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.

Halloween Outreach Videos and how to use them to reach unchurched people for Jesus

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Halloween Outreach video
Use this video to get people thinking about Jesus, the only person who conquered death.

Halloween is a fantastic time for evangelism outreach because everyone is talking about death and the supernatural. That makes it a perfect opportunity for you to engage unchurched people in a conversation about Jesus. The following are two versions of the same video that will help do that.

At the end of this article are download links to download HD versions of both videos for you to use in your Halloween Outreach. Do whatever you'd like with them.

The first one is a mellow one with Christian background music and soft fall graphics background.

The second one is a much more in-your-face with the music and a harsher graphics background—different ones for different audiences.

This video was created for you to share with your unchurched audience. Please download, share, link to your website. The other version of it has more mellow, church music if you prefer that.

Soft style of the video:

In-your-face style of the video:

Following is some information you can copy and share on your website after the video. It has a challenge for people to consider Jesus as well as websites for them to go to for more information. You have permission to copy, change, use however you want:

[Read more...]

National Boss Day is Oct. 16 & how Ministry Assistants define the excellent boss

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Celebrate your church office boss
Oct. 16 is National Boss Day and here are some characteristics of great ones.

Ed. note: The article that follows reminds us to thank and celebrate great bosses in our church. If they don't come up to the standards here, the article provides a wonderful list of prayers for them.

National Boss Day is a time for workers to show appreciation to their employers. The day is annually observed in the United States on October 16, or the nearest working day. Over the years I’ve asked scores of ministry assistants to define their ideal boss.

The excellent boss according to Ministry Assistants:

• sets a high standard for attitude and actions
• treats others with respect and courtesy [Read more...]

Video and notes: Tips for using COLOR in text

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Video: Tips for using COLOR in text
This video will help you make sure that your colored text not only looks good but is readable.

We might like how a color looks in an illustration, but the same color that might make a design appealing, might also make the message unreadable if we use that color in text. This short video will give you tips on how to use color in the text of your communications. The text is the most important part of any communication because that is the primary carrier of your message. It doesn't matter how pretty or inspiring an illustration is if people don't come to the event or learn what you want them to. [Read more...]

Teamwork in Times of Change

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Teamwork in times of change
More than ever, success in the church office is the result of teamwork.

Ed. note: If you've served in the church for any time at all, you've not doubt experienced changes and will experience many more in the times to come. In this encouraging article, Gayle helps us see how to make the most of the most challenging changing times.

In September 2011 the Hartford Institute for Religion Research released a new decade-long survey of congregations in the United States. It will come as no surprise to you that the past ten years have brought enormous changes throughout religious communities.

One disturbing conclusion is that median weekend worship in all sizes of congregations has significantly declined since the 2000 survey. Along with the drops in attendance was a significant decline in financial resources.

Still, despite fewer dollars and fewer people, a lot of churches—large and small—are doing some things quite well. One example: the vast majority of congregations have implemented electronic communications. More than 40 percent even use social networks like Facebook to keep in touch with congregants. These congregations and their leaders realize surviving and thriving in challenging times doesn’t just happen. [Read more...]

A primer on responsive websites, what they are and why they are important

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Responsive websites, a primer
A responsive website is one that adjusts to any device you use to view it--here's some basics about them.

Before we talk about responsive websites, a clarification is important. A responsive website, for the purposes of this article, doesn't mean one that meets the needs of seekers to your website, though that is important for a church website.

What I'm talking about is a website that adjusts, (responds) to any technology that is used to view it. It's also one of the most important web trends today. It's also the foundation of the changes that I'm making on this site to serve you better.

 An honest disclaimer first

I'm not writing this as an expert website creator, even though I've created several websites for churches and ministries, plus I created and maintain this website for my ministry Effective Church Communications.  Though I can do a little coding if I have to, I usually mess that up and rely totally on WordPress.

In the process of updating this website, I discovered responsive websites and was totally impressed with and excited about how they can expand the ways my ministry can help church communicators. Fortunately, WordPress has some fantastic FREE website templates that have all the complex coding of responsive websites built-in. Making this site responsive was as easy as replacing the template.

Well, not quite that easy. I'm still rearranging material to take the best advantage of the new way it displays content. Still, the shift to a responsive design using WordPress is relatively painless and I wanted to share this at the start because I don't want you to worry about this being too complex for you to do if you want to do this for your site.  As with many things in ministry technology, somebody has to do the heavy lifting in coding, but I think it is a much better use of most church communicator's time to use a template where the programming framework is already done and you can focus on the content. WordPress allows you to do that. Later I'll have some links that show you how easy it is to create sites using it.

Responsive technology, what it is and why we need it

Here is a more complete definition of a responsive website:
A website that responds to the device that accesses it and delivers the appropriate output for it uses responsive design. Rather than designing multiple sites for different-sized devices, this approach designs one site but specifies how it should appear on varied devices.

From: https://itservices.stanford.edu/service/web/mobile/about/terminology

This is very different from what happens on the most websites today. Though you can view them on a variety of devices, like a mobile phone, the website is simply smaller on the smaller device.  Unless you know what is already there, it is difficult to move around and expand a section of it, even if you have a phone that can do that. To actually use the site, to use drop-down menus, for example, is almost impossible.

A responsive website is also different from a website having a secondary version of it coded for mobile phones.

A responsive website in contrast, without additional coding for each device, automatically adjusts to the size of the device used to view it, and it shifts the organization of the content, so that you can always read the primary content on the screen. You can view the difference  here is a short video I did to illustrate the difference:

Why we need them

A quote from Jeff Veen gives the technology reason:

“Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.”

The ministry reason is this is simply another step in "becoming all things to all people so that we might win some." Websites are an essential way for churches and ministries to communicate both the plan of salvation in Jesus as well as the details about our church or ministry and how people can connect with us. Though the content remains the same, people now view our websites on an ever-increasing variety of devices.

The idea of responsive websites developed as an option for having to create a completely different size for every size device. Instead of having an exact layout for each one, responsive design determines the device and then scales and rearranges content to fit it.

If we want to both have our ministry material available to everyone who needs it and be able to manage the creation process at the same time, responsive design is a great tool.

How to make responsive design work for you

Many of you have highly skilled webmasters or companies that created and or maintain your site and they are most likely in process on adapting responsive design principles to it—if you are happy with that—keep with it.

My advice is for those of you who want to create your own website easily and for free (or almost) and that is to consider WordPress. You can start out with http://www.wordpress.com, which is completely free. It is extremely easy to learn and use. At this link here I have a series of free videos that show you how to create a basic site with WordPress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhAhP30CKzo&list=PL35207ECE78421EF4&feature=plcp

Update note on the link above: some of the interface examples have been updated on WordPress, but it is still a useful video to enable you to see what you can do with it.

For more about Responsive design:

I realize I've barely touched the surface of this exciting development in website design, but below are some additional resources, from a visual explanation to some excellent and more technical articles.

Following is a scrolldeck of responsive design, don't get overwhelmed by the how-tos at the end of it: http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js/decks/responsive/

I highly recommend this overview article: http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/whats-responsive-web-design-all-about/

A good, more technical overview and links to basic resources: http://blog.teamtreehouse.com/beginners-guide-to-responsive-web-design

Keep learning and growing in your service to your people and our Lord

Work in computers and communication never stands still and here is one more challenge. Let's charge ahead trusting the Lord that this is yet another way we can serve Him and His people.