Rethinking the Weekly Church Bulletin

Redeemer Ambassadors have now visited 50 churches. We’ve seen 50 versions of the weekly bulletin.

They are all pretty much the same and most are a mountain of paper to be left in the hymnal rack or tossed at the first opportunity.

The primary purpose of a worship bulletin is to direct people through the service. This is also the primary purpose of the expensive Worship Books/Hymnals sitting in the pew racks.

A secondary purpose is advertising — which these days is better done by email or Facebook. (It’s not the people who are in church that need all the reminders!)

Bulletins can be a creative outlet that provides enriching content—much more than those black and white line drawings that every church uses—the ones with short, big-eyed characters in flowing robes, acting out the Gospel for the day.

If a church is to go to the trouble of reprinting the worship book each week, it should add something to the worship experience.

We have yet to encounter bulletins as helpful as Redeemer’s—one piece of paper (11 x 17) with the entire service printed inside, including words to all hymns and prayers. Full color art from many different genres and religious poetry graced the covers. News, contact info, credits, calendar and even a Bible study or puzzle for the children appeared on the back.

There was no need to reference hymnals, which freed us to use worship elements from many sources.

Since we printed only words, we could easily substitute parts of the liturgy with an appropriate praise song or hymn.

But what about the music? The congregation developed a pretty good ear. The organist played hymns through in their entirety once. Hymnals were in each pew. Hymnal references were provided for those who wanted the music—and that was rarely more than one person.

A Redeemer bulletin was easy to follow for the presiding minister, visitors and even the children. Most important—there was a reason to take a Redeemer bulletin home to enjoy and share during the week.

Recently, a former member who now lives out of state wrote to one of our members and asked for a copy of our bulletins. She wanted to share them with her new pastor. A current member spoke up and said, “I’ll send her a few, I have them all on file.”

Others had often shared that they clipped a poem or image from the bulletin and stuck it to the refrigerator. That anyone kept them on file was a surprise!

It’s been more than three years since our last worship service in our own sanctuary, but when I cleaned my son’s room last week (who is now of age to be moving out). There, neatly folded on his dresser was the bulletin from the last Redeemer worship service —September 20, 2009.

Redeemer bulletins had mileage—even three years after we published our last one!

In this age of “going green,” it is peculiar that we publish hymnals with liturgies printed in them and place them in every pew. We brag that we have the latest and greatest worship book. Then the worship books sit unused in the racks. We reprint the liturgy in bulletins that eat up a ream or two of paper each week, a ton of toner, and wear and tear on office equipment. Preparing these bulletins takes a half day of a pastor’s time and probably a full day of office time.

Church bulletins are a huge investment with little return.

The reason we do this is probably that the hymnals are heavy and require flipping from the liturgy section to the hymn section frequently. They are awkward.

It’s also the way every church seems to do it.

But bulletins with 16-24 pages and fliers spilling out are equally awkward. Some of them were daunting to us as visitors — even with our strong church backgrounds.

Here’s an idea. Fill the hymnals with hymns—nothing else. You may end up needing to invest in fewer copies.

Print each liturgy in a small booklet that is easy to manage and won’t cost more than a dollar or two per copy. Let congregations choose which liturgy booklets they want. They can even create them themselves if they pay the licensing fee. Most churches don’t use more than one or two versions of a liturgy, regardless of how many choices are offered in the heavy worship books. An advantage of this is that new liturgies can be added at any time without waiting 20 years for the next hymnal to be published.

Now your bulletin can be one sheet of paper. Or maybe you won’t need one at all!

Save a forest. Save the church budget.

The bulletin will be easier to follow and allow for the inclusion of more art, poetry and teaching in your worship experience.

PS: We were able to forge the way in developing this because we didn’t have a pastor controlling the process.