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 PRINTABLES, images for Mother’s Day in all formats and sizes

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Prov 31:30, to celebrate any woman who serves God
These images can be printed up in a variety of sizes to honor women at Mother's Day or any time.

This image is part of a collection of printable images you can download and use in any digital format in 96 dpi and also in high-resolution PDFs and 300 dpi jpegs that can be printed at large sizes through online printing shops. I can only give you some of the smaller sizes here (because of upload size limitations), but the larger sizes are now available at the Bibleverse Shop!

Please click on the images and a larger view will come up.

I chose this verse because though it is a great one to share for Mother's Day, it applies to all women, biological moms or spiritual moms, or any woman who deserves praise because she fears the Lord.

At the bottom of this article are downloadable files that contain the images in these sizes and formats including:

  • INSTAGRAM and FACEBOOK size 96 dpi images are useful for any way you want to use them in a digital, social media, or web format.
  • Ready to print PDFs, 2 sizes in one folder for 8.5 and A4—the most common for a full-size sheet printed out in with standard church or office printers. Plus high-resolution 300 dpi jpegs.

It's now here! The Bibleverse Shop!

I now have a system and a place (the Bibleverse Shop) where I can also provide a selection of sizes and formats that can be sized from small images to 24x36 and 30x30 in both high-resolution PDFs and high-resolution 300 dpi jpg. You can use these files to have the images printed at your local print shops, or online with Costco, Vista Print, Staples, and many more.

At your home or office, you can print them out and then put them into frames for gifts or for inspiration around your church. The mockups below illustrate some of the ideas. The Bibleverse Shop is now OPEN and these images show what you'll be able to do with the files on the site.

Download these files for the Images

Click on the links below, the first for Instagram and Facebook, 96 dpi images for all digital uses.

The second one is for 8.5 x 11 and A4 files in both hi-resolution PDFs and 300 high-resolution dpi jpegs for printing.

Files for Home & Church Printing Files for Digital & Social Media

Files for Home & Church Printing

FREE eBook and links to resources to help you make the most of Mother’s Day–the BEST outreach and discipleship Sunday of the year…..really

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MOTHER DAY Cover--make the most of it for evangelism and discipleship
Mother's Day is THE BEST Sunday of the year for evangelism and discipleship--read this FREE eBook to understand why and for tips on how to do make the most of it.

Mother's Day gets some of the highest attendance of unchurched visitors of any Sunday and it isn't because of Mothers.

The Mothers are always there. The high attendance comes from the unchurched kids and spouses who come to church that week to make Mom happy. To help you make the most of it I pulled together some of my most popular resources and put them into an ebook that will help you make the most of it.

What’s here in the FREE OUTREACH materials for Mother's Day

  • Reprints of materials from the Effective Church Communications website (www.effectivechurchcom.com) that will:
    • Give you a new vision for the outreach and evangelism opportunities of this day and how to make the most of them.
    • Reminders of how to be kind to those who aren’t Mothers.
    • Ideas for how to use Mother’s day as a discipleship opportunity for your entire church.
  • Also enclosed in this eBook are copies of One Mother’s Prayer, a true story that has been reprinted and used thousands of times all over the world to encourage both physical and spiritual mothers to pray for the children they love. You have permission to make unlimited copies of One Mother’s Prayer (I, Yvon Prehn, wrote it and I’m giving permission to you) to use it or reprint in any way you want. It can used it in prayer groups, as a handout for
    Mother’s Day, for Mom’s groups, for Grandparents, shared in print, social media, or
    websites, however you’d like. No linking or attribution required.
  • Tips for communications you can create before, during, and after Mother’s Day, plus links to FREE templates to enable you to do that.

 

[Read more...]

PODCAST: Was Jesus a Zombie? Consider this question before you finalize your Easter Sermon

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Jesus is AliveWas Jesus a zombie? Please understand, there is no irreverence or shock value intended with this question. It was an honestly asked question from someone who was totally unfamiliar with church.

After I got over my shock of being asked this question (and a short time later I was asked it from someone else), I did a podcast that coincided with Halloween, but I think it is also appropriate for the Easter Season so I am re-recording it for Effective Church Communications.

The rest of the podcast is primarily directed towards people outside the church, but I'm sharing it with church communicators and I hope with Pastors and those who prepare sermons for Easter to help you remember that if you did a good job on outreach to get unchurched people to come to your church for Easter, you need to think carefully about the audience you'll have. Many more people than those of us who grew up in the church can imagine did not grow up with ANY exposure to the church or the Bible. The implications of that reality are vast. You can't count on them knowing anything about the true story of Jesus, but they will come into the church with many pop culture ideas about life after death. I can't tackle them all, but now I'd like to tackle just one aspect of it—the question of........

 

Was Jesus a Zombie?

When you think about it calmly, if you are someone who doesn't go to church regularly, it really is a very good question because the only conception many people have today of a person who has come back from the dead is a zombie. So when someone hears Jesus came back from the dead, that's immediately what they think about. Easter is all about Jesus coming back from the dead, but as we'll see in the podcast today, how Jesus came back from the dead is very different from coming back as a zombie.

So what do we know about Jesus coming back from the dead?

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Effective WEBSITE strategy for Children’s Easter follow-up and a handout to go with it

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Children's Easter Return Card
CLICK on the image above to download the PDF. You can add specific information from your church on the back to help people return after Easter.

Many churches have special events at Easter for children. Many churches have an Easter Egg Hunt. One church in our city has a petting zoo every year. It's a fun event for kids and they serve snacks, play games, and get to interact with baby animals. Lots of unchurched people from the neighborhood surrounding the church attend.

The church doesn't do a petting zoo every Sunday. They don't serve special snacks each week to the kids and they don't have an Easter Egg Hunt each week. Also, the children's ministry doesn't even meet at the same time on a regular basis that they hold the special events for Easter.

Yet somehow, because of the petting zoo, and all the money and time spent on the goodies and the Easter Egg Hunt, the people in the children's ministry assume that the unchurched families in the area surrounding the church will come back to Sunday School the following Sunday because their kids had so much fun.

When they don't, the church staff is often disappointed, but they forget parents aren't mind readers. They have no idea what this church or any church does on a regular basis and no hint of why they should bother to get out of bed early Sunday morning to take their kids to some program they know nothing about.

A flyer like the one here is essential to give out at Easter. On the back you can invite families to your regularly scheduled children's ministry events. In addition to that, a clear link to your website can make a huge difference in ongoing response. Following are some ideas how this works.

How your website can help change this response

If you are a parent of young children, when you see an advertisement for a program for kids, a new game, a special food, anything advertised for kids, what is the first thing you do to check it out?

You will check out the website. On any commercial product or program of any kind, the website is always prominently displayed. That is the next step to find out about the product.

On the site it explains and illustrates the benefits of the product. It will answer questions, tell you where to get the product, and give you instructions on how to contact someone for more information if you have questions.

If this is the obvious that any commercial business does; why do we assume in the church that people will know all about what we offer kids on a weekly basis if we don't tell them? [Read more...]

As a church and as individuals, your actions during this pandemic answer the question, “What is the gospel according to you?”

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We expect churches to be kind and reach out in hard times
People often look to churches for help in hard times and rightfully so as we represent Jesus to them. Here are some things to consider so we don't disappoint.

Yvon's note: I wrote this initially soon after the start of the previous recession. As I was reorganizing the website I found it and realized how similar our situation, challenges, and opportunities are with the current pandemic. With a small amount of editing and updating I trust it will be useful now.

We communicate with more than words as followers of Jesus. The little poem below reminds me of this. It's something I memorized years ago and I'm afraid I don't know the author or title, but here it is:

We are writing a gospel, a chapter each day
By the things that we do and the things that we say.

People read what we write,
Distorted or true.

What is the gospel,
According to you?

We have an opportunity to live out the gospel during this recession (and now pandemic); to communicate the love and care of Jesus in tangible ways. Let's look at one situation, job loss, and some suggestions on what to do and what not to do as a church to people who are out of work.

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