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When you walk in most church worship services, you are typically handed some printed material. It goes by different names, but the most common and the longest standing name is “bulletin.”
There was a time that you could expect consistency in bulletins among many churches. Such is not the case today. There are differences of opinion and a variety of ideas about what should be in the church bulletin.
Rather than speculate, we conducted an informal survey among church members. We asked one simple and open-ended question: “What do you want in a church bulletin?” The respondents could give as many answers as they liked. There was much agreement on the first four items. Beyond the top four was considerably fragmented opinions.
Here are the top five responses. I list them in order of frequency of response.
![Computer Publishing Church Bulletin Computer Publishing Church Bulletin](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d3/2e/4c/d32e4c0c138eb395b9c1eff57871c107--reading-bulletin-boards-church-bulletin-boards.jpg)
- Quality. This one issue was a near unanimous response. Church members see the bulletin as a reflection on their church. They are embarrassed when the bulletin has incorrect facts or grammatical errors. They don’t want something in their bulletin to become the next “bulletin blooper.” They want the bulletin to reflect quality, not a gathering place for a collection of ancient clip art.
- Sermon notes/outline. Church members want a place to take notes on the sermon, even if the same material is on the projection screen. They want notes they can take home and study. They especially appreciate any helps, such as an outline or references.
- Order of service. Frankly, I heard some complaining about this matter. Apparently a number of churches once put the order of their worship services in the bulletin; but they don’t now. Church members miss that in the bulletin and they want it back.
- Attendance/stewardship statistics. I thought numbers were being deemphasized in churches. Well, maybe they are, but church members want them back. They want to see the giving patterns and attendance patterns each week.
- Announcements. There is a big gap between numbers four and five. If not for its brevity, I could have made this blog about the top four things church members want in a church bulletin. While church members do want some announcements in the church bulletin, they do not want it cluttered with announcements. They prefer for announcements to be on a screen before the services or on the church’s website.
Download gta full version blogspot windows 7. Are you surprised by these top five? What would you add to the list?
free Templates
Use our free Microsoft Word templates to make your own church bulletin. Choose the style you like, add your own information, and print with ClickBook to make it double-sided. Fold and you're done.
Computer Publishing Church Bulletin Covers
These free templates and ClickBook give you a perfect church bulletin in just minutes. Don't have Microsoft Word? No problem, our templates work just as well in the free Open Office.
Get the free Church Bulletin Kit e-mailed to you. Full instructions come with the kit.
Get the free Church Bulletin Kit and get these templates to customize for your own church's use.
Which Church Bulletin Templates come in the kit?
Church Bulletin Template - Light of the World
Church Bulletin Template - Faith Chapel
Church Bulletin Template - Jericho
Church Bulletin Template - New Life
Church Bulletin Template - Palm Desert
Church Bulletin Template - Mothers
Church Bulletin Template - Flood
Church Bulletin Template - Childrens
Church Bulletin Template - Black and White
Church Bulletin Template - Beulah
Church Bulletin Template - Plain
Church Bulletin Template - Red
Church Bulletin Template - Blue
Church Bulletin Template - Contrast
Church Bulletin Template - Elegant
Church Bulletin Template - Modern
Church Bulletin Template - Basilica
Church Bulletin Template - Cathedral
Church Bulletin Template - Color Box
Church Bulletin Template - Monastery
Church Bulletin Template - Light of the World
Church Bulletin Template - Faith Chapel
Church Bulletin Template - Jericho
Church Bulletin Template - New Life
Church Bulletin Template - Palm Desert
Church Bulletin Template - Mothers
Church Bulletin Template - Flood
Church Bulletin Template - Childrens
Church Bulletin Template - Black and White
Church Bulletin Template - Beulah
Church Bulletin Template - Plain
Church Bulletin Template - Red
Church Bulletin Template - Blue
Church Bulletin Template - Contrast
Church Bulletin Template - Elegant
Church Bulletin Template - Modern
Church Bulletin Template - Basilica
Church Bulletin Template - Cathedral
Church Bulletin Template - Color Box
Church Bulletin Template - Monastery
Use these sample documents as a template for designing and printing your own church bulletins with ClickBook. You are free to modify these documents for your own use.
The templates are designed to be used with ClickBook, but you may use them however you'd like.
ClickBook will re-size the templates and print them as perfect church bulletins. ClickBook works with all ink-jet and laser printers.
making Bulletins
Making Bi-fold or Tri-fold church bulletins is simple with ClickBook.
Simply create a bulletin any way you like in an existing application on your computer (MS Word, Word Perfect, etc.) and then print the document to the 'ClickBook Printer'.
ClickBook will open with your document and will begin format your document for bulletin printing.
Print from ClickBook to your printer and ClickBook will scale, rotate and paginate your document to be printed as a professional looking church bulletin.
5 Step instructions come in the free Church Bulletin Kit.
Eye-catching contemporary and traditional church bulletin templates for every occasion are available from our exclusive collection. Whether it is for a wedding, funeral, or to enhance your Sunday worship, you'll find the art you need in a variety of styles. Each bulletin cover is professionally created by our graphic design specialists.
Upgrade your art with images from the largest library of church art on the web.
Whether you are looking for stock Christian photos, background templates, clip-art, cartoons, videos, website animations, bulletin covers, newsletter layouts, PowerPoint slides, or illustrations you will find what you are looking for in ChurchArt Online's library of over 40,000 religious images.
Weekly updates of additional graphics ensure that this library never runs out of the things you are looking for and that you never have to repeat the same art. There is always a new bulletin cover for every occasion. New Christmas and Easter art are added every year.
Coordinate your artwork every week for a professional, polished look.
ChurchArt Online will give you stunning, innovative artwork to coordinate with your sermon topics. Use matching and coordinated images each week for not only the bulletin cover, but also for the sermon and announcement PowerPoint slides. This gives you the unified, professional look of much larger churches with in-house publishing departments.
I am always on the look out for new ideas for any church communications and when it comes to the humble church bulletin I’m very interested.
Why?
In my opinion, the humble church bulletin or as some call it, news-sheet is a much maligned communications piece. Yet it has remained central to the life of many churches around the world from many different denominations.
I know that in my experience no one communication piece can solve all your communication problems. And it is the same with the church bulletin. It will never be a magic bullet to helping people find what they are looking for. No matter how brilliant it is.
Here are some strategies I have used for our purposely low tech church bulletin:
1. Be Focused
Less is more. We are a large church, yet we manage to fit all of our announcements on four A5 pages (Here is an example of our bulletin). That includes significant space focussed on newcomers. We are very strategically focused on what we announce, and more so what we don’t announce. We measure ourselves against key result areas, if we add a lot of noise in announcing everything else how can we expect our congregations to take a next step where we would like them to be?
I really like this emphasis chart that Dawn Nicole Baldwin created which shows the different levels of appropriate emphasis for different ministries.
Telling Your Story: What gets communicated when & where :: Echo ’13 :: Dawn Nicole Baldwin from dnicole
2. Are you visitor friendly?
If someone is sitting in your service for the first time, will they get all the helpful information they need to know. Do you use language that only insiders can understand? Test your bulletin on someone who has never visited your church to see if they understand it. What key bite-sized pieces of information would be helpful for a visitor for you?
3. What ever you do, scream community!
Repeat after me. You are not a corporation you are a church. Churches have drifted into becoming too professional and lost the essence of who they are, a community. How does the visitor see your community and connect into your community?
4. Provide ‘Easy On-Ramps’
Do you make it simple or complicated for someone to respond to an announcement in the bulletin? What do they need to know and where or who do they respond to. Keep it short.
5. Tell them the why as well as the how
Depending on the structure of your bulletin you have an excellent opportunity for your senior leader to share their vision. We have a 200 word space allocated to what we consider being the headline story, which helps us keep the main things the main things.
6. Provide easy to find contact points for questions
In a large community you need a simple central point of names and contact details to help people take their next step.
7. Repeat, repeat and repeat again.
Your average church community isn’t actually at church every week. You need to repeat your announcements at least three times. I have even gone on a heavier frequency for our top announcements and still people have said they didn’t know about it.
8. Point online
If you aren’t already doing an email version of your bulletin I highly recommend you do one. Your digital insiders will move to the online version if they have an easy sign up point. You still need your printed bulletin though. But you can minimise the amount of detail in the printed bulletin by pointing to your online calendar.
9. Print still matters
I tweeted this at our last #cmschat, video killed the radio star, but nothing will kill the humble printed church bulletin.
Why? The print version of your bulletin is essential because it is like mobile is for visitors to your website on the move. Your regular community has probably moved to using your app, but it takes time for new members of your community to adopt new things.
More reading
Your turn?
Got any questions or queries about how to use the church bulletin effectively? Drop a comment below. I’d love to help!
- Steve,
I’m an amateur graphic designer and helping my church as there isn’t someone else right now to handle the church media. We just had a conversation about our church bulletin with my senior pastor and other church leaders this morning. Great insight and gives me a great starting point on improving our church bulletin. God bless you! - Great to hear from you Diego! Always good to get feedback!
- I like the way you write Steve. ? I wish you lived close by to come give our church an audit. It really sounds like you have a good eye for things that matter. Great article.
- Hi, i intend to go into church journal/bulletin publishing for different churches and to commercialize it in a way. Either by direct sales in churches or contract with churches.The content in the publication will be determined by each churches, that its the information in the bulletin will be determined by the churches so it can be dynamic in a way.
The vision is to promote ministries and their activities.Please i need your guide and suggestion.