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Easter Resources and an important update from Yvon Prehn

please note: if you are a Bible805 subscriber, and are wondering why you got this, some emails got mixed into this church communicator's list, please forgive me if this content is not useful

March 22, 2024

It’s been a bit—welcome to my new newsletter!

Later you can click on an article following that explains why you haven’t heard from me in some time but far more important than that are some resources I wanted to get to you before Easter.

This is also a new newsletter format from a new provider, Beehiiv.com —I’m just learning it, but I am quite excited about it and will be sharing more as I learn it better.

What's here, scroll down to read what's useful to you

Last-minute essential resources for Easter

You are about to celebrate the most important event of the Christian year—the resurrection of our Lord and I’m certain you’ve gone all out to do that in the work leading up to it and in what you’ll be doing on that day itself.

You know you will have the largest turnout of any Sunday of the year and you hope that many of your Easter guests will return next Sunday and continue coming to your church.

However, that rarely happens—though you can get increased growth in your church—if you put the same amount of effort into your communications DURING and AFTER the Easter service that you did for the communications to get people to your church for Easter.

Effective Church Communications has many FREE resources to help you do this. Following are links to them.

"You are One of the Great Ones and far more important than you may realize," an encouragement for all church communicators

In the midst of all the work you are doing around the Easter season, this is a reminder of the incredible importance of your work now and always—following is a devotion I wrote for you on it:

Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. (Dan. 12:3)

Often when I ask someone who has come to one of my church communication seminars what they do in the church, they often respond by saying something like: “Oh, I’m just the church secretary” or “Oh, I just help work on the church newsletter” and similar self-deprecating statements.

My heart is broken when I hear that because the person who says it (and you may have thought similar things about yourself) has no idea of their true worth. Let me explain what I mean by sharing a story from a scene in C. S. Lewis’ book , The Great Divorce. In this scene the main character is being escorted around heaven. He sees a woman coming toward him magnificently clothed and attended to by a great procession. The book goes on: CLICK HERE to read the rest.

UPDATE—why you haven’t heard much from me lately, my future plans, and prayer requests

I really dislike talking about myself, and only do it when it affects the Bible805 and Effective Church Communications ministries are affected. This is one of those times. If you are interested in my personal drama, read on, but nothing critical here as after this tale of challenges and some technical modifications that will take a few months to work out the ministries will continue.

It has been a rather challenging few months for me with one illness after another from before Christmas into February, (e-coli infection, RSV respiratory infection, discovered a heart anomaly, that I daily now wear a nitroglycerin patch for). We also started some major much needed updates on our 60+ year old mobile home, which requires packing up and moving everything out (a good time to clean and sort) and then a few weeks ago  I had a severe fall. I was carrying some boxes down the outside stairs, slipped, tried to turn and grasp the rail, but missed and did a dead-drop backward with nothing breaking my fall, and hit my head on concrete. For the rest of the story, CLICK HERE.

FREE e-Book, Tetelestai, if the battle is over, why is life so hard?

Tetelestai! "It is finished!"

Many sermons, this and every Easter are either based on or contain this great final cry of Jesus from the cross that affirms that the work of salvation is complete.

But is that what Jesus really said? (Spoiler alert....He didn't).

And if He did, why is life so hard, why are there so many battles to fight?

Don't be alarmed.....I'm not being heretical or doubting. In researching the answers to these questions I found answers far more challenging and reassuring than what I'd known in the past about not only the finished work of Jesus but what it means to us in our struggles.

I had great plans to publish an expanded version of this book on Amazon with a Kindle version, but as I shared in another post, life interfered and many projects are put off. As Easter neared I wanted to give you this book.

CLICK HERE to go to the ECC website page download it. You have my permission to share it.