A short time ago I was trying to help a friend redesign the bulletin for our church. In need of inspiration, I took to the web and began looking for examples of bulletins. I was rather surprised to see that there was really not a whole lot available out there. The majority of sample bulletins I dug up were the Christian equivalent of Microsoft Word’s clip art collections—covered with awful art that someone thought would appeal to Christians. Most of them were unsightly. Few offered anything interesting in terms of the layout of the information within; it is the text layout that interests me more than the “bells and whistles.”
I thought it would be interesting and perhaps helpful to piece together a small collection of church bulletins. Perhaps this can help inspire others as they attempt to create the perfect bulletin for their church.
So I am asking if you will do me a favor. Will you keep the bulletin from your church this weekend and send it to me? You can scan it, photograph it (assuming it’s a photo of reasonable quality) or mail it to me. Once I build up a collection, I will post them for all of us to see.
Thanks in advance!
Comments (22) »
1. Kim Shenberger
June 21, 2008
1:30 PM
Tim,
I do our church bulletin and we archive a PDF on our website each week.
You can find ours here:
http://www.christcovenantpresbyterian.org/
More current ones are located in the upper left sidebar. If you want to see older ones, you can find them in a drop down under the “Home” link.
2. Deb
June 21, 2008
2:13 PM
http://www.gracechurch.org/home/doclib.asp?ministry_id=1&dlyear=&dlcat=Grace+Today
This is the one from Grace Community Church.
3. Elizabeth
June 21, 2008
2:58 PM
http://www.briarwood.org/clientimages/37045/resources/weeklys/06-22bulletin.pdf
4. Chris Giammona
June 21, 2008
3:50 PM
Tim
More examples of bulletins, if you want the covers, I can scan and send them to you. I will also scan the bulletin from Irvine Presbyterian and send via email.
Chris
http://redeemerpres.com/bulletins2008/b20080316.pdf
http://download.redeemer.com/pdf/worship-program.pdf
5. Chris Giammona
June 21, 2008
3:53 PM
Additional one here:
http://www.citychurchphilly.com/sundays
6. Andy
June 21, 2008
5:47 PM
Here is a flickr group that is devoted to graphic design for churches and ministries. There are many examples of bulletins.
http://flickr.com/groups/cfcc
7. Mrs. T.
June 21, 2008
5:48 PM
If nobody else has already offered, I’ll send you one from FPC Jackson, MS.
8. Bill W
June 21, 2008
7:20 PM
Hi Tim:
My church stopped the traditional bulletin hand out a year ago and started a Friday E-News send to all the members via e-mail. It serves as the bulletin. There are copies of it in the lobby on Sundays should visitors want it. Nothing fancy, seems to work well, saves time, money and trees.
9. Tim S.
June 21, 2008
7:33 PM
Hi Tim,
Thanks for doing this! I think it will be helpful for many people. Here is our bulletin from last week. We have been talking about an update to it but it has not made it high enough on the to do list yet.
http://www.prairietab.com/documents/2008-06%20Jun%2015%20church%20bulletin.pdf
Looking at the other bulletins posted, I see that many include the full order of service and it takes up a significant portion of the bulletin. We spend most of our space on schedules, announcements, church family info and prayer requests. We haven’t thought about putting the order of service in (everyone would know when you have to change it!). Would be interesting to discuss the thinking and even theology behind what goes in different church’s bulletin.
We try to keep it to 4 pages but there is often an insert making it 6 pages, and often a special event insert as well.
Looking forward to seeing all the others.
Thanks,
Tim
10. Blake
June 21, 2008
10:50 PM
Wow, a lot of us Presbyterians here, for a Baptist guy’s blog! Our bulletin is pretty blank other than the text, but we have this drawing of an old Puritan pulpit on the front. I always liked that picture because it reminded me of how the Puritans built their pulpits tall and strong—it showed their emphasis on preaching and their belief that the pulpit is the place where the Lord speaks through his minister preaching his Word.
Kim - great to see another OPC-er on here!
Tim S. - why would you ever change God’s order of New Testament worship?
Tim Challies - this sounds like a great project—I can’t wait to see what you come up with!
11. Dave Ingland
June 22, 2008
4:18 AM
Hey Tim, I posted this week’s bulletin from our service at Revolution Church Sacramento: http://revsacramento.com/challies/Revolution-Church-Bulletin.pdf
Great idea! In seminary I traveled to many churches to attend services so I collected a lot of bulletins and made mental notes before I put together the one for our church plant.
12. Elisabeth Dyvig
June 22, 2008
8:05 PM
I do our church’s bulletins also…we are a non-denominational church that is Reformed and charismatic in our doctrine. :) At one point I looked online quite a bit for new bulletin ideas…you are right Tim, most of them aren’t much! We eventually came up with our own concept, that works for us.
Here you go: http://www.divshare.com/download/4803986-627
13. David White
June 23, 2008
12:25 AM
Ours at Grace Reformed Baptist Church are available online, under the “Sunday Handouts” section (halfway down on the right).
http://www.grbc.net
14. Fred Greco
June 23, 2008
7:33 PM
We have a very straightforward bulletin that of necessity must be the main source of information for our people (we currently meet in a school. The original work is done in Publisher, and then printed on a color laser. PDFs are made to put on the web.
An older one (that shows our cover page) is here:
http://www.cckpca.org/bulletin/2007/12-09-2007.pdf
The most recent ones can be viewed here:
http://www.cckpca.org/worship/bulletin/
15. Jim Peet
June 24, 2008
10:44 AM
I really like the idea of “no bulletin”. On commenter mentioned this earlier.
90% (a number pulled out of thin air) of church members have email. Send a weekly news bulletin every Friday. Print some on Sunday for the 10% who feel they need a printed bulletin. And then just worship.
Sunday announcements detract from worship (in my own view)
16. Het
June 24, 2008
5:41 PM
I’ve been helping design our bulliten and we got our “inspiration” from Grace Bible Church:
http://www.gbcph.org/index.php
They call their bulliten’s Worship Planners and post them every Friday:
http://www.gbcph.org/wp.pdf
17. Krista
June 25, 2008
1:45 PM
Hello Tim,
My church bulliten is named “Good News” and is archieved on our website. It’s not too fancy, but I’m very intrigued by your idea. You can find links to the .pdf here:
http://www.christcm.com/goodnews.htm
18. Ben
June 26, 2008
2:22 PM
My church (Denton Bible Church of Denton, Texas) started doing something interesting last year.
They publish a monthly magazine which provides info about ministry events and opportunities during the month it is published. A new edition of the magazine is distributed around the first full week of each month.
They also publish a smaller, weekly bulletin providing brief announcements for upcoming events. This bulletin is distributed before each Sunday service.
PDF’s of both can be downloaded here:
http://www.dentonbible.org/index.php?pfile=newpubs&mfile=aboutdbclm&dir=aboutdbc
19. Ben
June 26, 2008
2:32 PM
@ Jim Peet (comment 15):
The 90% number is probably true in hip, young churches. There are hundreds of senior citizens at my church who are probably intimidated by the word “email”. I think if they heard rumors about the bulletin going mostly digital, they would split the church. So we do printed bulletins and place recycle boxes at the doors.
I agree that Sunday announcements from the pulpit can be distracting from worship if done improperly. But I don’t see a problem with placing a piece of paper in someone’s hand as they walk in. That is only distracting to me if I show up late and decide to read it immediately rather than after the service, which would really be more a reflection of my priorities and what’s in my heart on Sunday morning. Well, that’s what I think.
20. Jim Hunt
June 27, 2008
4:22 PM
I’m new to reading your blog, but here is this week’s bulletin.
http://firstbaptisthendersonville.com/pdfs/bulletin.pdf
First heard about you with your Shack review on Amazon, keep up the good work!
21. Scott Aniol
June 28, 2008
10:01 AM
Here is a recent bulletin from our church:
http://fbcrockford.org/FBCRockfordBulletin.pdf
22. Debbi Stocco
September 15, 2008
12:54 PM
Hi Tim,
I don’t know how I came upon your site just as I’m getting ready to launch my own graphic design business focused on revitalizing church’s graphics. Amazingly enough when the graphics excite the members, energy and spirit are also raised which is contagious. An example of how much difference it makes is seen in the church I attend ( http://www.eaglebrookchurch.com ) This church has more excitement than I’ve ever seen (which is infective!) and the attendance is tens of thousands per weekend . People even come there for their date-night! Imagine getting the word of God into people on their date! Now this church has it’s own graphics department and I realize that all churches can not afford a full time design department. That’s what I hope to help with. I’ve been designing graphics corporately for many years, and because I am so excited when I go to church I want others to experience this fulfillment in their churches as well. Just thought I’d share this and maybe give some food for thought to those that submitted “not-to-exciting” church bulletins.
If anyone wishes to contact me to talk about what it takes to have relevant and exciting church graphics they can get my phone number at my temporary web site - http://www.relevantdesignsolutions.com.
Thanks Tim, for putting up this site. It’s great to know there are people that care about their church falling by the wayside today and wanting to do something about it.
Debbi Stocco