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.

Let’s get real—don’t default to Magical Thinking when planning your seasonal outreach

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We know that nothing happens by magic in the church, but we can unthinkingly fall into magical thinking when we plan for seasonal events, but magical thinking alone won't accomplish the results we pray for.

You might protest you would NEVER count on magic to do anything in the church and mean it. But unfortunately, the communication actions in many churches tell a different story because. . . . .

Magical thinking takes place when you assume that simply by doing certain things, you will get the results you want without actually doing the hard work you need to do to get them.

This often happens in the planning and work that goes into the season or holiday celebrations at your church. Below are FIVE ways Magical Thinking can defeat the fantastic opportunities the holidays give us to invite and get people involved in the church and ultimately to meet Jesus. Holidays work so well as outreach to unchurched people because though few people today respond to the invitation "Want to come to church with me?" few people will turn down an invitation to a FREE party that has food and fun stuff for kids.

Holidays offer churches a great opportunity, but to make the most of them, you need to be aware of and correct the following FIVE destructive ways of Magical Thinking.

Magical Thinking # 1: By hosting your holiday or seasonal event people will think your church is great, wonderful, and cares about the community

Whether it is an Easter-Egg Extravaganza, a Trunk or Treat, Thanksgiving Community Meal, or Christmas Caroling and Chocolate—the first thought of people in your community when they see an advertisement of the event is probably not about your church.

The people in your community care most about themselves and their families. Their thinking when they see or come to your event is something like "Wow, this looks like a fun thing for the kids." "Hey, it's free and looks like fun and our family needs a night out."

They are probably not thinking: "Oh isn't First Church a loving church that cares about community outreach and to show the love of Jesus is the sponsor for this event." Even more than your intended audience not knowing WHY you are doing this, unless you consistently and graciously remind them that your church is putting on the event, chances are they won't even remember that your church was the sponsoring group for the event.  [Read more...]

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses

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Share your faith Snappa graphic
What an encouragement something like this can be when it comes across our social media. Snappa is a super easy way to create them.

Images with verses on them that fill our screens and phones can be wonderful moments of encouragement and refreshment. If we want to create them to share with others, Snappa is a fantastic program to use because it is so easy to create them. Though there are many programs you can use to do this, I like Snappa because it has more flexibility in placement of images and texts.

In addition, you can very quickly resize images in Snappa to fit any social media or print graphics format you want. Following is a short video I did to show how easy this is to do.

One quick reminder, Effective Church Communications does not take any affiliate advertising—I'm telling you about this because I personally love and use it all the time.

More videos about Snappa, click on the link below the title

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
https://wp.me/pDky9-8il

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics
https://wp.me/pDky9-8hw

Snappa: How to create a side-bar ad
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mB

 

Snappa: Super quick and easy, how to create a side-bar ad with it

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Side bar ad example--read through the Bible Chronologically
This and every other sidebar ad you see on this site was created very quickly and easily in Snappa. The video here shows you how to do it.

Snappa has removed a huge source of frustration for me because I never seem to manage my creative time as well as I start the day hoping I will. I'll work hard on project (like the one for this sidebar ad on Reading through the Bible in Chronological Order), and after the work is done on the project I realize I need to create a graphic to tell people about what I'm doing.

I panic. But then I remember I have Snappa, so I take a deep breath and usually less than 5 minutes later I have a graphic—polished, done, and ready-to-use.

Below the short video shows you how to do it.

I can't recommend Snappa enough—even if you are better at time management than I am, it's a super quick and easy way to create any kind of digital graphic you need.

 

For more videos on Snappa, click on the links that follow the title:

A video comparison of PicMonkey, Canva, and Snappa
https://wp.me/pDky9-8il

Snappa: Review and How-tos of a GREAT program to create social media graphics
https://wp.me/pDky9-8hw

Snappa: The easiest way to create social media verses
https://wp.me/pDky9-8mw

 

TWO of FIVE TRENDS that will reshape media in 2019

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2019 a new time to try new things
The start of the year is a great time to challenge assumptions and do new things!

MarketingWeek.com, a marketing group from England just published an article on their Five Trends that they believe will reshape media in the coming year.  Amid rather obvious ones like e-commerce will grow, so will video, and Instagram is becoming more useful than Facebook for marketing, were two interesting quotes with implications for church communications and marketing in the coming year. Below are the quotes, my comments, and implication and ideas for church communications that were inspired by them:

First QUOTE:

Consumers will call brands out if they think they are driving them to a social platform just to transact.

Darren Campbell, Dr Martens

IMPLICATIONS & IDEAS:

When a church uses social media in their outreach, how does it come across to people outside the church (assuming they see it)?

This quote got me wondering how much of what churches put out there comes across as simply selling something— “Come to this event!, Bring your Kids HERE!!, Don’t miss out on this!!!

We may protest that we aren’t asking them to spend money (not yet, they must become more involved to be approached with that), but we are asking them to spend time and attention in exchange for our message. We want them to buy into what we are selling.

The bottom line is that is what we want, for them to buy into what we are selling—we want them to come to know Jesus as Savior, have their sins forgiven and live a life serving him. But what if our audience has no idea this is of benefit to them? Or why they should even come to a place that has a pre-packaged life-plan for them to accept?

What is the alternative?

[Read more...]

Pantone’s Color of the year–a vibrant, hopeful, lively Coral

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Pantone's Color of the year 2019
Pantone's Color of the year is a vibrant, beautiful coral--use and enjoy!

Well, this is different. After a murky green in 2017 and a vibrant, but somewhat depressing purple last year, Pantone's color of the year for 2019 is a vibrant, hopeful, and lively coral.

After the sad and contentious year, we've had it seems like the perfect color choice—somewhere between sunrise and sherbet. Here is a short video on it:

Pantone's color selections they say are done like this:

The Color of the Year selection process requires thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. To arrive at the selection each year, Pantone’s color experts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world looking for new color influences. This can include the entertainment industry and films in production, traveling art collections and new artists, fashion, all areas of design, popular travel destinations, as well as new lifestyles, playstyles, and socio-economic conditions. Influences may also stem from new technologies, materials, textures, and effects that impact color, relevant social media platforms and even upcoming sporting events that capture worldwide attention.

Maybe. But maybe the committee or whoever this year just wanted to inject a bit of hope into the world.

Regardless of the reason—use the color!

It reminds me that Easter is coming, but even before then, use the color and put a bit of life and joy into your communications.