Effective Church Communications
Effective Church Communications provides Timeless Strategy and Biblical Inspiration to help churches create communications that fully fulfill the Great Commission
Don't panic, I'm not suggesting that every senior pastor or church leader drop the website creation and maintenance service they use, get a Mac; learn html, Dreamweaver, and Photoshop. The current service you use may be working out fine and if you have an affinity for the Mac and high-end graphics you are most likely comfortable in your work. I'm not trying to change that, but to challenge you to learn more about the process if you've been primarily delegating your website creation to others.
Creating a custom header for a website can be an expensive and difficult process, but it can be a very simple process if you do it with MS Publisher. This video does not teach you how to do websites, but if you already have one, for example with WordPress, this will show you how to create your own custom header for it.
If you don't have a website as yet, not knowing how to create a custom header can hold some folks back because of the perceived cost or impossibility of doing your own. This short video (it is SO easy) will solve one possible concern...and it is really fun! [Read more...]
Online Polls are a useful and fun addition to any website. This video shows you how to create them quickly and easily using the free Poll Daddy software. Poll Daddy Software is free and it allows you to create a variety of polls and surveys.
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After writing an article for Christian Computing Magazine on ways to save money in your church communication programs, I got an email with a question that I know many churches struggle with. The question in shortened from was, "Is it OK to do away with our print newsletter? We'd save so much money if we just put it on the web." As I was putting together the answer, I realized that it is a topic that would be useful to share with all of you.
Though I can totally understand where the woman is coming from who wrote the question, as always, there is more to it than simply saving money, doing away with a print version and putting it all on the web. I'm working on a larger book that deals with this issue, but here is a helpful section from part of it:
It is very difficult to take time to do a print postcard for the three people who don’t have internet access when fifty other people in the class are so easy to reach via email. Or to make a copy of the newsletter (in large print at that) and mail it out to the ten people who vow never to use a computer when everyone else in the congregation can get access to it on the church website.
Jesus left us a very clear example of what to do in these situations. He told the story of the shepherd who went after the one little sheep who wandered off.
Jesus isn’t nearly as concerned about the efficiency of our newsletter delivery as he is that we care for the wandering little sheep just as much as he does. That little sheepie was probably a naughty little sheepie and wandered off for no good reason. Jesus still went after him and carried him home lovingly.
Sometimes we might feel that some folks in the church make our communication tasks more difficult just because they are onery—and that might be true. But Jesus still expects us to love and serve them, just as much as the rest of the congregation.
No matter what the cost, people are always the most important consideration, no matter what the cost.
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.
