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.

Always keep the spiritual and the practical in balance

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So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning (Exodus 17:10-11).

In his devotions, Charles Spurgeon has this comment about the passage above, "So mighty was the prayer of Moses, that all depended upon it. The petitions of Moses discomfited the enemy more than the fighting of Joshua. Yet both were needed."

From this passage in the Bible and Spurgeon's commentary on it, we are reminded that our work always has two sides-the spiritual and the practical. It benefits us to keep them in balance.

The workings of a computer are not beyond the realms of prayer. We can ask for wisdom to understand computer manuals, to remember to slow down, to execute computer commands in their proper order. We can pray about what software to purchase and when; where to get training and for the resources to afford it. We can pray that we might learn all we need to complete our present tasks without overwhelming ourselves.

We can pray for insight as we create ministry communication pieces and that the Lord would prepare the hearts of those who read our message. We can encourage ourselves by remembering that the changing of lives is always, "‘Not by might or by power, but by my Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts." (Zechariah 4:6, NAS)

At the same time that we commit our ultimate success to the Lord, we must remember "both were needed." Joshua had to actually fight a bloody, dusty, horror-filled battle. There will be days that our work in ministry communications doesn't feel spiritual at all but is mundane, disciplined hard work. To do our jobs well, we don't stop praying, but we must also we must apply every earthly skill of business organization, communication, marketing, and computer training that we have to succeed in the battle entrusted to us.

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from the book by Yvon Prehn, The Heart of Church Communications. To either download or purchase a copy, go to www.lulu.com/yvonprehn

Have you closed with Jesus? Perhaps a new way to communicate how to become a Christian

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Like any other transaction, when we close with Jesus it is intentional and something of value--our life for his salvation--is transferred.
Like any other transaction, when we close with Jesus it is intentional and something of value--our life for his salvation--is transferred.

What does it mean to be a Christian? It’s important to understand that for any of the work you do in church communications to make sense. Below are some verses about how the Bible defines it and then I’d like to share what might be a new way that you may not have heard to explain it.

And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. So whoever has God's Son has life; whoever does not have his Son does not have life (1 John 5:11, 12 NLT).

Not all people who sound religious are really godly. They may refer to me as 'Lord,' but they still won't enter the Kingdom of Heaven. The decisive issue is whether they obey my Father in heaven. On judgment day many will tell me, "Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name." But I will reply, "I never knew you. Go away" (Matthew 7:21-23 NLT).

If you've read a number of entries on this website and if you have done church communications work for any time at all, you may have one of two responses. Either the words here have been an encouragement and a challenge to you in your work as a church communicator or perhaps they seem empty and your job remains a frustration.

If your job seems a constant frustration, beyond any solutions in technology or work setting, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to take a few minutes to look at your personal relationship with Jesus.

Church communications is ultimately and at its core communication about Jesus. Unlike other kinds of communication work, you will have a hard time doing church communications work if you don't know Jesus. Knowing him, listening to our shepherd's voice, is essential if our work is to pass the test of eternal value and to be bearable as we do it day-by-day. But how can we be sure if we have this kind of relationship with Jesus?

Please now, take a few minutes by yourself, without distractions, to read this section and think about it.

One way to look at your relationship with Jesus

Evangelists in the past used a term that we don't often hear today when they would ask, "Have you closed with Christ?" Their use of the term "closed" was taken from real estate back then and they used it just as we do today. You can look at a house, walk through it, admire it, want it, even invest time in getting a loan on it, but until you "close" on it, the house is not yours.

What happens when you close? On closing, only then does the house then becomes truly, legally yours. For that closing to take place, you have to give up something, usually a considerable amount of money, and you have to make a commitment to keep investing in the house for it to one day be yours completely.

No analogy is ever perfect, but this is a pretty good one to explain what it means to know Jesus personally. You can look at Jesus from far away, you can even get up close, perhaps visiting or regularly attending a church to look at his teachings. You might even work at a church and do communications work in his name. But unless a personal transaction takes place, unless you know Jesus personally and he knows you, you haven't "closed" with him.

That act of closing with Jesus is a serious commitment. That closing takes place between you and God, in prayer where you admit your sins have kept you from God and you recognize that Jesus death on the cross paid a penalty for those sins that you could not, and you ask that Jesus become the forgiver and leader of your life.

The cost of the transaction

If you do that you have closed with Jesus and you move into an eternal relationship with him. Though there is no monetary cost to this transaction meaning there is nothing you can do to earn or deserve a relationship with Jesus, at the same time before making that closing transaction, the Bible does urge you to count to the life cost. The Bible is clear that the cost involved in closing with Jesus is that you now turn over the control of your life to Him: your priorities, your time, your focus, your decisions are now all to be under the leadership of Jesus. You aren't asked to make monthly payments (though giving regularly to your church and those in need is an expectation of all Christians), but you are required to give up your time regularly in the study of God's Word, in prayer, and in service to your world in the name of Jesus. In return the Christian receives much more than an earthly house that will deteriorate. The Christian is promised an eternal home in heaven and on earth peace, strength, and joy for whatever life God gives.

I'm bringing this up because, because as I've said earlier, doing Christian communication work is one of the hardest jobs imaginable and to last in it, you need every resource available in Jesus. You have to have a personal relationship with Jesus for his strength to flow through you to do this work; you must be on good terms with him to do it happily. Our relationship with our God is personal-more than a theology or belief system or set of rules-one with much more, but no less than the personal qualities of a relationship with an earthly friend.

If you have not closed with Jesus, count the cost of following him and if you are ready to commit your life to him, close with Jesus by praying the prayer that follows.

A prayer of "closing" with Jesus

Dear Jesus,

I admit that though I've known about you for a long time, I've kept you at arm's distance. I don't want to do that anymore. I admit that I need forgiveness for things I have done. I realize that in coming to you I acknowledging that you died on the cross to pay the penalty for my sins and I want you to come into my life and be my forgiver and leader. I realize that in doing this I turn over the control of my life and eternity to you and I pray you'd help me to live a life that is worthy of you. Thank you for your salvation and for being willing to have a personal relationship with me for all eternity. Amen.

If you sincerely prayed that prayer, welcome to the family of God! More than ever before you will have Jesus beside you as you do your work for him. Be sure to read your Bible every day and go to a church that preaches the Bible and you will grow and experience the reality of a friendship that will never end.

Evaluate your ongoing relationship with Jesus

If you are in a relationship with him, how is it? We take time to test our human relationships and it is very important to give time and attention to our relationship with Jesus. Is it the happy, peaceful time you want it to be? Is a bit of resentment festering? Talk about it to Jesus. Is there sadness inside you that you don't feel will ever end? Share it. Have you forgotten to be thankful for the blessings of food and shelter that so many of our brothers and sisters around the world are without? Catch up on your thanks. Do you forget he wants to help you in every detail of your life? Invite him to share this moment.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," the apostle Paul said (Phil 4:13, KJV). Now that your relationship is right with Jesus, charge into your day, doing your work in church communication in his strength.

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Altered slightly, this is taken from Devotions for Church Communicators,The Heart of Church Communication by Yvon Prehn, available as an ebook for Kindle and as a paperback book from amazon.com.

The possible future of church communication channels

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Once again Apple did it—and the i-phone has changed everything.

A white paper sponsored by Neu Star (Jan. 2007) began with this quote:

Mobile marketing offers one of the most effective and rapidly evolving opportunities to engage with target audiences in new ways. In the developed world, the cell phone is the ubiquitous "third screen" in most people's lives and one that they are rarely without. For hundreds of millions of people in the developing world, the cell phone represents the "only screen" in their lives and makes these new audiences easily and individually reachable for the first time. Today, cell phones represent the most personal and intimate way to communicate with individuals.

Small screen is an important channel in the future of communications. The trend for many years has been to complicate, enlarge, and illustrate. Much of that will remain, again in the channel of large group experience of communication, but much person to person communication is moving to the small screen, specifically to the screens of mobile phones.

[Read more...]

The importance of a COMPLETE gospel message at Christmas and always

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In the past, when the culture, school system, and world view was Christian, when you talked about Jesus and accepting him as your personal Savior, most people knew what you were talking about. They may not have believed it, they may not have thought it applied to them, but part of their cultural worldview was a Biblical view of the historical Jesus. Again, they may not have accepted it personally but they knew the facts about who and what they were rejecting. It is very different today.

Now, when you mention Jesus, you need to be very complete and clear what Jesus you are talking about. Are you talking about:

  • A Jesus who is in every person, a sort of divine spark, which is what many new-age folks believe?
  • A Jesus who was a first century Jew and who did good works and taught ethical precepts, but was not the Messiah, as Jewish people believe?
  • A prophet, but not the prophet, as the Muslims believe?
  • Or are you talking about the eternally existing second person of the Trinity, who came to earth, died, was buried, physically rose from the dead, and who is coming again, which is what evangelical Christians believe?

This is just the start of what you need to completely communicate about Jesus: his life, substitutionary death, his physical resurrection, his intercession for us today, his coming return. All of these truths are not part of most people’s current world view. You cannot assume that people have any knowledge of them when they come to your church. You can’t ask them to commit to a savior if they don’t even know who he really is.

A practical example of the dangers of incomplete communication about Jesus

Imagine it is Christmas and your church hosts a Christmas concert: wonderful organ music, uplifting choir pieces, moving poetry, and Bible passages all as background to a moving Christmas pageant. In the beautifully designed program (that the church communicator worked for hours to create and that cost a small fortune to print), is the statement:

If you have not accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, we trust that the joy of the music and message will so fill your heart that you will accept the true peace and joy of Christmas and become a Christian.

I do not want to be cynical, the Spirit can move in any way he desires, but if a person would then check on a card that he or she responded to this message, what does that mean? Does that person have any idea of the complete gospel message? Of the Jesus of history and not just the Jesus of beautiful hymns? Of cross-bearing and the crucifixion of Jesus and not simply Jesus the tiny baby in a manger? You may feel that you shared the gospel, that you challenged people to become Christians, but if someone responded to this incomplete gospel presentation, what really happened?

The early church required that potential converts go through a lengthy teaching time of many weeks and in-depth instruction before they were allowed to publicly proclaim their faith and be baptized. If we are not careful to completely proclaim the Christian gospel and completely teach people what a response to that gospel involves, we may be responsible for souls who think they have become a Christians but who are tragically, completely wrong.

Beyond the details of events and the essentials of salvation

The need to be complete goes beyond being certain we have all the details of events in place, though this is very important if we want to connect people with life-changing events. Being complete also moves beyond being certain people understand what it means to become a Christian, though that is the essential starting point.

We must also be complete in preparing our people to defend the faith. If we don’t take the time to completely explain, defend, and teach in depth about our faith, our people will be unprepared for those who oppose the Christian message, but who take time and care to completely put forth their false teachings. Though this component of effective church communications is most emphasized in Step 4, INSTRUCT; we must keep it in mind in every step of our communication ministry.

The challenge of those who do not believe the biblical, Christian message are sometimes more complete in their communications than we are.

The enemies of our faith are complete in their attacks. For example, a New York Times best-seller, Misquoting Jesus, the Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, has been weakening and  destroying the faith of many for years. Ehrman, who claims to have been a believer at one point in his life, drones on and on and on for 218 pages, in complete (though often distorted) detail, about why we cannot trust the Bible. His book is not difficult to refute, as his logic is faulty, his conclusions dubious, his seemingly shocking statements about supposed biblical inconsistences hardly news to any reputable biblical scholar. In addition, for any so-called scholarly author to use himself and his books, again and again as a primary citation of the truth of his facts, as Erhman does, is ludicrous.

But he is complete in a rambling, false, repetitive way and for a casual reader the simple volume of his argument is persuasive. I am not recommending his method, but it is effective.

Why his volume of distortions convince people

We somehow assume that if an author or authority takes the time to expound on a topic in detail and depth that it is important. Conversely, if we aren’t told about or taught about an important topic in depth it is easy to assume it is not very important. Consider the above two examples:

1. A Christmas gospel presentation of one paragraph.

2. A lengthy book detailing why the Bible can’t be trusted.

Based on the sheer volume, number of citations, seeming care and time taken to explain each topic, it would seem that author of  the book about the Bible took his topic much more seriously, that he obviously cared enough to research and write about it in more detail.  An uniformed seeker might consider it more true because of its completeness.

In contrast, a challenge to consider an eternity-changing decision presented in one brief, emotional paragraph, doesn’t have the same apparent importance. You may protest that a Christmas program is not the place to do into a lengthy, apologetic discussion of the Christian faith and that’s true. However, the lack of space in the program does not mean we should not explain the plan of salvation in its completeness.

Here is where the communication tools we have today and the ability to do multi-channel communication can be useful. We don’t have to put the complete details about salvation in the Christmas program. Keeping in mind the multi-channel resources we have,  in the Christmas program, could be a short statement like this:

Becoming a Christ-follower is a decision that will change your eternity and the way you live the rest of your life on earth.

Don’t make the decision lightly. To explore what it means to be a Christian, please check out our website at www.churchwebsite.com.

There you’ll find answers to questions, links to explore the faith, and email addresses of folks waiting to interact with you. Not wanting to go there?  Call 555-5555 and there will be someone to talk to.

We need to take time to be certain the messages of our church and the gospel are presented in completeness. Yes, setting up a complete web links, finding and training people to interact through email and the phone is difficult and time-consuming. But, if the enemies of truth can take the time to do this, we can do no less. Even if you can’t go into this much detail, at least including a well-done tract would be useful, but without anything more than a brief mention to consider Jesus, it’s hard to take the challenge to consider Jesus as Savior and Lord seriously.

One more note: An in-depth, complete critique and series of articles showing the falseness of Bart Erhman’s thesis is available on www.equip.org, the Bible Answerman’s website. In addition, one of the most complete apologists of the Christian faith is Lee Strobel and his book, the Case for the Real Jesus,  deals with Erhman’s and other current critics of the Bible and Jesus and provides in-depth answers to their false claims. I highly recommend both sources and have used them prior to Christmas to do a series of lessons on Why Jesus is the Reason for the Christmas Season.

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As you write for different communication channels, don’t change the content or look of your message

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Multi-channel communication creation
When you have to create communications for a variety of channels, you don't have to change content or design!

Writing multi-channel communications,creating content for both print and digitally forms is easier than many people who create it in church offices realize. That is because a common misconception in the church office is that if you create communications for various channels, e.g. brochure, web, email, brochure, you need to redo the content, restructure, rewrite, and reformat it for each channel. The truth is that you don't only not need to, but if you do change things in each channel, you will confuse people.

This article will explain:

  • what content details you need to include in every channel
  • the important visual elements that need to stay consistent
  • suggestions of what channels to use
  • how often you need to repeat your message

The essential content details that connect people with the ministry or event of your church

These details need to stay the same no matter what channel you use:

  • Name of event (clarify acronyms and church jargon)
  • Who the event is for
  • Time, including duration
  • Date
  • Location & how to get there
  • Contact information of person putting on the event
  • If childcare is provided
  • If there is a cost
  • Why people should want to attend, the text that explains and invites.

Getting these basic details together is often the hardest part of any communication process. Always remember that though these details seem small, they are the vital links that actually get people connected to an event. Once you have them, you simply need to repeat them.

Warnings:

You will always be tempted to leave some of them out thinking that people have already seen them, but remember that just because you have seen something 5-10 times as you put it into different communication channels--every piece you put out will always be the first piece some people see.

YOU MUST include all the important details in every piece you send out or with an easy link to them. NEVER (the shouting is intended here) tell people to "contact the church office for more information." Nobody has time to do that and even if they do, chances are that since you did not have the information when you first put out the communication, you don't have it now.

Getting the little details from people holding events and putting them into every channel of communication is some of the terribly hard servant work of church communications--but these details are essential to link people to life-changing events. For example, a newly-single mom at your church may want to come to an event, but if you are unclear about child care or child care costs she may not have the emotional courage to contact the church and ask about it.

In addition to consistency in your words, you also need visual consistency

What would you think of a team that changed its team colors to make the team "more interesting?" Doesn't make sense does it? It doesn't make any more sense for your church communications to change the items below to "make things more interesting."

Remember, people do not read church communications because they are "interesting" or not. They read them to find information, to meet needs to grow spiritually. It might not be as interesting for you to create consistent, but what might seem like boring designs, but consistency will serve your people well.

The visual content that needs to stay consistent includes:

  • Logo, if one has been created for the event or ministry
  • Key images or pictures.
  • Colors used in advertising, or tied to an event
  • Layout if unique

Once this core content is created: DO NOT CHANGE IT!

The content of your message needs to be consistent and don't change identifying colors or images.

The most successful advertising campaigns are ones where a company finds a slogan, image or person that works and they repeat it again and again. Some phrases have even become part of our vocabulary:

  • Can you hear me now?
  • Just do it!
  • Where's the beef?

Though we aren't attempting to become part of the national jargon, the same secret for success applies in church communications. For example, if your church has decided to use the slogan, "Everyone in One!" for a small group campaign, don't use that slogan in your printed material and "Never study alone!" as your theme on the website. People will be confused and think you are promoting two different programs.

Decide on your content and design and then take that content and design and put out the message using the various channels. For example, perhaps your content is a campaign to get the congregation involved in small groups. The communication team members, using the same content and perhaps similar colors and images, can create a variety of communications to carry out your ministry goals including:

  • a print brochure
  • a bulletin announcement and insert
  • a PowerPoint presentation
  • a website directory of small group times and locations
  • a print directory with the same information for the welcome center
  • cards for the various groups that people can take home
  • an email newsletter designed to inform and encourage people to sign up
  • social media that links to information and encourages sign-up

You may use more or less of it of the basic core of information (but always with the same look, color, slogan) in the various channels. For example on the web you might list every small group with detailed information about what is being studied and detailed directions on how to get to each small group, whereas in the church bulletin, you might simply give a list of topics, times, and a link to the website.

Finally, each channel should repeat the same message several times

Remember nobody sees all the channels and no one in your congregation will see each communication each time it is presented. Though the number changes with the authorities cited, most marketing experts agree that people need to see a message at least 5-7 times for it to register at all. We may be sick of repeating it, but you can be sure that after you send out the same message 10 times in at least 5 different channels, there will still be someone who says, "Thank you so much for that one (text, postcard, email, bulletin announcement)--I didn't know that was happening, but when I saw it, I went and it changed my life."