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.
Yvon Prehn's Church Communication Blog
The Bible tells us that “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks, (Luke 6:45)” or as the J.B. Phillips translation puts it “For a man’s words will always express what has been treasured in his heart.”
My goal in these blog entries (actually in all of the ECC Ministry, but particularly here) is to give your heart and mind a biblical viewpoint and foundation in church communications, so that your communications, whatever form they take, will reflect God’s Word and not primarily secular marketing or current cultural views, fears, or attitudes.
I used the word “primarily” quite intentionally in the previous statement because though we learn from secular marketing and contemporary culture, these influences should not be primary in our work. The primary influence on our work is God’s Word. God’s Word informs the Effective Church Communication ministry in our goal, which is to help church communicators create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.
Learning from, observing, and sharing other sources, while staying true to a biblical perspective and providing useful commentary is a challenging path to walk. No doubt I will often make mistakes, but to serve you in this way is my goal in these blogs.
If we don't create connecting communications at our seasonal celebrations and few people return to church after them, we are bound to wonder what we did wrong. This article and website can help!
Ed. note: I have shared this story before, but it is such an important reminder of how we need to create communications that will help people connect with the church AFTER the big event.
This is a true story. Though the specific event discussed is Easter, the lessons learned from it can apply to any event. In addition to applying to any event, we can all identify with the situation here. The challenges of ministry are so huge, it is very easy to get overwhelmed in one area and totally forget another one. May the Lord have mercy and help us all.
In one of my seminars, at the break, a woman literally came running up the aisle to talk to me.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” she said, “Now I understand what went wrong.”
I had just been discussing the same ideas I’ve presented here about the importance of an overall communication plan for maximum results from your holiday outreach. I knew it was useful, but her response was more excited than most so I asked her to tell me more about her experience.
She then told me about a special Easter service her church put on that was a huge amount of work and an equally huge disappointment in results. They were a new church plant and wanted to reach out to their community at Easter.
They were meeting in the grade school, but they wanted to grow and to do that committed to reach their community for Jesus this Easter. On faith, they rented the high school gym so they would have room for a huge crowd. They prayed hard and worked hard to get lots of community involvement. They got it—merchants put up posters; they got lots of media exposure. The day came and the church of 300 had over 1500 at the Easter service held at the local high school gym.
They were so excited. The next week back at the grade school, they set up hundreds more chairs, printed lots of extra bulletins. They were excited to see what would happen.
Are you clearly sharing the most important message of your church? People shouldn't have to search for it.
Note: I was recently asked for the location of my past article on "The Most Important Message of the Church." Following is the original article with links to the updated e-book and video presentation of it. It constantly amazes me how many churches are not clear about what it means to be a Christian and how to become one. Please take time to read this and look at the video to be sure your church isn't missing out on THE most important thing.
What is the most important message of your church? Obviously the answer to that is that the message of Gospel--of forgiveness of sins and eternal life in Jesus.
But do people know that after visiting your church? Stop a minute and think about it. When people spend an hour with you did you share with them:
great music?
inspired preaching?
information about activities for the family?
special events invitations?
small group or recovery ministry opportunities?
You probably did and these are all good things, but did you share the most important thing? Do they know that your church can help them find salvation in Jesus? Did you mention that at all in your sermon? Is it even hinted at in your bulletin? Or announcements?
I'm not writing this to make you feel guilty--but when I was recently collecting samples for an ebook, Gospel Presentations in Church Bulletins, I was surprised at how many (by far the majority) of both church bulletins and websites do not tell people how to get saved. Somehow the most important thing we are about gets lost in the announcements and events that fill the life of a church. Please don't think I'm saying that any of these activities in church or during the week are bad, but as the subtitle of the e-book says:
What does it profit a person to have clear directions to the potluck, but lose their own soul?
Church attendance is declining both in fewer new people coming to church and current members coming less often—that’s our challenge.
You know that the solution to this challenge isn't going to be solved by a 500-word blog post of bullet points about the latest and greatest tech tool or social media to come along that will solve all your church communication problems and get people flooding back to our churches. You know you won't be able to get people returning to church if you can simply find more contemporary graphics or upgrade to a more cutting-edge look to your website.
But we keep hoping don't we?
What follows is not a quick read filled with magic solutions. It will take time to read, digest, and plan out implementation because the issue of declining church attendance and retention is not an easy issue to understand with easy answers to fix it. There are many parts of church theology, growth, and health that factor in and what follows is not an all-inclusive solution, but one that can make a big difference in reversing this trend. [Read more...]
At one time I thought technology would never get any better than the self-correcting typewriter and press-on letters. Now I'm learning to create HD videos and podcasts. As I've researched video and podcast hosting and distribution systems, at times my brain felt like a jumble of data that would never sort its way into a linear path of what to do next. I'm getting it figured out, but as I'm working out the next steps, I reminded myself of four guidelines I've used in the past to encourage people to try computers and websites without losing the focus on the importance of fully fulfilling the Great Commission. These helped me and may be useful if you are facing new challenges in communication technology:
#1—Don't confuse the media with the message
The media, the tool you use to craft and share your message is and will be constantly changing. Media changes always seem overwhelming and they are often difficult to get through. The change from typewriters to computers for church office communications, from cut and paste layout to MS Publisher to create the church bulletin, from print only to the expectations of a website and social media communication assortment for every church, from flowers to adorn the pulpit to multi-media projection systems—all of these have taken place in the recent experience of the church. The challenge is not only in learning how to use them, but to not allow the demands of the technology to overwhelm the priority of your message. Technology can be extraordinary demanding, but it must never be your North Star. Every person, every church has a North Star which guides all your communications whether you are conscious of it or not. The only appropriate North Star for the church communicator is to fully fulfill the Great Commission—to help people come to know Jesus as Savior and to grow to maturity in Him. The media is not our message—our message is our message. If our eye is on the goal of sharing Jesus truly and completely and growing followers into disciples , if that is the core of our message, though there are many parts of it and many steps in sharing it, we won't be thrown off course when new tools appear. [Read more...]
This morning I decided to check to see where we are in terms of Google Search, so I entered in the generic "church communications" and this is what came up—3 listings on page one! To the left is a screen grab of it.
I was very happy to see that because I don't buy ad space, use paid SEO (search engine optimization) services, or do any of the dubious key word loading and all sorts of things that some recommend to get a site listed in even the first 5 pages of Google search.
What I work very hard to do is to provide church communicators with worthwhile, useful content. Google has stated repeatedly that is what they are honestly looking for when they rank websites.
I trust the results affirm we're doing some things right.
