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.

FREE TEMPLATES: Church Business Card Size Fall Festival and other Fall Events

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Here are some FREE Templates in Canva you can use to print business cards to invite people to a variety of fall events. This is part of the launch of many new and revised templates in Canva that you can also download and use in MS Publisher. For a video on how to use these, CLICK HERE.

Following are the designs and below them the link to Canva where you can modify them. If you simply want to download and use jpg images of them, a link for that is below the images also.

To go to the Canva file, modify or download as is, CLICK on the link HERE

To download a zip file of jpg images of the cards that you can use in MS Publisher or web applications, CLICK HERE.

For a video of how to sign up for Canva and some initial tips on editing Templates and how to download and use them in MS Publisher, check out the video here:

Game changer! The loss of comprehension of cursive—what it means to church communicators and what to do about it—Canva video included

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Contrast between cursive and block lettering
Many people today have trouble reading the cursive scripts in either print or handwriting. We need to be aware of this and design accordingly in our church communications if we want to reach the most people possible.

This is incredibly important for you to understand before you do ANY more outreach advertising, encouragements, or communications creation of any kind, if you want the the maximum number of people in your church and community to be able to read them.

The reason for my urgent message is the realization that many people today cannot read cursive writing and that includes ALL the wonderful script fonts we like to use so much in our designs for church communications. That includes the group of templates I had ready to send out to you that I need to update. (Sigh.)

This is not a happy post for me to write. I don't like change any more than the average person and to have to change something as basic and natural to me as writing cursive and using wonderful script fonts in communication design just seems like a bit much to deal with.

When I am feeling grumpy like this I remind myself that the communication I do isn't about me, but about a world that needs Jesus and NOTHING should be too much to do, little or big if it can help us reach them. So I slap myself, ask for forgiveness and write a blog about it......

First I'll give you a little background on how I became aware of the loss of the ability to read cursive and then some very practical steps on what to do about it, plus a short Canva Tutorial on some creative ways to deal with this situation on a Fall Outreach Postcard.

It is later in the post, keep reading first for more background on this situation.

[Read more...]

A great resource for encouragement, inspiration, and challenge—and a super affordable way of pricing them for you

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Here is a short video preview of a great ministry resource that I've recently repriced to make it affordable for any ministry.

For many years I've enjoyed creating little framed images of Bible verses or encouraging sayings and giving them away.  I realized that this could also be something shared with people as well as be a way to support the Effective Church Communications ministry.

As I started making them I enjoyed it more than I imagined and the images have increased and increased.

I also realized as they did that pricing them individually would mean they couldn't be used as much as I liked to use them and that I hoped others would. So instead of pricing them at individually, I decided to price them at $36 a year--and grant unlimited reproduction rights on them.

This way you have a growing resource 24/7 that you can have for printed images of many sizes as well as for social media. Check out the video below for a brief overview of them, but keep in mind that new images will be continuously added.

To go to the shop, click the following link: The Bibleverse Shop

You can sign up at: https://payhip.com/b/vLezC

Canva Training Video: 3 BIG mistakes in creating Bible verse graphics and how to correct them

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In our recent survey of church communicators, one of the biggest requests was that people wanted help in creating materials in Canva.

Following is a video that Lord willing, I plan to be the first of many on Canva.

It is a simple topic, but a challenge I see all the time where people create Bible verses with graphics on them and with the best of intentions I'm sure, they violate the most basic rules of typography in using poor contrast, hard to read typefaces, and incorrect sizing for the type vs. the image. In this short video I'll show you how to correct all the mistakes and make a verse graphic where the Bible verse, the reason for doing it all is clear.

 

To sign up for the newsletter to get updates on additional Canva and other instructional videos, plus resources from Effective Church Communications, click the following link: https://dogged-mover-617.ck.page/8b64649777

The most important communications you create—answers to staff emails and other requests

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Don't ignore people who email you
When we ignore emails people send to the church staff it can hurt hearts, damage relationships, and certainly, make people less open to communications you send to them.

We want people to respond to what we communicate to them, we want them to show up and participate. Yet, again and again, I hear from those who are challenged emotionally and spiritually because people on the church staff do not respond to emails. Here are some recent ones (identifying details are modified so as not to embarrass any individual or church as we can all be guilty of these things):

"I wanted to sponsor some of the youth group going to camp and it was not an insignificant amount of money. I also had some other things I wanted to give the group and as I went over my email I realized it wasn't clear that a lot of money was involved with the various offers and a few questions I had. However, the youth pastor took days and no response. I recopied it and sent it again with a nice "I'm sorry I bothered, and you may have missed this....." I got an extremely short reply, basically rejecting my offer. I don't think he actually read the email. I am NEVER again going to support this person and my money will go elsewhere.

I had a really important question about an issue that came up with our small group. I emailed the pastor who is supposed to be in charge of all this and still no reply. I'm trying hard not to call and yell. We just had a budget approval time and our church pays people really well and I don't understand why they don't answer emails.

I sent in the requested material so the communications person could add our Sunday School topics to the church weekly email newsletter. No acknowledgment it was received. It wasn't put into the newsletter. I don't know what to do.

I could go on and on with comments from many churches, but all of them have the same question, and concern--"Why does the church staff not answer email?"

Let's look at why this is happening and positive ways to improve the situation. [Read more...]