It is not just about expanding your distribution list; it is about expanding your vision.
Never assume that no one is reading what you distribute.
If it is practical, truthful, well written, and addressing the questions people are asking, someone will read it. It may not who you expect, but someone will read.
There will people who will ignore your publication, some who discard it, and others who glance over it. You must distribute to them in order to reach the smaller group of people who are hungry.
See that person in your mind and in your prayers. Know that you are publishing spiritual food for the hungry of heart.
If your vision can embrace those souls, you will produce and distribute material that is nurturing and effective in reaching your community with God's truth.
Furthermore, you will be seen by those people as a church that cares about their needs and is listening to the cries of their hearts.
Your first concern in developing a publication ministry is to determine your audience. To whom are you speaking?
Are you addressing yourself to your own members? If so, that will drive your content. It will assume a great deal of knowledge of your church and will addressed to people who already share the same commitments and agree on basic principles.
Perhaps you are addressing other believers outside your church. That will not presume a knowledge of your congregation, but it will presume certain beliefs.
If, however, you wish to do outreach, you can presume nothing. You must develop articles and art that attract the attention of people on all points of the belief and non-belief spectrum. You must address common human concerns and interject a clear and relevant message that points to Jesus Christ.
If that is what you want to do, Church Newsletters Plus can help you.
We want to address whatever questions you have about how and why to use church publications as an outreach tool, about where and how to distribute, and about strategy planing to reach your community. Please post your questions and we will answer.
“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than
a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls
of his cell.”-
C. S. Lewis
We don’t vote on God’s existence. Belief does not alter reality. Nor
does unbelief nullify it.
Are we disillusioned with God or God’s people? Are we
angry with sermons and institutions and the God they describe? Do we perceive
God as unfair and ruthless?
The importance of personal belief lies in what happens inside of me
when I believe and identify with ultimate truth. Like a river, the current of
truth flows with overwhelming force in whatever direction it will.
Twice I encountered being swept away by a river. In one instant, I had
a wonderful time experiencing the rapids as I bounced about and felt the mighty
flow beneath me. On the other occasion, I was exhausted and frustrated from
nearly drowning. In the first, I was floating in a tube with the current. In
the second, I was desperately swimming against a similar current trying to make
my way to shore with no floatation device.
I cannot change the truth by refusing to believe in it. What I can
change is whether it will sweep me away or if I will flow with it for the ride
of my life.
Our thinking is limited by our finite minds. We think in time and space
about that which is beyond time and space. When we think about God, faith is a
beginning where believing is seeing. As we make our minds available to be
stretched beyond capacity, we start to comprehend that which is beyond
comprehension.
Unless we allow the word, “beyond” to enter our vocabularies, we will
continue to beat our heads against the wall trying to understand and diminish
God into something manageable and controllable. When we let go of that, we
enter a realm of limitless possibilities for our views of God and for
ourselves.
“For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your
thoughts.”– Isaiah 55:9
A mental note isn’t worth the paper it is written on.
You can make mental notes all day long, but they lack the safety features of paper and digital notes. For one thing, you lose them. They exist, but they are floating out there is a closet of cerebral clutter and are only retrieved when looking for something else and usually after a deadline has long expired.
A basic problem with mental notes is that they are subject to the distortions of time. It has been demonstrated by neurological researchers that eye-witness accounts are often unreliable and altered by time and intermingling with other memories.
Perhaps that is why the Bible required two eye-witnesses before a person could be convicted of a capital crime.
Mental notes are often relegated to lists of lesser leverage in our thinking simply because we did not render them important enough at the moment to write them down.
Entrepreneurs eat ideas for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Good ideas are worth remembering and writing down. So are not-so-good ideas. They can be sorted out later or even trigger good ideas.
There are two roads to life. They have many expressions and
characteristics, but I want to focus today on one dimension of choice: Playing
it safe or risking everything.
Most people agree that “stupid risks,” those made in a
stupor of pleasure seeking irrationality, are worthless and possibly evil. That
is because they have no meaning, purpose, or long-term advantage.
Risking what is not yours to risk is likewise
beyond any redemptive purpose. There is no honor is taking three drinks,
getting in a car without buckling one’s seat belt, and driving 110 miles per
hour down the road against oncoming traffic.
There are no monuments to men who caused multiple fatalities
in 100 car pile-ups because they were brave enough to take a risk.
When Jesus says that we must deny ourselves, take up our
crosses, and follow Him, He is calling us to live sacrificially, redemptively,
and adventurously for a purpose.
That is why He so strongly utters these words in Matthew
16:24-26:
“ 24Then Jesus said to his disciples,
"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross
and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save his life
will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole
world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?”
We can lose life by clinging to it.
William Barclay said, “The man who plays for safety loses
life.”
There was a very
cautious man
Who never laughed or
played,’
He never risked, he
never tried.
He never sang or prayed.
And when he one day
passed away,
His insurance was
denied.
For since he never
really lived
They claimed he
never died.
- Anonymous (quoted
by John Maxwell)
Irrational clinging to what we think is life is as without
merit as throwing it away needlessly and foolishly.
We fail to move forward and conquer what lies ahead.
Julius Caesar landed in England about 2000 years ago to
conquer the Celts, numbering about a half million with 50,000 Roman warriors.
His men were not fully committed and many would have retreated given the
opportunity and overwhelming odds that lay ahead. So Julius Caesar burned the
ships.
The Romans stayed, conquered, and established a long-term
Roman presence and permanent influence in England.
In1519, Cortez did
the same thing off the coast of what is now Veracruz. Now, all of South
America speaks Spanish.
In the book of Exodus, the children of Israel were tempted
to return to slavery rather than face the hardships of the desert. 40 years
later they entered the promised land and well over 3000 years later we have a
nation called Israel, a people called Jews, and a heritage that brought our
Savior into the world.
Jesus went before us and gave us the gift of assurance after
His death that life can extend beyond the grave. Because He died and rose again
and gave His disciples 40 days of constant contact to verify it, They bore
witness to it and we have the biblical record today.
And we have the Holy Spirit within us.
Yet, following Jesus is risky.
John the Baptist was imprisoned in a dungeon, dark and cold. He had been the first to identify Jesus as the Lamb of God, but in that dank place, he doubted and sent word to that he needed reassurance. "Are you the One or do we look for another?"
Jesus met him in the darkness and reassured him.
Sometimes we cry out to God from dungeons of despair. As we wait for an answer, we keep on keeping on.
C.S. Lewis gave us a great gift in the fantasy land of
Narnia with the Christ-figure, Aslan to point us to truth that even emerges in
fiction.
In “The Silver Chair,” by C.S. Lewis, one of the characters
says.”I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I am going
to live like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.”
We have assurance and hope, but we still need faith and we
must decide to exercise it and live by it.
We can win by losing.
That is Jesus’ message.
Whoever loses his life FOR HIM will find it. One might also
say that losing one’s life IN Him means finding it … not just for now, but for
eternity.
After ignoring a warning, Homer’shero, Odysseus and his men launch their ships
on a voyage that is certain to end in doom. They had no experience with losing,
but this day would be different as they crashed between some unmovable rocks in
a harsh current. While his ship and all his men are being sucked into the sea
by a whirlpool, Odysseus is somehow propelled upward and grabs hold of a fig
tree on one of the crags nearby. He was washed ashore on the island of the enchanting Calypso,
a strange and powerful woman who compelled him to remain as her lover for seven
years before escaping.
Then, his journey continues … but first he had to be
stripped bare of everything upon which he falsely depended. All he had left was
who he was … his character.
Sometimes we have to shed our false dependencies.
Stalin is said to have taught his Communist operatives,
during the Cold War, to think of themselves as dead men on furlough. As long as
they thought of themselves that way, they would have nothing to lose.
Jesus teaches us to think of ourselves as men and women who
cannot ultimately die and whose final outcome is victory, and who will see the
His glory.
With the development of technology and science in the field of commerce, entertainment and education, projectors have become a part and parcel of life in today’s scenario. They are now an indispensible part in office, educational institution even at home with the coming up of home theatre systems. It’s an apparatus or a hardware device that integrates a light source and projects an enlarged image or a video onto a flat surface for various display purposes.
By The PLUS Blog | June 19, 2009 at 11:23 PM EDT | No Comments
Recommended blogs on web evangelism and communication strategy! Plus email newsletters too
Here are some of the very best third-party blogs and newsletters
available on these subjects. We have grouped them by their particular
focus, though there is considerable overlap in subjects covered. Hover
the blog name to see a preview (usually) of latest contents in a
‘snap-shots’ popup box (adverts in these popups are chosen by
snap.com). You can use RSS to subscribe to any of these blogs.
Alternatively, set a page monitor email alert with ChangeDetection.com.
By The PLUS Blog | June 17, 2009 at 11:04 PM EDT | No Comments
I just finished reading a discussion on the distinctions between a newsletter and a magazine.
I read it. I learned from it. I discarded it.
Church Newsletters Plus is redefining the genre.
It is a newsletter and a magazine. It has churchy news and articles of interest to no-church-goers.
It
has elements that will speak to Christians and it contains material
that will be of interest to people with no faith commitment. It is a
tool for developing the church, promoting events, and for outreach.
We would like for you to rethink how you use the tools at your disposal. We have.
In
the past, church newsletters have contained pages of material that were
not all that interesting to any but the most faithful, involved, and
informed. We think it can be different.
We
think it is possible to produce a document that is readable,
interesting, informative, evangelistic, edifying, and simple. We can do
it at a cost savings and we can teach you to use it in email, “snail
mail,” door-to-door, or on your web site.
It will be versatile yet consistent.
In our member community, you can discuss ideas for distribution and utilization in your outreach program, but here are a few:
1. 1. Create
opportunities for people to ‘opt-in” to receive your monthly
communications. Do this on the web, through interest cards, on business
cards with a link, or by telephone.
2. 2. Do periodic follow ups through phone or email.
3. 3. Make
sure that you include a telephone number, website address, and email
address so that people can contact you when they read something that
stimulates them.
4. 4. Collect email and “snail mail” addresses of anyone you think might be interested and ask permission to subscribe them.
5. 5. Print out copies for medical offices or any public places or businesses where there are distribution racks or waiting rooms.
6. 6. Take copies with you when you visit in homes.
7. 7. Encourage your members to forward the email newsletters to their friends with opt-in inquiries.
8. 8. Make sure all members has a quantity of newsletters to carry in their cars, briefcases, and around their communities to share.
9. 9. Encourage members to take a stack of newsletters to work or school to share.
1010. When possible, print in color and on good paper. Quality makes a good first impression.
It
can prove to be quite a challenge to motivate people to attend church.
However, there are innovative ways that can be used to aid in this. One
of the outreach ministries that addresses this task is the church
newsletter. It can be used in various ways to introduce the church to
the community. Please read on.
