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.

In your church office: Keep It Simple, part one

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Gayle Hilligoss Picture
Article by Gayle Hilligoss

A cell phone’s ring tone during a meeting of ministry assistants sparked a conversation about how complicated life is today as compared to just a few short years ago. One of the youngest of the group remarked, “Even I remember when multitasking was something computers, not assistants, did. I think I was more productive then. For sure, I was less stressed.”

Experience in the church office leads many assistants to believe the key to achieving the maximum joy from work lies in keeping things as simple as possible. The process starts with making wise choices—decisions designed to manage your job and your life effectively.

• Delegate what you can
Volunteers can take over many hours of your work week to free your time for the kinds of tasks that cannot be delegated. Granted, enlisting and training volunteers takes time and effort. And there are some obvious disadvantages to relying on unpaid help. But, done well, delegation will simplify your days.

• Identify avoidable negatives
Worrying about the future, ruminating over the past, being involved with gossip, remaining in outgrown friendships, indulging in harmful habits, setting unrealistic standards for yourself and others—imagine the tranquility you could gain by discarding these life-complicating behaviors.

• Trim your tasks
Today’s alternative to delegate is eliminate. What do you habitually say yes to that you could say no to?

Ask yourself:
• Does it really need to be done?
• Does it need to be done right now?
• Does it need to be done this way?

We tend to hold on to old habits and notions even if we are not satisfied with the results. Most likely there is a better way. Look for the most simple technique to achieve the desired outcome. Moving beyond the “we’ve always done it this way” syndrome is a huge first step toward implementing new techniques.

Get even choosier about how you spend your time. Take a serious look at your week’s agenda. Identify things which give you a low return on your time and effort investment; cut them from your routine.

• Seriously unclutter “stuff”
Church offices can be collecting places for all sorts of (is there a better word for it?) stuff. Gain control by having a proper place for each item that belongs in the office and a system for moving things that don’t belong there to more appropriate places.

Ask yourself:
• Do I need to keep this item?
• Does it need to be kept in the office?
• Where is the best place for this item?

Every office needs a workable policy for ditching things. If you have one, use it. If you don’t, see what can be done to get a policy in place.

Unclutter your personal space as well. The more things one has, the more time and energy must be devoted to caring for them. Go for quality rather than quantity. Having fewer possessions—only what you use, need, and enjoy—allows you to appreciate each more fully.

 

Why training church communicators takes so much time and effort and the 10,000 hour rule

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In the video that follows, Malcolm Gladwell talks about his 10,000 hour rule. This rule, based on extensive research, is that it takes about 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a field. To make that number more manageable, it means that you need to work on something 40 hours a week for 250 weeks, or slightly less than 5 years to become really good at it. Take a quick look at the video and then I'll share how this applies to church communicators:

How this applies to church communications

Don't get lost in the details of this idea. I've ordered his book, Outliers, to look at his thesis in more detail and will blog about it more later, but the point is, you don't get good at anything quickly. We know that's true in many areas of life--you don't become a great preacher with your first sermon, a great cook the day you buy a cookbook, a great apologist the first time someone asks why you think the Bible is true.

Why is it then, we expect people in the church who have no advertising, marketing, design, layout, typography or technical training to become instant masters at website design, church bulletin layout, and newsletter writing?  From the earliest days of the computer revolution when a church secretary would often come into the church office and find her typewriter replaced by a computer (this really happened more times than I could count). She would then be informed, with great excitement, by whoever did this, that by next week she would get to create the church bulletin and newsletter with it! With the extraordinary tenaciousness innate in church secretaries along with many tears and prayers, she would often get it done. She would go on to learn the computer and the software, usually with no formal training at all and on her own time.

That lack of respect for the person and ignorance of the training needed to do complex communication tasks has continued wherein church secretaries and communications people are told to create a website or various forms social media for the church. It usually happens, but often not easily or well.

The true Biblical Church of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, rose again and is coming back is not doing very well communicating our message (when we look at declining numbers and the public perceptions of the church) when we have the most extraordinary tools available in the history of humanity.

The key is, we haven't taken the time to learn to use them really well. That reality is what motivated me to start the ministry of Effective Church Communications and that's what keeps it going today. Here are some of what I have to help you get the 10,000 needed hours of training.

  • There are many resources available at: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com to train church communicators.
  • PLEASE check out the site--there is a LOT on it, but there needs to be.
  • If you are a church communicator, sign up for the newsletter, check out the site often to learn the continuously added and updated lessons.
  • If you are a church leader who is responsible for church communicators, buy them an ECC Membership and GIVE THEM TIME TO USE IT (yes, all caps and shouting to make the point). You must give your people time to learn communications.
  • Please also check out my books on church communications--this is an ever-growing resource that will help you learn about the importance of Effective Church Communications and what you need to do in your church to create them. The materials are available in all digital formats and in print. Check out, just click on site title:
  • Smashwords--the source for all digital formats, free materials and special editions here. Just scroll down the page to get to the books--I wish they didn't have my bio first, but I had no control over page layout.
  • Amazon.com--the source for Kindle and print versions.

10,000 is a lot of time to learn something. We have been entrusted with the Words of Eternal Life--that task is worthy of them.

Q & A: Where can you find Free PowerPoint resources, artwork and templates?

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Question:

"Our church has recently added a video screen to our sanctuary. We are in the beginning stages on learning how to use it for announcements and other parts of our church service. We have found some resources for slide backgrounds, videos and countdowns. Most of the video and countdown sites have a fee to use these. We are a small church and just wondering where the best sites are for these things, and possibly free usage sites also. Any suggestions?"

Answer:

Though there are many excellent companies that create PowerPoint presentations for churches, many do charge a hefty fee for their materials. As someone who creates resources for churches, I know everyone needs to make a living, but at the same time, I as someone who is married to a bi-vocational pastor and whose work at the church is done for no compensation, I do know that church resources can be very tight, while ministry demands can be challenging.

I did a good bit of research on this and found the following websites have some excellent FREE resources! Rather than simply telling you about them, I did 3 video reviews, so you can actually see the sites. Following are video reviews of the sites I found most useful with preliminary comments and direct links to them.

PLEASE respond in the comments section if you have other sites that you use either free or paid for. Any extra comments would be very helpful. Thanks so much!

Free PowerPoint Templates from Christian sources

Heartlight.org
http://www.heartlight.org/powerpoint/2262.html
This site is just WONDERFUL! Lots of free materials, really good quality, and I found the overall attitude of the site encouraging and uplifting. Not only PowerPoint, but lots of other materials you'll find very useful for church communications.

Ebibleteacher.com
http://www.ebibleteacher.com/
I didn't find this as useful for worship-type PowerPoint as some, but I really like their teaching materials. Good graphics and maps section and OK background images. I use a lot of maps and historical images in my Bible teaching to remind people that the Christian faith is rooted in real history that took place in real places.

Hyperpixels Media
http://www.hyperpixelsmedia.com/motion-background-loops/fire-flow
I really liked the materials here. This site has mostly materials that cost, but they also have some free materials, that change and that are wonderful. Their quality is excellent and their prices are very reasonable. This does cost, but their video: A Man's Thesaurus had me laughing out-loud. Check it out when you need a bit of humor.

Free PowerPoint Templates for Churches Video Review

Free PowerPoint templates from Secular Sources

PowerPoint Styles.com
http://www.powerpointstyles.com
This is a weird site—but useful weird. Be sure to look at the video before you go to it. It has some GREAT material and it's all FREE, but what is weird about it is all the junk ads, software download boxes and other stuff that clutter up the site. But if you take a few minutes with it, you'll be rewarded with some really great PowerPoint Templates.

Microsoft.com
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/results.aspx?qu=presentations
The link above goes directly to the free PowerPoint templates from Microsoft. As you'll see the best ones they offer don't come from Microsoft themselves, but from companies that give free resources to them. It is a little tricky to find and access these resources, but the video that follows shows you how.

Free Templates and Clipart for Churches from Secular Sources

Free Power Point Training Resource

Indezine.com
http://www.indezine.com/
This is a very interesting site—it does have lots of free templates for PowerPoint and the video below shows you how to access them, but it also has lots of educational information on all sorts of topics related to PowerPoint, such as an extensive tutorial about presenting on the iPad. There are lots of links to books and other resources related to PowerPoint and links to downloads of software trials. Their religious templates feature ones for non-Christian religions, which could be very useful for world religion classes. Bookmark this site as the offering and education materials change often.

Free PowerPoint Templates and Training, a video review of Indezine

Father’s Day Post cards, a great set, ready-to-use

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Here is a set of postcards for Father's Day, that can also be used as stand-alone images in PowerPoint, websites, newsletters or however else you want to use them. These publications and images come in a ZIP file you can download in these formats:

  • A PDF of postcard size publications that is ready-to-print as is, but that you can also personalize on the back side with your church information.
  • An editable MS Publisher file of the images that you can modify however you choose.
  • A graphic image in either png or jpg format that you can use any way you want, in newsletters, on the web, however, you'd like.
Word Cloud image 3
These images for Fathers Day can be used for postcards, inserts into bulletins and invitations to celebrate Father's Day.

The images above illustrate only some of what is available for Father's day. All of the files on this page are FREE for ECC MEMBERS, some of the other files will be available for everyone. Members can download the ZIP FILE, at the end of this. If you are not a Members of Effective Church Communications, CLICK HERE for membership information --it is only $9.99 a month for many free resources and training available 24/7.

The images and postcards were created with Word Clouds, created with http://www.tagxedo.com.

These are illustrations only, the zip file containing all the files, PDFs, etc., is available at a link below the images.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD the ZIP file containing the PDFs, graphic images, and editable MS Publisher files.

 

5 things that don’t work and 5 that do to start a Men’s Ministry at Father’s Day or anytime

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Like Father Like Son True story here: a growing church of 1800 (from 300 only three years earlier) decided to start a Men's Ministry with a Bible Study for men. Lots of prayer and encouragement from the pulpit, plus a splashy PowerPoint show, encouraged men to come. The night of the study the staff set up 200 chairs in anticipation. Three men showed up.

What went wrong? Following are five staff assumptions about their advertising approach to this even and why they didn't work.

#1 The staff assumed men would do what the Power Point® told them to do.

The colorful, eye-catching PowerPoint® slide show ended with a call to "sign up in the church lobby." What they wanted to be a call to action was in reality the kiss of death to any event sign-up.

After church is over, does any man to say to his wife (please forgive any implied sexism in this illustration), “Honey, would you please wait for me in the car while I find out where to go sign up for the men’s Bible study?”  It doesn’t happen. I know my own husband’s most pressing thought after church is–where are we going for lunch? Following the thought of food is football, basketball, or hockey, depending on the time of year. Most men I know, godly guys that they are, are similar in their after-church priorities. Trying to find a table in the church lobby to find out information about something that you may or may not be interested in simply is not a priority, even if by chance a man remembers he was told to do that.

Any time you require people to take a second step (call the church office for more information, sign up in the lobby, etc.) to find out essential details that they need to show up for any event, you will drastically cut down attendance.

#2 The staff assumed that men would remember the connecting details from the PowerPoint® announcement presented every Sunday.

Most men don’t. PowerPoint® is great for song lyrics, to set a specific mood for worship, or for graphics to reinforce a story or theme, but few men (women or teenagers) sit in worship, pencil in hand, ready to take notes off of a PowerPoint® presentation. A bulletin insert, ready to post on the refrigerator with all the details on it, would have been much more useful. Wives and girlfriends post it and remind the significant men in their lives about it. Yes, it might seem retro, old-fashioned, a bother to produce, but it works.

#3 The staff assumed that having the pastor encourage the men to come to the event meant something to the men and would make them want to come.

It usually doesn’t. Pastoral leadership doesn’t have the influence it once did. We live in an irreverent age, an age that doesn’t admire authority. A personal invitation can be powerful, but pleas from the pulpit to attend events that aren’t particularly appealing to uninvolved church members, men or women, are seldom heard, let alone acted upon. [Read more...]