The impudence, the unfairness, the absurdity of it!... What was the sense of so arranging things that anything really impor portant should finally and absolutely depend on such a man of straw as himself? At that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not t help remembering, men were at war ar,, and...freckled corporals who had lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awaking, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions; and far away in time Horatius stood on the bridge, and Constantine settled in his mind whether he would or would not embrace the new religion, and Eve herself stood looking upon the forbidden fruit and the Heaven of Heavens waited for her decision. He writhed and ground his teeth, but could not help seeing. Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices. from Perelandra, by C. S. Lewis, when Ransom realizes his personal responsibility to fight evil personified Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven en and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey y ever erything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the ver ery y end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20 yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 1
Contents YOU CAN DO IT! Make this your goal for Effectiv ective e Church Communications in these challenging days...3 Content is primary y and our content is the most impor portant message of the Gospel...4 The tools are available ailable that do the hard d wor ork for you ou......6 You ou can produce your own wn communications......9 You ou owe e it to your people to develop elop and use them first... 11 Doing things in-house is good stewardship in these chal- lenging times... 13 About Yvon Prehn... 14 End notes, Reprint Information, Resour esources, etc. tc... 15 yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 2
YOU CAN DO IT! Make this your goal for Effectiv ective Church Communications in these challenging days Times are changing and challenging, budgets are a worry, and church worship technology always seem to require that you learn a new skill, but one thing that does not change is our commission from the Lord to reach the world with the gospel message and to make disciples. One of the primary tools we have to do accomplish this task is our church communications and in this financially challenging time it is easy to want to cut back in this area. Cutting back is not t the answer er. The church will die without strong, continuous communications. The Lord calls and gifts his people to do his work you may not feel like, you may not want to, you may be scared of the technology, but no matter how old or young you are, no matter where your church is located or how small your budget, you can do all the communications you need to win your community to Jesus and to help your people grow in their faith. Staff and volunteers in the church, and creating your communications in print and online in-house does take time, commitment, and lots of hard work, but the results will be communications that will reflect your church and will more effectively reach the audience the Lord has called you to reach. Read on for reasons why you can and should do your communications work in-house, in your church, and by your church people and how this works out in practice..... You ou can do it! yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 3
Content is primary and our content is the most t important message of the Gospel The Five Steps of Effective Church Communication & Marketing It is vitally important, especially when time and money is scarce, to remind ourselves why we communicate anything at all. We communicate to fully fulfill the Great Commission given to us by Jesus to go into all the world, preach the gospel, and make disciples. Our resources or our perceived lack of them is not the most important thing we need to consider when we make church communication decisions; what we must always keep foremost is the content of our message and our responsibility to share it. Our content requires more than an uplifting praise service followed by great preaching, though these are useful introductions. The content of the Christian message requires careful study, teaching, repetition, and a variety of learning experiences for all ages. It requires thoughtful invitations, complete church bulletins and newsletters, training classes with handouts, and websites that contain up-to-date and complete information, plus links to in-depth research and learning opportunities. If we respect the Christian message and want to be faithful stewards of it, we must communicate the content of the message in its fullness and depth. To do this takes many pieces and varies of communication and to do this cost-effectively means you must do it, using the people at your church, and making the most of resources available to you. Our content should be personal In addition to being a cost-effective solution to economic challenges, there are additional reasons that you should do your own communication creation and production. One of the most important reasons is so that your content will be personalized to your church. Though the core message of every church: salvation Though the core through the death and resurrection of Jesus is the same for every church, every message of the gospel church will express the gospel message and its practical outworking in its own is universal, you need unique way and no one can express it better to the audience your church is called to personalize your to reach than the people in your church and the wider audience your church is telling of it to your called to witness to. church and the people It s a little bit like falling in love and getting married. There is something universal you are called to reach. about love and romance, but every married couple has a unique story to tell of their proposal. A young man, wildly in love with the woman of his dreams, always wants his proposal to be like no other. He knows what his beloved likes, what will surprise and delight his future bride. He crafts the proposal to be something she cannot resist and will remember forever. Imagine though how different it would be if a future groom decided that an individualized proposal was too much work and he decided to hire a professional proposal maker (if there were such a thing) to do the work for him. The message might be the same, Will you marry me? But somehow, receiving a message from a professional, who did the same thing over and over, even though he did it with great flare and flourish, just wouldn t have the same impact as a homemade proposal crafted just for her. A potential bride might wonder if the prospective groom didn t care enough to create a proposal just for her, if their future relationship would be a rehash of professional messages also. yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 4
I think it s like that when churches purchase professionally done postcards and other outreach pieces. They might look good and be professionally produced but people know when they are being marketed to and when they are reached out to by real people. Around Easter, getting the same slick card from three different churches in the same town (as happens every year in our city to our household and I assume to thousands of others), doesn t exactly make the recipient feel special. You know the people in your neighborhood pray for them, talk to them. Then create in-house outreach pieces that will speak directly to them. When people receive them, they will know that a real church filled with real, caring people produced the materials not some impersonal mail-order house. You can do this! More than marketing, personalized messages reflect personalized care God is extravagant in the variety he placed in creation. Every snowflake is different, every flower unique, every personality singular. In the same way, God allows many expressions of his church: some formal, some casual, some filled with history and tradition, some quite spontaneous in music and tradition. There is no one right way or wrong way to express our worship and discipleship journey. So long as we base our practices on Biblical truth there are many ways to express it according to denomination and locations. God chose your church and called your people to be who you are and to reach a unique and specific audience. Be that so you can fulfill your place in his plan. yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 5
The tools are available that do the hard work for you Many tools have been created that make it very easy to create your own communications, both in print and on the web. In addition to being adequate to do the job you ll save lots of money by using them. Let s review a few of them: Print creation: Years ago when you wanted to create a newsletter, you had to set up the columns manually by measuring in picas and points, decide on typefaces and specific them in style sheets, work hard to modify photos and images. Today we have software templates in Microsoft Publisher and image editing tools in Picasa that make these tasks automatic and easy. It is always the person, not the program that determines the final quality of any communication creation If you want to create very advanced print materials, even the complex programs such as Adobe s Creative Suite make difficult tasks in typesetting and photo manipulation far less complex than they were in the pre-computer days. Though you can do extraordinary, complex and highly professional publication work with Adobe products, you DO NOT need them to do the majority of communication creation work in the church. MS Publisher has come a long way in its ability to allow you to create very professional looking communication products. It is always the person using the software, not the software itself, that in the end makes the design decisions that create the final product. If you want professional, photographic images to enhance your print productions, you don t have to shoot and develop the pictures yourself, there are many sources for free images on the web including www.morguefile.com. You don t have to use only clipart, though some of the current clipart available as a free download from www.microsoft.com is very contemporary and useful for church communications. The tools are there for you and much of the work is done for you. You can purchase the software inexpensively for your church office and volunteers using charity pricing (more specific information about this charity pricing on www.effectivechurchcom.com). If your people need training in how to use the software for very low cost ($25 a month for unlimited training) you can access online learning from www.lynda.com. Website creation: For websites, blogging/website programs like WordPress, or web-based programs that provide basic templates and structure make it simple to create websites. I especially like WordPress and have used it to create a number of websites and know from my experience and the experience of many others that it is a great way to create a web presence for your church. To get started with WordPress you can use the free version at www.wordpress.com. I used this for many years as my ministry website. WordPress has another system which is what my current church training a resource site is on. This version of WordPress, available through www.wordpress.org, known as the self-hosted version is free for the software, though you must pay for your own hosting. Though the basic structure is the same, there are significant differences. I needed to change from wordpress.com to wordpress.org because I needed to yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 6
charge for the training in the new site (not being independently wealthy, I needed a way to support the creation, hosting, and numerous administration costs of the site and a membership fee I felt anyone could afford seemed the way to do it). The www.wordpress.com (what I used to use) system does not allow commerce and a number of the additional features (known as plugins ) that I needed, so I switched to the www.wordpress.org sytem. Website creation is not just for the young techie in your church YOU can do it! However, www.wordpress.com it is tremendously powerful and many great resources are provided totally for free, which of course makes it perfect for churches. On www.lynda.com there is a training course for only $25 that shows you how to use the program. I cannot recommend it enough for churches. On my website and my YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/yvonprehn) I have a couple of little videos that demonstrate how you can use this program to create websites and lots more information about them. As of the third week of April 2010, I am starting a training program in Wordpress that will go into detail on both systems. The WordPress situation is confusing, especially since the.com is the free program and the.org is the one that costs, which is totally opposite how the.com and.org are usually used, but that s just how it developed. To summarize the difference between the two: www.wordpress.com: this is FREE, your site is hosted by y Wor ordpress for free. You ou are limited ed somewhat in some of the things you can do and cannot do a for- profit site with it. This is a fantastic way to learn website creation and blogging and a great starter site for churches. www.wordpress.org: the basic software is free, but you must pay for the hosting on your own and you have to do all websit ebsite e wor ork k to modify the basic program. You ou can do whatever you want with this and there are thousands of add-ins, templates and products on the web eb to personalize your site. e. Not t nearly as easy,, but powerful. It is impor portant that you modify the basics available ailable in these programs you want to make them represent you and your church. Of course, you will add your own content, but the basics, the building blocks of technology that in the past were difficult to master are done for you. Don t think that website creation is difficult, after you learn a few basic skills, if you use a program like WordPress.com, it isn t hard to do at all. This is important to learn because there are here are lots of additional reasons you should learn to do your website work yourself. First of all, you will save your church a lot of money. Especially if you create a website with WordPress.com (which you can do--my complex ministry site was created with it and functioned well for years until I needed to add the for-profit component), you will spend little to no money. Even if you learn to use more complex programs such as WordPress. org and have to pay for your own hosting, the cost is very little (less than $100 a year). Some groups charge what I feel (and this is my opinion, I m sure they have what they feel are valid reasons) excessive yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 7
amounts for hosting church sites, some charge up to $100 per month, and that is not warranted because server hosting costs have dropped to very little for highly reputable companies. The company is probably paying less than $5 a month hosting costs. There may be other consulting fees included, but if you learn to do your own web maintenance, you don t need this. Second if you learn how to create it, it is much easier for you to modify and update it. If a website is not totally current and constantly updated, it is useless. The most impor portant reason to learn to do websit ebsites es The web is part of the future direction of communication. Everything is becoming digital, all communication is moving to digital formats. I don t know how long it will take; I have no idea how long we will to continue to create communications in many formats from paper to web-based. I do know that for the lifetime of many of Learn to you reading this that you will continue to carry the burden of needing to create communicate on the communications in every form you can imagine. Paper production may never web and share your totally fade, but for certain, it will always be one of many forms, not the primary gospel story with the one. entire world. I do know that digital will not go away and that for anyone who is serious about wanting to communicate to their world for Jesus, that you need to learn how to do The web enables Acts digital communications. 1:8 that we are to be his witnesses to You are at a great time to learn how to do websites with programs like WordPress. every part of the The difficulties of creating websites of a few years ago when you had to know world to be reality for HTML and all sorts of hard computer stuff to do anything decent on the web are far gone. With programs like www.wordpress.com, anyone with absolutely no knowl- each of us. edge of computer programming can create a great website. Once you are comfortable with that you can venture into the more complex areas if you so choose. But you don t have to. On the web, as with any other church communication your CONTENT is what is most important and the current web creation options enable you to literally share your gospel story with the entire world. Training resources There are many resources to help you learn how to use these tools. One of my favorite teaching sites is www.lynda.com where you can get online tutorials for very little cost for MS Publisher, website creation, and even the most complex graphic arts programs. ***Keep in mind this training is for the how-tos of software, there is no Christian or ministry emphasis here. Consistent Computer Bargains, www.ccbnonprofits.com, is a wonderful resource to buy graphics software programs at a reduced price. My website, www.effectivechurchcom.com has lots more links to many additional resources that equip and train church communicators and the website has a membership training program, plus lots of free training resources for church communicators. On the website itself is a continuously growing collection of training resources that will not only help you learn HOW to use programs, but how to use them in a way that is structured for effective church communications. You do not need experts outside your church to create these communications for you. You can do it! yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 8
You can produce your own communications As previously stated, the tools to create your own communications in print and online at your church are available, as is the training to create them. You can also produce them in-house. Print production I had the privilege of working with the RISO Corporation (www.riso.com) for many years when they helped to sponsor some of my seminars (I no longer travel and do them, but do extensive online training at www.effectivechurchcom.com). I worked with them for a number of reasons, (wonderful people, great integrity as a company, caring enough to sponsor seminars so churches were able to attend for almost nothing, etc.), but the bottom line reason is that their equipment is incredibly cost-effective for churches. We used their equipment at the churches we worked with and couldn t have communicated cost-effectively without it. They make digital duplicators and the new HC machine which is a big production inkjet machine that prints full color pages at over 100 pages a minute and at about.03 a page. Their duplicators run at a fraction of that cost. They are a totally green and environmentally wonderful company in part because their machines generate no heat, no toxic emissions, and have extremely low energy consumption. With their equipment, you can print almost anything you can imagine in-house for very little cost. The question of quality The one complaint people have about their equipment and other machines that are used to produce things in the church office is that the quality isn t what it might be if an outside company printed it. OF COURSE IT WON T BE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There is no way any machine used to create communications in the church will produce the same quality that a Heidelberg press costing hundreds of thousands of dollars will product. Get a grip and be realistic, especially in today s challenging economic times Church publications are something people look at for a few minutes, (an hour if it is the bulletin), and then most often they toss it. If an announcement makes it to the refrigerator to remind people of a church event, people post it where they can see it for the times and location of the church event, not because it is a great piece of artwork. Most churches have a totally incorrect view of qual- ity when it comes to church communications. Quality does not mean producing magazine quality pieces so that visitors will think you are professional or perfect or some such vague issue. Quality in the church means creating pieces in the quantity and frequency that people need to really know what is going on in the church and to be able to respond to it. In practice this means that you update your website so everything is current even if you don t have fancy flash videos of every event. In print this means getting the yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 9
flyers, postcards, bulletins, children s materials printed in the quantity and frequency that is needed to connect people to events. For both of these areas to do them in a more timely manner and in so doing serve your people, you need to do them in house and remember YOU CAN DO IT! yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 10
You owe it to your people to develop elop and use them first An investment in the training of your people instead of a short-term fix is just that, a real investment, not simply a onetime expense. This is a sometimes forgotten, but very important reason to do things in your church and by your people. The Bible clearly tells us that pastors and teachers were given to the church to prepare God s people for works of service (Eph. 4:12). It s interesting that the Greek word used here for to prepare is defined by Vines Expository Dictionary as: a making fit or a fitting or preparing fully. I like that because in reality, few people who do church communications come into that job perfectly equipped to do it. When the church approaches the tasks of church communication, just because people aren t prepared to do it when the need first appears, does not mean they should not be given the job. Leaders need to take responsibility of fitting and preparing fully. The church secretary that conquered desktop publishing and created fantastic print bulletins might just surprise you with her YouTube video or website skills if you give her a bit of training. It is not only a pastoral task but it is a wise stewardship decision to train your own people to do print and web communications. You are investing in your people, not in an outside company. Let s face it; most folks who work in the church are not paid particularly well, especially as support staff. Spending money on training them, instead of perhaps hiring a consultant (who may or may not be helpful and may leave behind anger and resentment, even if it isn t expressed out-loud), or hiring some web guru or company that charges lots of money and is gone, is a much more lasting solution. An investment in the training of your people instead of a short-term fix is just that, a real investment, not simply a one-time expense. When you get your staff training, be sure to allow them research time and practice time and time to implement new skills. As someone who did not grow up with computers, but who has learned to do lots with them now, I m aware of the process many of us go through who did not grow up with them. This process is at its core the reality that computers aren t really hard to learn, they are just different, the terminology and processes are different than anything we grew up with. For example, the term dashboard is used in WordPress and many website creation programs. When I first came across statements such as the WordPress dashboard is easy to use...blah, blah, blah... that made no sense to me. To me a dashboard is what cars have. It takes time to learn the vocabulary before you learn the skills. This is what can take time. I recently learned how to zip files. Now for many of you, that is so simple to do it is almost laughable, but I hadn t had the need to do it, so I hadn t ever learned it. When I realized I needed to do it for the some of e-commerce on my new site, I didn t even know it meant. Yes, I d clicked on a file to unzip it in the past, but I didn t understand what got it where it was. I had to understand this so I spent hours looking up what zipping and file compression was all about. Once I figured that out, I just got the www.winzip program and in a few minutes was zipping away. I then tested it to make sure it did what it was supposed to do. It did. This means I can sell zipped sets of templates to folks who come to my site in a way I was never able to do previously. yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 11
The point here is that for some of us learning these new skills we need time. We aren t stupid, it is simply a new world with new languages and we need to perhaps spend a bit of extra time learning the new lingo. One benefit of the training on www.lynda.com is that the lessons are in small sections so you can easily go back to a skill or two that you might have forgotten. No one becomes an expert in new technology quickly, so be kind and supportive in your church while the learning process is taking place. As said earlier, you may not be paying the person a lot financially, but providing training, encouragement, and time to learn new skills is a wonderful gift as well as a wise investment in your people. You ou can do what really makes es an eternal ernal difference in people s lives es It doesn t take big, extravagant actions or programs to make an impact. We ve had some of the most extravagantly, over-the-top, complex and fancy communication systems imaginable available to us and the Christian church is losing ground. Big and bold, complex and expensive technological wizardry is not the way to win our world to Jesus. You can do what needs to be done. Again and again in my ministry and experience with thousands of church communicators has proven that often the communications that are life-changing consist of careful attention and faithfulness to seemingly little things. Being sure all the contact information is in place; making certain links work and times are updated on a website; having someone kind answer the phone. Please read the articles, look at samples and videos in the STRATEGY section of my website (www.effectivechurchcom.com) to make sure you have the foundational areas covered. Few Bible schools or seminaries today prepare people in ministry in the area of communications. Because of that people often look to the flashy and expensive or to outside professionals to accomplish communication tasks, when in reality it is strategic, consistent implementation of basic principles, done in-house by caring people that gets the job done. yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 12
Doing things in-house is good stewardship in these challenging times Of course everyone is worried about the economy and times are scary, but the church CANNOT cut back on its communications. The church is about communicating the most important messages of time and eternity. What the church does need to do is to look at how to do things more cost-effectively. From creating communications to production, this most often means doing things in-house, by the people in your church, staff and volunteers, using the resources and systems discussed above to be more effective as you do your communications. If anything, now is the time the church needs to increase its output because the church has the training and values that people need to get through these tough times and develop a new way to live that isn t based on excessive consumption and never looking ahead. All of the spending in a church should be carefully considered, but communications is an area that should be supported and expanded because with expanded communications, the church will get out its message, people will look to the church for answers, the congregation will be encouraged, the church will grow and will have the resources it needs to do ministry. To cut back on communication is to cut off valuable contact with the people you are called to reach and serve. Being a good steward means investing in what will bring the greatest return on investment (ROI). For a church its most important ROI is people. Effective communications is an investment in people that reaps current positive responses and eternal rewards. Finally...... Being attentive to the basics, strategic and consistent implementation, training staff and volunteers in the church, and creating your communications in print and online in-house does take time, commitment, and lots of hard work, but the results will be communications that will reflect your church and will more effectively reach the audience the Lord has called you to reach. You can do it! yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 13
About Yvon Prehn Yvon Prehn is the founder and director of the training site for church communicators, www.effectivechurchcom.com. This site has hundreds of articles, videos, podcasts, templates, samples and reviews that help churches intentionally create communications that will enable them to fully fulfill the Great Commission. Yvon has worked in communication ministry for over 25 years. She was a freelance newspaper reporter and religion writer for the Colorado Springs SUN for nine years. She was a top-rated, national trainer in desktop publishing for Padgett/ Thompson, the nation s largest one-day seminar company when desktop publishing was first invented. She worked as a communications consultant and trainer for many of the ministries headquartered in Colorado Springs and was senior editor at both Compassion International and Young life International. For fourteen years she traveled full-time all over North America teaching seminars on church communications to thousands of churches in every denomination. She continues teaching virtual seminars through her website, www.effectivechurchcom.com. She has written for many of the major Christian magazines including Christianity Today, Discipleship Journal, Today s Christian Woman, Youthworker Journal, Ministries Today, Computing Today, Clergy Journal, Church Office Computing, Pulpit Helps, and Your Church. She has been the communication columnist for Christian Computing Magazine for over 16 years. Her most recent books include: Church Bulletins, how to create and use them to touch and change lives, Church Connection Cards, connect with visitors, grow your church, pastor your people, little cards, big results, The Five Steps of Effective Church Communications & Marketing, and The Heart of Church Communications. In addition to these books, she has a number of shorter booklets, how-tos, and publication samples, many available as downloads on her storefront at www.lulu.com/yvonprehn and on her training website: www.effectivechurchcom.com. Yvon has a master s degree in Church History and has done additional extensive graduate work in theology and communications. She has taught high school English and was an adjunct professor in church history at Regis University. In addition to her formal experience in these areas, Yvon gets the opportunity to practice church communications in very practical ways. She is the wife of a bivocational pastor and does the majority of the secretarial and church communications work for her husband Paul, in addition to co-teaching in a variety of ministry settings at the church they work with in Ventura, California. Yvon s seminars and written material have helped thousands of people in ministry maximize their church communications and enabled them to use them to help fully fulfill the Great Commission. For free articles, tips and ideas, and to sign up for her free newslet- ter for church communicators, please go to: www.effectivechurchcom.com Follo ollow Yvon Prehn on Twitt witter at: www.twitter/yvonprehn yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 14
End notes, Reprint Information, Resources, etc. Permission to reproduce articles: You may reproduce single copies of any of the content for your church staff or you may reprint them in any publication or website that is intended to help churches without additional permission and with my blessings. PLEASE use the following citation: by Yvon Prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com I would appreciate you linking to my website and/or letting me know if you cite me, but if ministry life is just too crazy to take time to do that, instead, have a latte, relax, and forget it. Interview info: If you would like to interview me on any of the topics in this book or any related to church communications for either print articles or other media, I d be happy to chat contact me through yvon@effectivechurchcom.com. I have done extensive radio work, some television, and am comfortable with unscripted interviews, callin, and talk formats. Additional resources, training and church communication instruction: The website: www.effectivechurchcom.com has hundreds of articles, videos, podcasts and additional resources to help you grow as an effective church communicator.the website has both free materials, plus low-cost downloadable communication helps, and materials available to members only, Citation note: Some of these articles appeared in earlier versions in either articles in Christian Computing Magazine, my book, The Heart of Church Communications, misc. books and reprints, or on my website, www.effectivechurchcom.com. Scripture versions and citations: Unless otherwise noted, Bible verses are from the New International Version. Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Comments, corrections, questions, suggestions for additional articles or information to help church communications etc. Please send to yvon@effectivechurchcom.com yvon prehn, www.effectivechurchcom.com page 15