kinds of instructional videos, PDFs, templates and lots of similar things that would be available 24/7. I didn’t want to charge product by product because that would be a pain for me and church communicators. I really liked the system of www.lynda.com (which is the best software online learning site—go there for all of that) and I wanted to do a less expensive, different, but similar version of what Lynda does. I would still have books and videos available through my www.lulu.com/yvonprehn site, but that would be for folks who wanted or needed versions other than online. The main training I wanted to be cheap, available and always expanding.
I knew it would take quite a bit of time and work without an income from me to get the site going (I made over 2/3 of our needed income previously from my speaking), but my dear husband was willing to work more and he felt along with me that this was a distinct calling from the Lord—to equip church communicators.
I have a huge amount of files, resources and materials I can’t wait to make available to church communicators. There is almost nothing out there to help people, especially those in smaller churches. In addition, there is almost nothing that approaches church communication from a reverent, Bible-based viewpoint. I have the material. For 14 years I’d collected information, stories, and samples. I had the passion and I was ready to go.
About building the training site
After extensive searches, research, and much trial and error, I found some membership software and a service to make it all work from a wonderful company in Wales. It was not inexpensive, but it seemed like it would allow me to do all I needed to. That was the software I used to set up the site that I made available to you a number of months ago. Initially I was very excited about it. All the feedback was great and I learned so much from the company.
But as I added more and more material, I started to become quite concerned. They had no filing system for content–which meant that as I got over a hundred entries, I had to scroll through one long list of videos, PDFs, audio and text files. I contacted them and they said they had no way to organize them. They said they realized this was a big problem.
I also found out they would charge for downloads and for people to view my videos online, which made the low fee I wanted to charge people a little difficult. I didn’t know quite what to do. But still I was still excited about it and pressing ahead. Then a week before I was going to launch the site, I felt a very distinct stop from the Lord. I felt strongly that from what I was seeing more and more that this company would not be a good fit for the ministry I wanted to do. I did not want to hold back on what I put online because I was afraid of additional charges I’d incur. I didn’t feel that they could really handle the volume of material I wanted to put online and make it available for church communicators 24/7 in the way I wanted to do.
The options were so scary for me. That meant completely starting over. That meant I’d have to do much, much harder work than I had any idea how to do. But I felt that the Lord was telling me I had to trust Him and not go with that company. I told my husband and he was supportive.I cancelled my plans to launch the site and got busy downloading all my materials, many, including all the videos had been put into a proprietary codex that wouldn’t work anywhere else and meant redoing all of them. I began to research other options.
The next week the whole system crashed. Completely—it could not be accessed at all for days and that was the week I had been hoping to launch it. After a couple of days the company sent out an email saying they were not set up for the kind of multi-media traffic that they were starting to get. They did not have the system or servers to handle it.
I was so thankful the Lord warned me.
I sent them a very nice email, wished them well and withdrew from their program.
Starting over
After lots more research, I realized I needed to build my own site instead of going with another sort of pre-done system that would get me into the same messes and not really serve people like I wanted to.
I realized I’d I’ve have to learn all sorts of things (get my own account, really learn html, css and probably php). It seemed impossibly hard, but also exciting. I realized that I would have the opportunity to learn things that I’d be able to help other folks with after I learned them.
I decided to go with a self-hosted WordPress.org system. This is the big brother (and so much harder….) version of what I am doing my site with now. But I love the WordPress organizational system of content—I don’t think there is anything better to organize masses of content a training site needs.
After trying various templates I purchased a professional one from a snooty, very unhelpful company (not ready to name names as yet), but I really admired the basic design and felt it would work well for my plans for the site. I’ve learned how to modify the CSS—well a little tiny bit anyway, but making progress. They had a gaggy pink in the original template that is now a calming blue. I created my own nameplate in Photoshop and got it loaded up (though I’m still having trouble with the whole hosting and cpanel thing, but working on it).
I set up all the financial systems to be the most secure possible. I’ve got the credit card system with the biggest, most secure company as rated by many, the gateway system (had to learn what that was). I am verified and certified and all that. I got my hosting company—one of the biggest and most highly rated and around for a long time. I got a system with unlimited storage and downloads so I don’t have to worry about how many videos people watch online. I got a dedicated ISP number (not shared space) and an SSL certificate. All this costs money, but the income from my www.lulu.com/yvonprehn site (plus a $100 gift from a friend and cashing in some gift certificates) has paid for it.
I didn’t want to let you down while I was working on this
I have spent a lot of time on trying to keep up with materials for church communicators while working on the training website. I felt I really needed to do something about Halloween. I spent hundreds of hours working on the videos, materials and publications for Halloween. I truly believe it can be a time to wrestle back territory taken by Satan, to flood our communities with light and use it as an opportunity to reach people. I was so excited to share the materials. I gave away most of it and sold only a tiny bit. Though a few folks seemed happy with it, I was repeatedly and sometimes rather unkindly attached for my efforts. Pretty nasty stuff some of it.
So I turned back to helping with material on church communication basics. I got a book out on church bulletins, which I felt was absolutely essential. The response to that book has been great.
I also have had to put up new things on the www.lulu.com/yvonprehn site because I have monthly costs for the hosting and all the services I’m setting up even before I can make money from them and we cannot spend any household money on this, it just isn’t possible. I also felt an obligation to continue to create articles for Christian Computing Magazine—they don’t pay, but it always seems I’m really able to help folks with that.
I just finished The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing book. I felt I needed to get a basic foundational book done for church communicators.
So where am I now?
I’ve got to get the website up and going. I’m going to quit doing books for a time put my nose to the grindstone and do that. There is so much, so much to do. I still have to redo all the videos and PDFs and templates that were in the other system and organize lots of articles.
I still have to figure out an immense amount of software, template adjustment, and lots of other things. I need a number of additional software modules and plugins and have to figure out how to use them. Right now I have no resources for any of them.
How you can help
#1-Pray for me.
Please, pray most of all that I hear the Lord’s voice and create a site that is pleasing to Him. That it be all He wants it to be.
Please pray for strength and health. I’ve had some rather challenging physical issues, not worth discussing, but pray the Lord will give me health to serve Him and some months from now the ability to deal with what needs to be delt with.
Pray for resources. Pray for my dear husband that he continues to get handyman work and that he has the strength to do that and his church work.
The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing
This is the most direct way to support my ministry currently. I am releasing a new book , The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications and Marketing, to help raise money for developing the new website.
It is a really helpful book and one I’ve been working on for a long time. It sets up the background and overview of the whole system, biblical and structural basis of my ministry.
There will be two versions of this book, one for the regular $7.50 download price and the second (same book) for $25. The purchase of the more expensive book is a way for those who can to give an additional amount to the ministry. Both books (because the purchase of the $7.50 download is greatly appreciated also) have in the back a special certificate you can download and fill out as a commemoration of helping to launch this new part of the Effective Church Communication ministry.
#3—PLEASE pass on my resources, newsletters, links to my website.
There are so many reasons for this—not only would l like to expand have more folks purchase materials, but so many, many churches desperately need this! I really believe we could radically change the outreach and effectiveness of many churches if they would just listen to and apply what I teach.
To help spred the message of creating church communications effectively, you can pass on, copy, excerpt ANYTHING on my website, make copies of portions of books you download—I own the rights to all of that— and freely give them to you so PLEASE DO IT!
Please link to me from your websites and especially your denominational websites or sites that help pastors or church communicators. You can publish any of my material that is helpful for free—just put a link back to my site. If people buy something or not, no big deal—but I pray more people and churches will be helped.
No matter what your response, thank you for taking time to read this. Most of all, please pray for me that I can do all the Lord wants me to do to serve you and help you create communications that will fully fulfill the Great Commission.
