OFFICE EQUIPMENT

A Better Bulletin

Timely tips on making your worship folder a top-quality read

Gayla R. Postma

Bulletins used to look pretty much the same from church to church, but not any longer. People are coming into the church from a culture saturated with image, print, color, and sound. How can the lowly church bulletin match the standards set by advertisers, corporations, publishers, and television?

Some professional advice on design, production, and quality control may help improve your bulletin and make it worthy of passing around. Here are some tips we picked up from designers and communicators as well as drafters of exceptional bulletins.

Cover Notice
The first thing people notice about a bulletin is its cover. The cover mirrors the church, says Anthony Goodhoofd, a graphic designer in Toronto and a member of Community Christian Reformed Church in Richmond Hill, Ontario. "The reader will know by looking at the bulletin where the church is at in its ministry," he says. At Goodhoofd's church, the liturgy of morning worship starts on the front cover of the bulletin because worship is the highest priority.

Some churches put drawings of their building on the cover. That sends the message that the building is most important to the congregation, says Frank Speyers, professor of visual communications at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Likewise, putting the logo of the church's denomination on the cover indicates its importance.

Many churches put Scripture texts on the cover. Speyers questions the wisdom of that if the verses aren't self-explanatory. "Some of your readers may be visitors who don't know the Bible well, in which case, that verse may be completely out of context," he says.

He suggests that churches be more sensitive to the cultural context of readers. "As a church, we have to be very conscious of what Madison Avenue is doing to our parishioners," he says. "Go to a magazine stand and peruse the covers. Which ones are attention-catching, appealing? People will judge the bulletin by its cover."

LaGrave Christian Reformed Church, in Grand Rapids, uses full color on its cover but in a very understated way. Against a cream-colored background, the cover offers basic information about the church—its name, logo, founding date, address, contact numbers, and a simple scriptural blessing. Rich Bouma, chairperson of the church's worship committee, says LaGrave church used to include a drawing of the church's stately old building on the cover but made the change to create a more contemporary image.

A cover can also announce the theme of the service, a series that's being preached, or a special event in the church calendar, suggests Eric Reed, worship leader at Glenfield Baptist Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. The cover might also show something relating to the life of the church or its members. "I have no problem with the bulletin cover being a display ad for something coming up in the life of the church," Reed says. "It's the first and best opportunity to say to people the one thing you want them to remember."

A Guide for Worship
If the liturgy of morning worship doesn't begin on the bulletin's cover, it should be the first thing on the next page. "Think of your bulletin as a tourist guide, a concert program, or a subway map," Speyers says. "How does the reader, the worshiper, proceed through this space? The bulletin is the map that gets them through the service."

The worship guide must be balanced; if it's too brief, the reader won't have enough clues about where the service is going. A short version also encourages the use of labels that have little or no meaning for worshipers. "If I write 'ministry of music' in my liturgy, that could be just about anything," Reed says. "If what you really mean is that the choir is singing, say that; if a soloist, say that."

A bulletin can also be too lengthy. Fifteen items or less is about all that a bulletin should include, with the trend going to as little as six or seven, Reed says. He prefers that litanies be printed in the order of service to prevent paper shuffling, but that those words should be in bold print or italics to stand out visually from the rest of the liturgy.

One way LaGrave sets its order of service apart is to include only the liturgy on the inside of its trifold worship folder. The liturgy includes everything pertaining to morning worship: the names of instrumentalists, speakers, soloists, the words to anthems, the designation of special offerings, and special instructions on participation. At times, the folder also offers comments on some of the music being presented in the service, Bouma says.

Other Church Events
The bulletin is a handy tool for absorbing all kinds of announcements about programs and events in the church community, but should it be used for that? People at Community Church don't think so. A single line in its bulletin reminds readers to check message boards in the lobby for announcements. That helps keep the bulletin a manageable size.

The bulletin can offer one-stop shopping
for everything you need to know about
what's going on at church for the week

Speyers also prefers a bulletin without announcements. "Have a live monitor in the lobby with a continuous loop and an up-to-date Web site," he suggests. "The less that is in the bulletin, the more precious it becomes."

A stripped-down bulletin would never work at LaGrave church, says Georgena Cole, bulletin editor. "There are too many people and too much going on," she says. "If people had to go hunt for a bulletin board, they'd never get the information." She says most of LaGrave's parishioners read the rest of the bulletin after they get home.

The eight-page bulletin at National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., also includes announcements. Kate Brinkley, publications coordinator at the church, describes the bulletin as "one-stop shopping for everything you need to know about what's going on at church for the week."

Fitting all kinds of information in a readable, attractive format is a challenge, Brinkley says, especially during the holidays when announcements multiply. She uses headings like "Opportunities for Ministry at National" and subheads such as "Upcoming Events," "All-Church Retreat," and "News of the Family" as visual guides for the reader.

She does not use clip art or inserts. She and many other bulletin editors consider inserts a disaster. Inserts fall out of bulletins, litter pews and hymnal racks, and don't get read. If you need inserts, you probably need a bigger bulletin, Reed says.

Production Tips
If you're looking for helps in setting up or formatting your church bulletin, check out some software programs that are designed especially for that purpose. Christian Publishing Suite by Kingdom, Inc., for example, was created to help church staffers in the production of bulletins, brochures, newsletters, and other printed material. Church Administrator, also by Kingdom, Inc., offers bulletin helps along with most anything else a church leader needs for doing the business of church management.

The number of bulletins you need determines how best to print them. Small churches that need less than 100 bulletins are best off running them through a copier. Churches that need more than that ought to start thinking about a digital duplicator.

Though a digital duplicator from a company such as RISO, Inc. is a big initial investment, it offers the tremendous advantage of being able to receive copy directly from a computer. You can create documents in virtually any page layout and send them to a Risograph. In minutes, you can print as many as 120 copies per minute. The higher-quality paper and faster-drying ink produced by companies such as Van Son Holland Ink Corp. for use in duplicators help reduce smudging.

Duplicator prices range from $5,000 to $20,000. However, a copier will need servicing after 30,000 or so copies, while a duplicator from a company such as Savin Corporation won't need servicing until after 300,000 copies. Duplicators outlive copiers about three to one, and copies are produced for as little as one-third of a cent, compared to one to two cents per page by a copier. Duplo USA offers an entire printing system (DP-63P), which includes built-in 3,000 sheet-feeding and receiving trays and speeds of 120 copies per minute.

Regardless of what method you use, you might consider asking a professional to design your bulletin cover, using two or more colors, shading, textures, and logos, then getting a large quantity of covers produced by an offset printer. Then you can produce the inside of the weekly bulletins yourself. Both LaGrave and National Presbyterian have covers printed up quarterly.

Tips for Better Bulletins
Bulletin editors passed along this advice for improving bulletins:

• Use a proofreader.

• Choose a style guide and follow it.

• Design a workable template that you can use from week to week.

• Work with a standard format to assist readers, but include enough variety to keep eyes from glazing over.

• Collect bulletins from other churches to see what they're doing.

• Price out new methods of duplicating your bulletin.

• Find someone in the congregation who is gifted in design and composition to help you.

• Be kind to the bulletin editor.

Gayla R. Postma is a freelance writer living in Morrisburg, Ontario.

Helpful Resources

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Your Church Magazine. Click here for reprint information on Your Church.
March/April 2000, Vol. 46, No. 2, Page 28

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