At my old church, we transitioned to video announcements, which were really cool. And hugely time-consuming. So we decided to go back to the church bulletin (which had co-existed with the video announcements). But no one was reading the bulletin! We ended up doing a series of video announcements parodying the guy who didn't know what was going on at the church because he didn't read his bulletin. I don't know how effective that was, but it was hilarious.

Our current church has a fantastic bulletin design. And it's economical: we had the gorgeous shells designed and printed, then we create the content and make copies. The shell contains our mission statement, beautiful graphics, and church information. The changing content (upcoming events, church announcements, notes, and description of upcoming series) has to be relevant and updated constantly, or no one will read it. But the presenation is consistent and timeless.

Our bulletin does not guide you thru the service, it has announcements and our church mission statement on it. 'The Flap', about a 2" wide perforated flap is designed to put in the offering for visitors or for signing up for something or requesting prayer. Alot of our signup is occuring now on our website and we are working on setting up some laptops in the lobby so people who do not have internet access can sign up on our site that way.

Great article and comments. I totally agree that it is one of the only things that people will take with them when they leave and it needs to live and breathe your vision and be something that people can give to a friend as an invite tool.

One thing that is so vital is identifying who you are communicating to. A great exercise I did was take a stack of bulletins from the past few months and with a Sharpie mark over each announcement how many people each item in the bulletin was actually communicating to. You'd be surprised how much room we can give to ministries that ARE vital, but only involve a small majority of the entire congregation.

We are working to make our Weekend Bulletin more of a communication tool to the 'crowd'... so only listing things that apply to the whole church and creating a Midweek Bulletin that will be handed out on Wednesday nights that will list things that are more related to the 'church family' like wedding, baby shower annoucements and also provide space for smaller, sub-ministries.

Great article and comments. When I talk about the 3 components of an effective website (marketing, delivery, response), I'm borrowing from many other effective events or publications.

For instance, I think an effective bulletin would have good marketing for the church and it's offerings, clean layout and written well, and easy to understand ways for readers to interact and get involved.

However, I think one problem is we tend to focus on how to have a great bulletin. We should instead focus more on how do we engage people for ministry?

I think the video idea is great. It gives a visual, audio, and hopefully emotional reinforcement for people to do something. Then the bulletin reinforces it and provided the response mechanism or more details. They will remember a video and think, "How did they say to find out more? Oh yeah, this is it here in the bulletin!"

Our church doesn't print a bulletin. We have a single sheet (two sides) monthly newsletter. My "article" fills at least the front of the newsletter. Announcements, therefore, are made verbally at the beginning of worship and a monthly calendar is published in the newsletter.

Only about half the congregation has internet access. We're very small so people still rely on a phone tree to get quick word out.

I'm writing all this because I think there is a big gap between those of us who live and breathe electronically and those who still have landlines and read the local newspaper more conscientiously than the Bible or other spiritual reading.

My struggle is to relate to everyone--the non-electronics and the people I think we can reach out to who will only find out about us via the internet.

Thanks! I needed that! I forwarded the link to my board.

Enjoy your stuff
Would it kill ya to call this Church Marketing Stinks?

God's best - KSD

very interesting indeed

Great article, thanks for the link!

Not enough churches realize how important the bulletin is and just sort of throw something together, that will be one of my big challenges as I begin all the design work for an upcoming church plant I'm involved with.

Thanks for this resource! (I linked it on my Faith Creative blog).

Great article!

We are working to update our weekly bulletin, trying to make it as postmodern as possible. No one seems to have found a truely cutting edge way to inform people. Videos are great but time consuming. One of the best things our church does is make "my team 1" announcements, which is a way to make a phone announcement. All people on the list get phoned at the same time with whatever message we record. Very cool, and great response from people!

If you are looking for a fresh, new, inexpensive, way to do video announcements check out aholiabproductions.com I think they have found a reasonable custom way for every church to do video announcements... check it out!

What an interesting article. Like we really ought to be sitting here thinking about how to market the church and community with our bulletins. Jesus would be so proud. I can see Peter and the early apostles. "Guys, do we have a good multi-colored spread in this weeks bulletin? Make sure you put in hot pictures of the worship band. Paul, are you making cutting edge comments in your blurb?"

God help us all.

Hello world! I'm from Latvia, I now have a computer and Internet! It's so interesting here! But on some forums I see strange posts, they offer to buy some pills or something and they look very stupid. It is robots posting? I thought moderators should delete such posts. Maybe somebody will explain me what's going on? But at all it is very interesting to speak to all you people!
Kisses! :)

I find it odd that your website is dedicated to communicating the gospel of Jesus Christ but you chose to use the word "sucks" which is "vulgar slang" according to the dictionary. As you ask for prayer for more "butts" in the pew, why not simply use the word people rather than butt?