Let’s take a look at why you should be ditching your church bulletin. I know, sounds like an absolutely crazy idea. Right?
How many of you who may be reading this are still using physical bulletins in your church? I would venture to say that nearly 100% of you will respond with a resounding “Yes.”
I would like to think that most of us are conscious of doing our part in the arena of conservation. Everyone would like to see more trees being saved. Each of us can do our part and in doing so, not only will you be saving the trees you’ll also be reducing your cost for such things like paper, printing supplies and time.
Let’s examine a few things that I know to be true about your church bulletin.
Most people come in about 5 to 15 minutes in advance of your service. They get their bulletin, go to their usual sitting place, then begin mingling with their friends. However, they haven’t even glanced at the fancy piece of paper you’ve given them.
Now it’s time for the service to start. Most churches begin with their worship service, followed by the collection of tithes and then move right into the meat of the service, which is the preaching. Now you’ve reached the end of the service and the benediction has been given and people are dismissed to depart and go to their favorite eating place.
Chances are, your church bulletin has been thrown in the back seat of their car or even worse, dropped into a trash can. Think about the time that was spent in creating that, materials that have been wasted and time that could have been better spent on more important tasks.
Most churches today have an online presence. It’s called a website! The easiest and most economical way to ditch your church bulletin is by implementing it into your website.
Without me geeking out and going all techy-talk on you here, it’s as simple as creating a custom post-type and a template that can be re-used for your website. What’s even more fabulous about taking this path is the fact that in the event if you make a mistake somewhere within the content, you will be able to update it at the last minute if necessary. Try that with a printed bulletin and let me know how that affects your costs.
Plus by taking the digital route for your church bulletin, this provides you with a greater level of creating more engaging and dynamic content that you probably would not be able to incorporate into a printed format. Have you ever tried embedding a video of one of your amazing services or events into your printed church bulletin? Bad news, it’s not going to happen!
Let’s face it, if you have seen one church bulletin, you have seen them all. For the most part, you have the standard layout. A front-facing image with possibly a scripture on it, then you open it up to find every announcement crammed into a tiny space, followed by possible communications from the pastor, worship leader, youth director, and the list goes on. Not to mention that the print on most church bulletins is so small that even those of us who wear bifocals still require a magnifying glass to read it. Not exactly the best way to make an impression on someone who is visiting your church for the first time.
Why not have a slide that is incorporated into your announcements that most have the ability to display on a large screen that gives them the website address to your church bulletin. Something like www.yourchurch.com/bulletin
Thus taking them to an archived page of both your current bulletin as well as previous ones. After all, what do you think the chances are that someone has a bulletin from three weeks ago that they are looking for information from?
Although this particular article is about ditching your church bulletin, you can also apply the same tactics and techniques for your monthly newsletter, thus reducing both printing and mailing costs that are associated with those as well.
If the true purpose of your church bulletin is going to be focused upon delivering announcements, upcoming events such as VBS or church camp, then why not make it interactive.
There are the usual sign-up forms involved for each of those items just described above, right? Why not include them with your digital bulletin?
When you begin placing things before your users that they are already accustomed to as far as filling out online forms, this should almost be a no brainer.
I don’t think I have sat within the confines of any church that has an older generation that there wasn’t some level of pushback when you begin talking about taking things to the digital realm.
Furthermore, it’s usually the very same group of individuals who oftentimes are the very ones who push back on everything that can advance or promote the church’s growth when it comes to placing more focus on your digital content.
However, how many of your older generation is already on Facebook? Regardless if they regularly post content, I can almost guarantee you they are looking at images or memes that provide inspirational quotes and occasionally sharing them with their friends.
All you have to do is create a custom graphic and make it link out to the location of your church’s website page where your digital bulletins are located. If you are not sure on exactly how to do this, you can always leave a comment on this post and I will get with you to provide you with the easiest way to do this.
How many more people are you effectively reaching by using the traditional bulletin as it exists? Probably no further than the hands that it was placed into on Sunday morning. Such a waste of effort, considering how many more you could be reaching with your online communications.
A well planned and put together digital bulletin also has the capability of being shared to various social media networks.
So imagine for just a minute that you have created the perfect layout for your digital church bulletin. You have all the essentials in there such as advertisements, announcements, special events, messages from various leaders and maybe even an accompanying article provided by a member of your pastoral team or someone within your congregation.
You now have put a wealth of information before your congregation and made it available for them to share and truly increase the number of people you are currently reaching.
I know you have heard me say this in previous articles, but if you’re not taking full advantage of using your website as a way of promoting your church and events, you are truly missing the mark.
Who hasn’t created a bulletin and went to print, then reviewed the final project only to realize that there was either a typo or error in a date or time. I am going to bet it’s safe to say that nobody is going back in to correct those typo’s and reprinting the bulletin again. Talk about a cost wasting event.
This is where the true beauty of using a digital bulletin comes into play.
Needless to say, you can make changes on the fly or even add additional content, even after you have published it and have everyone who has read it receive notifications of the updates that have taken place.
As one of our church’s digital experts, I cannot tell you the vast amount of times that someone walks up to me, last minute, and ask for a special slide to be shown. We have a standing rule that all material must be provided to the content team no later than Friday evening, thus giving us a fair chance to provide their request. However, for more complex projects, then, unfortunately, we are left telling them “No.”
However, adding something as simple as an update to a specific date of an upcoming event, or changing the time or location is quick, simple, and can be executed on the fly.
Are you starting to see the benefits of having your church’s bulletin online versus the old fashioned, trashcan destined, piece of paper you are probably using now?
If you’re interested in trying this out, obviously you should be using a CMS (content management system) such as WordPress on a self-hosted platform to help you deliver your church or ministry website.
Just leave me a comment and I will schedule a time that we can chat about what options may be available for your and your ministry.
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