Whoever wrote that song, "Summertime and the livin' is easy" did not work in church communications.

The pace and type of activities change in the summer, but with Bible camps and special events, there is a lot of work to be done.

Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

In our podcast today I'll give you some tips for more effective summer communications. Please go to the website www.effectivechurchcom.com for FREE TEMPLATES of communications that you can use for effective outreach this summer. There are many more on the site for communications at other times, so check it out.

Here is the direct link to the FREE Templates: https://wp.me/PDky9-7oe 

 Whoever wrote that song, "Summertime and the livin' is easy" did not work in church communications.

The pace and type of activities change in the summer, but with Bible camps and special events, there is a lot of work to be done.

Hi, I'm Yvon Prehn and welcome to the Effective Church Communications Podcast!

In our podcast today I'll give you some tips for more effective summer communications. Please go to the website www.effectivechurchcom.com for FREE TEMPLATES of communications that you can use for effective outreach this summer. There are many more on the site for communications at other times, so check it out.

Here is the direct link to the FREE Templates: https://wp.me/PDky9-7oe 

If someone insults you how do you answer?

Does the way people treat us determine how we should treat them? 

In our podcast today we’ll look at Proverbs and get some advice on how we can respond no matter how difficult people might be in ways that please God and ultimately help us live a more peaceful and productive life.

We laid the philosophical groundwork for this podcast in the last one. Please listen to it first if you haven't already.

In this podcast we get practical on how we can apply Proverbs to our daily lives.

 Why do you act the way you do? Talk the way you do?

We don’t often give everyday actions or words much thought, but in our podcast today we’re going to look at the book of Proverbs and WHY we need it in a post-Christian, post-Biblical world.

This is an important podcast for you to listen to because though we don't often think about the default settings in behavior and beliefs in our world today, they are important because they guide our behavior unless we make conscious decisions to act differently. Because our society today is post-Christian and post-Biblical we must work much harder to live a Biblical life.

This podcast will walk you through the meaning of these ideas, how we got where we are, and the remedy of a Biblical view of life as found in Proverbs if we want to live a life pleasing to God and peaceful and productive to us. 

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day and while we commemorate and honor the sacrifices of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy I think it is appropriate to remind everyone who is involved in Church Communications that you are daily involved in storming the strongholds of Satan to win people to Jesus. 

To do that I want to share 3 things:

For the rest of the content and to hear my grandfather's story, go to: https://wp.me/pDky9-8w0

 It's easy to look at Father's Day as just another holiday to do up a special bulletin and social media for and to say a few nice things about Dads during the church service. But did you know you can do so much more as communicators for Jesus?

We need to constantly remind ourselves in the crush of trivia and distraction that our job is not to be a holy version of Hallmark where our goal is to have the most appealing Father's Day social media and PowerPoint ever, but that our primary job in communications, as in all of life if we are followers of Jesus, is to grow as his disciples and to share his message of salvation—in other words, to fully fulfill the Great Commission.

This podcast will inspire you to see how much you can do for Fathers on their special day, plus preview and provide church communications tools and templates that will help you do all the things we talk about. 

The free templates and resources for Father's Day are at: https://www.effectivechurchcom.com

This short piece, One Mother's Prayer, is a true story that is both an encouragement to pray for children and an assurance of the power of prayer to change a destiny.

The written version been published more times than anything else I've written. It was first published in Today's Christian Woman magazine. Then it was included in their Best of Ten Years of writings, it has been reprinted and republished all over the world, and it continues to bring tears to the eyes of any group I read it to. 

This year I decided to record it and I'll put the embed code at this link: https://wp.me/pDky9-5HO

 You are free to use it any way you want and share it however you want.

In addition to the audio file at that link is also a Free ZIP FILE of PDF formats: 2 more 8 1/2 by 11 plus 4 other versions on half sheet size plus the jpgs of the larger files and an MS Word text file if you want to create your own publication. 

This is a great resource not only for Mother's Day, but any time of the year for Mom's groups and prayer groups.

 Mother's Day gets the third highest attendance at church right behind Christmas and Easter. What churches often forget is that the large increase in people does not come from more Mothers attending--they are there every week! It comes from the unchurched children and spouses who show up to make mom happy on her special day.

Churches that recognize this and use church communications in a way that makes the most of it can make it a day truly worth celebrating for Mom's because nothing is more wonderful to a Mother than for her child to come to know Jesus.

This podcast will give you an overview of some of the strategies and communications you can use to give Mom's what they want more than anything else for Mother's Day--a way for their unchurched spouses and children to come to know Jesus. 

For access to the many FREE TEMPLATES that will help you do this, go to: https://wp.me/PDky9-7d0

Will you get the same number of people the Sunday after Easter that you have on Easter Sunday?

We know we won’t, but in Today’s podcast we’ll talk about how you can increase the response by what you do on Easter Sunday.

First, I'll share the true story about a church plant of 300 (growing and doing well) that had an off-site Easter service they aggressively marketed. 1,500 people showed up for the Easter service, but the Sunday after Easter, they were back to 300, because of a simple, easy-to-correct mistake.

I'll share with you why that happened and how you can prevent it from happening to your church.

Was 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?

For a copy of the script of this podcast and for links to the free templates you can use to connect with people who visit your church for Easter go to: https://wp.me/pDky9-8tm