Of course one of the greatest benefits of our Great Idea Swap is the inspiration you get from looking at what other church communicators create, but even better is when you can take it and modify it for your own church communication uses. That's what you'll be able to do with this wonderful little conference notebook sent in by Vicki Coulter of Christ United Methodist Church.
It is made up of 8 1/2 x 11 in. pages folded in half, which is easy to print in small quantities at your church office. The sample was sent in as a PDF, which you can see the from pages illustrated below ( just 6 of 12 are illustrated). It's hard to see from the illustrations alone what a wonderful file it is, but you can immediately see how useful a layout like this can be for anything from Advent booklets to devotionals.
To make it useful for you, I then took the PDF and converted it to MS Word to see if that would work out so that you could edit it for your uses. That worked out well. CLICK on the first image and that will bring up a larger image and gallery you can scroll through to see the pages better.
However, when doing a conversion to MS Word, the tricky part is always making sure the pages print correctly double-sided and it does work! I also played around with creating a couple of alternate covers just for fun and that worked great also. The examples of them are below.
Everyone gets access to the ideas in our Great Idea Swap, but for Effective Church Communication Members, I also have a short video that shows how to be sure you have the correct print settings to print out the modified template, plus the PDF file and the MS Word file if you want to create your own booklet.
Two more fun samples sent in with the booklet
Below are two signs that were sent in along with the booklet. I LOVE SIGNS! It is so easy to forget that people do not necessarily know where the "Fellowship Hall" or the "Fireside Room" is at your church. Signs are a tangible way to serve the people who come to your church for any event. They don't have to be fancy or complex, but they can make the difference between someone attending or walking away in frustration.
The best part of the booklet
Though the layout of the book is wonderful, a real bonus I wanted to share is the way there are verses added to each page.
This makes it much more than simply a booklet to take notes in. It literally grounds the content of the conference in the Word of God. The selection of verses is well-thought-out and makes the booklet excellent for any kind of leadership or volunteer conference. It would also make the booklet useful to simply give to volunteers or leaders in the church and ask them to journal the meanings of the verses and how they can apply them to their work in the church. You could also suggest in the introduction that these verses become prayers for the leadership and volunteers in the church.
Below are just a few of the verses. Take a few minutes to think about how these apply to your work today as a church communicator:
From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
~Ephesians 4:16 (NIV)Whoever wants to be great must become a servant.
~ Matthew 20:26 (MSG)Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God.
~ 2 Corinthians 3:5 (NIV)… Those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.
~ Isaiah 40:31 (NIV)
Download the source files and create your own booklet
For ECC MEMBERS, below is a ZIP FILE with the source files for the booklet in PDF format and 3 versions of the booklet with the different covers in MS Word format.
In addition, I've created a 1 minute video for ECC Members that shows you how to print a perfect little booklet, collated and with the pages in order. If you aren't an ECC Member, you won't be able to see the video or link to the ZIP file.
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If you are not an Effective Church Communication Member, CLICK HERE for more information and to sign up.
CLICK HERE to download the ZIP file that contains the PDF and editable MS Word files for the booklet:download-files-for-ready-set-go-journal
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For more information on our GREAT IDEA SWAP, and how you can be part of it, CLICK HERE.
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions!