I'm painting with a broad stroke here, but I think every pastor and church communicator in North America hates church bulletins. In my mind, bulletins fall in the same category as taxes—a necessary evil. No one likes them, but everybody keeps on doing them.
Let me encourage you: you do not need to keep giving your life to this weekly burden. Here are three reasons why you should stop printing church bulletins.
Church bulletins are a drain on resources
I know church secretaries who spend an entire workday each week preparing the bulletin. They (maybe you!) spend hours editing, formatting, designing, printing, folding—all this to put a pamphlet into people's hands that typically gets thrown away as people leave the building.
In addition to the church communicator responsible for preparing the bulleting, there is also the financial cost to consider. Printing a bulletin can easily cost several dollars per person per week. Printing in-house often inflates a church office's inefficient printing costs. Outsourcing the bulletin for a professional full-color print could easily take a church's annual printing costs into thousands of dollars.
If we're evaluating our costs (and we always should be), is the church bulletin the most cost-efficient way to convey and connect with your members and guests?
Church bulletins are ineffective
A generation ago, self-proclaimed Christians came to church every week as a matter of priority. However, culture has changed in the last few decades, and Sunday mornings are no longer reserved solely for church worship. A Gallup poll found that 70% of protestant Christians do not attend services weekly (a figure that is still higher than pre-pandemic levels).
In today's world, even the most dedicated church members may come an average of once or twice per month. Before you argue that your church is different, consider those "most dedicated" church members who also leave for warmer climates in the winter or enjoy traveling during the summer. They're often gone for multiple weeks at a time!
This new era of church attendance means your printed church bulletin isn't even getting into people's hands!
Even on a popular Sunday, like Easter, when seemingly everyone attends, the bulletin might get into most people's hands at the start of the service. But the ushers will undoubtedly end up with a stack of discarded bulletins after the service ends.
Consider this: You put every requested announcement in the bulletin, yet every staff member and ministry leader still tries to get their event mentioned from the pulpit. Why?
Their reason is easily because "no one reads the bulletin." So why put so much work into something that brings such little return on investment?
Church bulletins don't lower barriers
As communicators and church leaders, everything we do—especially regarding the corporate worship gathering—should help lower barriers for guests and newcomers.
Church bulletins typically do the opposite.
Most church bulletins overflow with insider language. We use acronyms without explaining their meaning. To save space, we use shorthand in the order of worship. We let people write their own announcements, which often end up as a paragraph of text that is much longer than necessary, and yet it still leaves out key details.
The church bulletin is akin to a country club bulletin board. It's all for the people who are already "in."
Alternatives to your church's weekly printed bulletin
Okay, here's the deal: Church bulletins may still have a place in your regular communication rhythms, but it's time to rethink their purpose.
For example, printed materials can be excellent for greater accessibility. People with vision disabilities or neurodivergence can find orders of worship and printed materials as tools to increase participation. Perhaps a printed order of worship could help someone follow along with the service, or printed song lyrics and announcements in large print could help a person participate more fully in the gathering.
But rather than making the weekly bulletin the central tenant of your church's communication strategy, it ought to be one aspect of a targeted approach to connecting with the right people at the right time in the right way.
Ask yourself: What's most important to communicate to the people holding this bulletin? What do they need to know right now while in the building? Maybe that's information for a first-time guest, maybe it's tangible next steps to get more involved in the church's life, or maybe it's something else entirely.
Think different: Take a moment and think about your overall communication strategy (whether that's an actual written strategy or just the one in your head). What is most vital for you to communicate specifically to those in the building on Sunday morning? You have a captive audience in the space; how can you intentionally connect with the people in the room? If that requires a printed piece, then what should that printed piece include? Or, perhaps better yet, what should it not include? Maybe it's time to think differently.
Bottom line: The Sunday church bulletin doesn't have to be awful. The bulletin doesn't have to be the bain of your existence. But it might take some retooling. Maybe it's time to reframe the purpose of your church bulletin so that it's an integrated piece of an excellent church communication strategy.
What's your biggest frustration with your church bulletin, and how are you reimagining its purpose? Discuss these and other questions with your fellow church communicators in the Church Juice Insiders Facebook group.
Would you like another set of eyes to look at your bulletin? Do you need someone to help you brainstorm ideas for your church bulletin? Schedule a Zoom call with Church Juice's producer, Bryan Haley, or call or text him anytime at (616)224-0749. We love meeting with church communicators, and thanks to the generosity of donors and church partners, these meetings and consultations are always free.
