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 Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission.

Quarter-page postcards for Christmas Outreach, reminders, invitations

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Christmas Quarter Page Postcards#1
This quarter-page Christmas file is free for everyone and this article has many more for ECC Members.

These quarter-page designs can be used in many ways for your Christmas outreach: as invitation postcards that you make up for your people to hand out, as reminders, as encouragements to attend Christmas programs, as gift inserts, whatever you'd like.

You can edit the card if you are an ECC Member and have access to the MS Publisher files, but even if you don't edit them, they are great designs you can personalize on the back.

The design to the left is free for everyone. CLICK HERE or on the image to download it.  It is a ready-to-print PDF.  Below are the additional designs for Effective Church Communication Members. Each of these designs is in a ZIP file at the end of the article that has:

  • Ready-to-print PDFs
  • Editable MS Publisher Files
  • Hi-res images [Read more...]

Church Office tips for sanity and joy as you prepare for the holidays

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Christmas Tree, keep it a season for joy
Thought there is always so much to do, here are some tips to help you keep your sanity and joy.

Can it be possible that Christmas and the holidays related to it are just around the proverbial corner?

Many church office professionals say this season has a way of sneaking up on them. It isn’t a matter of not knowing the dates— it is just that before we feel ready the celebrations are here. At both church and home there are more activities to plan, more projects to do, more pressure, more hurry. Too often what should be a joyful time becomes one of stress and frustration.

This year can be different. Really. You may not be able to change what goes on around you, but you can change your responses and you can control your own expectations and activities. A caveat: The answer is not to move everything up a few weeks. As a friend remarked, “At our church all the Christmas programs and parties are over by the first of December. The 25th doesn’t seem like the day at all.”

Ideas for keeping spirits bright— [Read more...]

Christmas invitation Cards, the start of Christmas outreach–many uses, many designs

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Christmas Invitation Card
Make up Christmas Invitation Cards for every member of your church--involve everyone in Christmas outreach!

Business and invitation cards can be used for so many things during the Christmas season: invitations, gift enclosures, links to website explanations about your church or Facebook or Twitter encouragements, cards to encourage people to come back to church, gift tags, or whatever else you can think of.

Below, first is a minute long video to preview the cards, then some cards including ready-to-print PDFs, and editable MS Publisher Templates and hi-res images of all the cards.

Video preview of the Church Invitation Cards

[Read more...]

Christmas carols as inspiration for Christmas outreach, sermons, website content

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Christmas Carols are not only fun to sing, but can provide inspiration for sermons, blogs, and outreach.
Christmas Carols are not only fun to sing, but can provide inspiration for sermons, blogs, and outreach.

How do you find a theme for your Christmas outreach, sermons, blogs, or for content for your website that visitors might read?

One of the best resources is in the classic Christmas carols. The content is rich with biblical references and truth. The carols make a perfect communication starting place because people, both church members and unchurched are familiar with them, but may not be aware of the truth they reflect.

Following are some suggestions of ways you might want to use Christmas carols, but before you pick one, be sure to pick a carol that is in the Public Domain (copyrights expired) so that if you want to quote all or part of it you aren't breaking any laws. Sixteen of the most popular ones are listed below.

For an extensive list of all the carols with lyrics in the public domain, including many little-known, historical ones: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/HTML/index_of_carols_ab.htm

A limited choice of lyrics of some of the more popular carols:
http://songsofpraise.org/christmaslyrics.htm

Short list of some public domain Christmas Carols, suggestions for use follow this list

  • Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
  • Silent Night
  • Jingle Bells
  • Deck the Halls
  • Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem
  • Angels We Have Heard on High
  • Away In a Manger
  • Deck the Halls
  • Here We Come A-Caroling
  • The First Noel
  • It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
  • Jolly Old St. Nicholas
  • Joy to the World
  • The Twelve Days of Christmas
  • We Wish You a Merry Christmas
  • What Child is This?

Some suggestions for ways to use the content of carols in outreach, sermons and blogs

From: Oh Little Town of Bethlehem

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

The idea of hope and fear--a combination of emotions as old as the years before Christ and as new as contemporary Christmas expectations.

From: Joy to the World

The title alone is great inspiration.

We all need JOY and the reason we can have it now and forever is because of the second line of the song: "the Lord has come"

From: What Child is This?

A good sermon series or Christmas Day sermon title or for a series of Q & A on your website. The answer is in the song: "this is Christ the King."

From: Deck the Halls

"Deck the halls with boughs of holly......tis the season to be jolly...."

Why is it a season to be happy? Again, back to the idea that salvation has become real and tangible in the birth of Jesus. God fulfilled thousands of years of promise in the birth of the Messiah.

 

Write to reach today’s audiences in your church–book updated

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Writing, Editing, Proofing ebook
People will read what you write if you follow the advice in this book.

"Nobody reads what we write!" is a common complaint from all church communicators. Often the assumption that goes with it is that people simply don't care about the Christian faith anymore and that's why they don't read.

In reality people do care tremendously about their lives and eternal destinies--as the bestseller response to self-help and popular spirituality shows. The reason people often don't read what is written in church publications is because much of what is written in church publications both in print and digital formats isn't written in a way that makes the message clear and easy to respond to. And the primary reason this happens is that few people in the church realize that writing that reaches people today is not the same style of writing that got you an "A" from your seminary professor. [Read more...]