effective church communication

Church Communication Best Practices: 7 Basic Skills

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

The term “Best Practice” has been a useful guideline for many areas of business. Here is how Wikipedia defines the term:

Best practice is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is believed to be more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc. The idea is that with proper processes, checks, and testing, a desired outcome can be delivered with fewer problems and unforeseen complications.

Church communicators serve the King of Kings and he is worthy of our best practices. My ministry is dedicated to helping you accomplish your best for his glory. To help you in this area, I’ve republished my book Back to Basics, it will help you define and implement the best practices for church communications in these areas:

The 7 Best Practices for Church Communicators

Plan appropriately: churches need to plan with the goal of measurable spiritual results; this requires carefully thinking through ahead of time an analysis of your audience and how your church can best serve them.
Design realistically: church communication is not design for design’s sake. All design in church communication is there to accomplish a purpose. Know that purpose and design to achieve it.
Write to reach today’s audiences: you aren’t writing for your teacher anymore, you are writing to reach very busy people. Write in levels; work hard on headlines, subheads and captions, tell stories.
Use type properly: do not select type for looks, but for its ability to accomplish communication goals. Follow timeless typesetting rules regarding spacing, correct use of special characters, justification, use of caps, et.al.
Photography: remember a picture is only worth the meaning you assign to it in a caption. Pictures do not have objective meaning.
Proofing: have a consistent, sequential system and know when to quit.
Managing: learn as much as you can and pray together; never lost sight of your ministry because of technology.

These best practices are not intuitive. You need to learn these skills and my book, Back to Basics will enable you to learn them. There is a chapter in the book on each topic (plus other sections not listed above) that will give you complete and practical instruction. This is not communiction training for corporate America. All the training is specific to the church. Click here to get a copy.

Filed under: #1 Strategy | Tagged: best practices, church communication, church communications, communication planning, communication theory, design in communciation, Writing, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

Church communications; why you know more about good design than you think you do & why CNN & FOX have similar looking websites

Posted on June 29, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

Why is it that you sometimes look at a church bulletin and you say to yourself, “That really looks good?” or “My goodness, this is hard to read.”

Or you read a church newsletter in print or on-line and you think, “That is person is a great writer?” or “This makes no sense at all.”

Even if we don’t say it outloud, we all have a very clear idea of what works and what doesn’t in church communication design and writing.

It isn’t some mystical, intuitive skill that enables us to make these sorts of judgements about church communications. Following is a brief example of how this works and then how you can apply this to make your communications more effective. Read more »

Filed under: #1 Strategy, #2 How-to, Graphics, Images, Writing | Tagged: church communication, church communication basics, church communications, church communicators devotion, church leadership, church marketing, publication design, typography, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

For 4th of July, church communication reminder to pray

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

: 4th of July bulletin Insert, click for free PDF

Church communication folks do so much more than update the weekly bulletin and confirm dates on the website.

Church communicators remind people to pray for what’s important and this bulletin insert can help you do that. It’s useful to give to your folks either before or after the 4th of July celebrations. Encourage them to post it on their refrigerator to remind them to pray daily that our nation be what God desires.

My apologies here to the many folks who visit this website outside the U.S. Use the thoughts in this to pray for your country. We all need God’s grace.

This free, downloadable PDF prints 2 per 8 1/2 by 11 page.

As always with all my material you are free to pass it on to other, to take the text and use it in any way you’d like.

Filed under: 4th of July & Summer celebrations, Free downloads, Holiday communications | Tagged: 4th of July, bulletin insert, church communication, church communications, church communicators devotion, Holiday communications, prayer, yvon prehn | 2 Comments »

New training site for church communicators

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

Church communicators, pastors, and church planters all are placed in ministries without training in the vital skill of communications. But, without effective communications, churches and ministries are stunted in their growth and frustrated in their ministries.

My life ministry has been to help church communicators and through my seminars and writing, the Lord has enabled me to do that. But it isn’t enough. No matter how successful a seminar, I can only teach a limited number of people a limited amount of material.

For many years I wanted a way to share the many resources, classes, templates, and training I have for church communicators. I wanted it to have a huge amount of material, accessible in many formats. I wanted it available 24/7 on the web because I know how hard it is to take time off to go to a seminar.

Finally, after much research I found a web-based system I could use to build the site. It has been quite a challenge to learn, there is much to be done, but I’ve done enough it is ready to share.

Click here to go to the site and check out all the features.

Filed under: #1 Strategy | Leave a Comment »

Listen now to Yvon Prehn’s interview on BlogTalk Radio by Chris Walker, the Evangelism Coach

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

I had a great time on my hour-long interview with Chris Walker, aka, The Evangelism Coach, last Thursday.

If you weren’t able to listen to it live, you can listen to the interview by clicking on the link below and from there clicking on the BlogTalk Radio file.

http://www.evangelismcoach.org/2009/how-to-get-church-visitor-contact-information/

While you are there, take some time and look around Chris’ website—he has quite a few great resources for evangelism.

He has also written a book on How to Welcome Church Visitors, that has lots of helpful tips in it.

Filed under: #1 Strategy | Tagged: church communications, church communicators devotion, Church Connection Cards, church marketing, church visitor cards, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

Planning, a critical part of church communication success

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

The entry below, “Don’t plan too far ahead” has gotten a lot of hits lately on this site, so I moved it up by this entry.

Though we can’t plan too far ahead in today’s ever changing communication world, we do need to plan our publications ministry and the video below will show you how.

PowerPoint notes, charts, and valuable resources related to church communication planning

You can watch the video here anytime, but you can also use it as a training opportunity for your church communication staff. To get a copy of the PowerPoint handouts, plus the forms and charts, articles and a book chapter relating to the topic of planning church communications, click here. If you want to take notes as you watch the webinar, this is very helpful. This will take you to my http://www.lulu.com/yvonprehn storefront. This download is $5. If you purchase ONE download you have my permission to make as many copies of it as you want for your church staff. Your purchase of the download and other materials from LULU, is greatly encouraged and appreciated as this is what pays for me to be able to do the webinars without charge.

Below is the video–most of you I’m sure already know this (it took me awhile to figure it out…) but if you click on the little square of four arrows pointing outwards at the right side of the bar at the bottom of the video, it will expand it to full screen. Then you can just hit the escape key to go back to the smaller size. If you want to hook the computer up to a projector to share the webinar with staff or volunteers, this works well.

Click here to download the charts referred to in the webinar. This download contains only the charts, not the PowerPoint notes or other planning resources.

Filed under: #1 Strategy, Graphics, Images, Leading & Managing, Multi-media | Tagged: church communications, church communicators devotion, church leadership, church marketing, communication evaluation, communication planning, yvon prehn | 2 Comments »

Don’t plan too far ahead in church communication

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

Several churches have approached me recently with my opinion on how to create a communication plan for the next five to seven years. They know new technology can be costly and they want to be prepared.

Though I admire their desire to be good stewards, planning ahead in church communications, especially when it involves trying to figure out technology, is futile.

Think about it. Five years ago, could you have imagined or planned for the iPhone? For texting to be a major way your youth group would communicate? Would skill with FaceBook have seemed useful for new staff? Go back a bit from that. When you finally figured out the computer, did you ever dream of the internet? Seven years ago, did a website, with or without streaming video, seem essential for your church? Had you heard of a blog?

Our human nature always wants certainty. We want to know what to expect, what we will have to learn, what things will cost. In addition to being impossible to project and predict technology changes, methods, and costs on a practical level in today’s ever evolving communication world, there is another thing to consider. Because we don’t know the future in technology, in this area, as in every other area, we need to stay close to the Lord. We need to walk daily with him, we need to listen to his voice. We need to bring all our technology plans and practices before him and measure their value by the values of his Word. We need to plan on being intentional in this area.

Instead, sadly, I so often see a disconnect between the perceived demands of technology and the demands of godly living and trusting Jesus. It’s almost as if some in communications technology, though they would never say it out-loud, act as if Jesus isn’t smart enough to help us in this area. Asking for daily bread is OK with spiritual stuff, but not with technology.

We forget the gentle carpenter from Nazareth is also the creator of quantum mechanics. The wisest planning we can do every day, five to seven years from now and always is to plan to grow in our knowledge of his Word, our time in prayer, and our ability to hear his voice.

Filed under: #8 Simply blogging | Tagged: church communication, church communications, church communicators devotion, church leadership, church website, communication planning, iPhone, Jesus, technology and Christianity, web, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

Triage, a model for responding to connection cards

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

note: this is an excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

It is critically important to respond to the connection cards received each Sunday, but as stated in the previous chapter, not every card needs the same timeliness or intensity of response, but how do you decide what needs what? The concept of triage can help.

First, here is the history and definition of TRIAGE from Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia:

TRIAGE
The term [triage] comes from battlefield or natural disaster situations. When the wounded are brought in there are three categories in which the wounded are immediately placed:

Red / Immediate
They require immediate surgery or other life-saving intervention, and have first priority for surgical teams or transport to advanced facilities; they “cannot wait” but are likely to survive with immediate treatment.

Yellow / Observation
Their condition is stable for the moment but requires watching by trained persons and frequent re-triage, will need hospital care (and would receive immediate priority care under “normal” circumstances).

Green / Wait (walking wounded)
They will require a doctor’s care in several hours or days but not immediately, may wait for a number of hours or be told to go home and come back the next day (broken bones without compound fractures, many soft tissue injuries).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

How to apply triage to connection cards

Filed under: #1 Strategy, Church Connection Cards, Evangelism Resources | Tagged: church communications, church connection, church leadership, church visitors, church volunteers, seeker sensitive, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

What not to do in connection card ministry, part one

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

note: this is an excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

I’ve been teaching church communications for over twenty years and have looked at many communication cards and discussed their use with many church communicators during that time. From my experience, and many years of personally using them in a variety of church settings, I’ve found the following activities and tools don’t contribute to maximum communication success in getting either initial contact or continuing ministry information from people.

I also realize that, though not the most successful, many of the following practices have been done by many churches for a long time and it is difficult to imagine doing things a different way. If that is your situation, please suspend defensiveness or judgment until you’ve finished this entire publication to see the recommendations that might replace these actions.

Change is always challenging and difficult and if your church does some of the things listed below, I appreciate your willingness to consider alternative ideas. After each suggestion of what not to do, I’ll briefly list the alternative action as “A better idea,” and after this section, the alternative actions will be discussed in more detail.

Filed under: #1 Strategy, Church Connection Cards | Tagged: church communications, church connection, church leadership, church marketing, church visitor cards, church visitors, free communication tools, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

What not to do in connection card ministry, part two

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Yvon Prehn

note: this is an excerpt from the book: Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people

#3 Don’t tell people about connection cards without giving them time to fill them out.

This is probably the single biggest reason churches do not get connection cards turned in. In most churches, either the pastor or another church leader will mention the connection card very quickly in passing, often when people are still standing up after singing a song. Sometimes it will be mentioned when people are sitting down, but often then it is part of a long series of announcements and no time is given so people can actually fill it out.

The problem with this approach is that a visitor or church member, if they want to respond or turn in a prayer request, has to then decide when to quit paying attention to what is going on up front so they can fill out the card.

Do you want them to ignore part of the sermon?
Write during the prayer time?
Stay seated and scribble while an upbeat praise song is being sung?
Hold the elements with one hand and write with the other during communion?

Something has to be ignored while they read a card with which they are unfamiliar and fill it out.

Filed under: #1 Strategy, Church Connection Cards | Tagged: church communications, church connection, church leadership, church visitor cards, Religion, seeker sensitive, yvon prehn | Leave a Comment »

effective church communication