Communications Revolution Part 3: The Death of the Weekly Program/Bulletin/Newsletter

We are in a season of change at Park… I’ve already shared about texting (which I have more to share about some updates in that arena soon), I’ve talked about our new logo, and today I have some sad news to report…

June 22 was a sad day at Park Community Church, we lost a dearly beloved friend… our weekly program.

What is often the bane of all communications people, church secretaries, and grammar police… the weekly program… passed away.

*moment of silence*   *moment of celebration*

On June 22 we debuted @Park, our new way of communicating to our church on a monthly basis. Call us crazy, but for us it just made sense. Here’s why:

-          we are a young church… not young in the sense of how long we’ve been around (20 years), but in the sense of age… our average age is 29

-          we are a ‘mobile’ church… all of our people work in the Loop and live by their Crackberries (aka Blackberries) and are single, Facebooking, texting, and Twittering

-          on any given week we were just shuffling the same information in our programs around, adding maybe 1 or 2 new things each week. Our content was just stagnant.

-          we invested a lot of time and energy to revamping our website (future post on that coming)

-          all of our event registrations were already through the web and everything in our weekly program pushed people to the web for more information or to sign up

-          we threw away programs people left behind like crazy

 

The Pro’s of this choice…

-          the budget savings... we cut our monthly printing budget 75% going this route

-          the environmental savings… we’re not killing as many trees. It’s a “green” choice and one that people in our church would rally behind.

-          in terms of our organization, it forced our ministry leaders to plan out their events way in advance and caused them to be more organized instead of waiting to the last minute… which tended to be how we did everything.

-          it forced us to prioritize and condense. We went from publishing everything to being careful to choose what would further the mission and vision of our church. And we had to do so in a few sentences versus a whole paragraph.

 

The Con’s of this choice…and what we did about them…

-          what about people who aren’t there on the Sunday you hand them out? Easy. We hand them out on the last Sunday of every week and subsequent weeks they are available at our Guest Services table. We make reference to them each week in our announcements on stage and tell people to pick one up if they want to know what’s going on.

-          what about first time visitors and the visitor card? Well, we put visitor cards in the backs of all of our chairs and direct first-time visitors to stop by Guest Services. We’ve actually gotten more of those cards back than the ones we put in our programs!

-          what about sermon notes? We always had a page for sermon notes, so to remedy that problem we created inexpensive sermon notepads that are in the backs of all of our chairs. If people want to take notes, that paper is there!

-          what about things that change or are left out? We are now continually driving people to our website… and enews can catch what may have been left out.

 

Surprisingly, this was an easy sell to our staff, but I was unsure how it would be received by our church… and the response (having done this for a month now) has been great. People love it! It’s got everything they need to know, it’s compact, it’s simple, and it’s something that they can pass on to a friend.



Inside each month’s edition we include:

-          A main event and testimony (‘my journey’) relating to it

-          Information for people who are new to our church

-          Key events - we squeezed in 22 events for August

-          Ways to Connect - service or volunteer opps

-          Teaching schedule for the month – series and speaker

-          Maps and directions to our church campuses

-          Our contact info and vision statement

 

Check out what we used to do… old school

Check out what we do now… new school [July] [August]

 
Final thoughts… while this decision made sense for us, we know it’s not for everyone. Not everyone is mobile and connected like our church is, but what I can say anyone can take away from this is: know the primary way your audience receives information and communicate to them that way!

For some churches it might be sticking to a program and not putting a lot of energy into the web, for others it might mean reducing print and using print to drive people to the web.

It’s all about knowing your context and your audience!

Kem Meyer did a great post on this convo about print vs web... check it out!

Comments

[Corey]

That is rad! Love that you guys can do that, it is better on so many levels.

[evan]

Tim.
Great post.
We...ok maybe I have been tossing around this idea in the office.
Thank you so much for your detail on this process.

Bulletins are dead.

[Simone]

I was glad to see the weekly bulletins exit.

I get why the note paper is there for people. But I am curious to see how long the note paper is available. If I really want to take notes, chances are, I already bring my own notebook. And, if I can afford a crackberry or a crackphone, I should be able to drop $10 on a nice little notebook. I'm just saying.

Love the new website BTW

[Bill]

Very cool

I was actually going to send you an email requesting a bulletin, we are going to be redesigning ours at chruch, and wanted some ideas. This post will lead to good discussion at our meeting no doubt.

[Deb]

LOVE this idea... I just passed your blog URL on to my fellow staff members...

deb

[Skyler Goodman]

Wow...pretty sweet move. We completely simplified our weekly bulletin, but this may be even better! Hope you are doing well!

[david]

Great job!!
Good information for my church plant

[danielle]

I am so excited for you guys! I would absolutely love to test this out. I think it's a genius move. Communications Directors unite!

[Ariah Fine]

good idea

[Clayton]

We recently did the same thing in our little church, for many of the same reasons you did. The hardest part was selling the idea to my Lead Pastor. He isn't sold on how great e-communication is. It is good to hear someone else is thinking how we are. Keep it up.

[Jeff Smith]

Great idea. I'm the associate pastor AND I do the bulletin. We are a traditional and somewhat "country" church. Not sure if this will fly... yet. But thanks for the innovation inspiration.
-jeff

[aaron]

Excellent. I have always thought bulletins were either a waste or a distraction during service. I wish our church would try this out.
And thanks for outlining the "pros and cons", you hit everything I was asking in my mind at the beginning of the article.

[Jenni Catron]

Very interesting. You've got me thinking!

[Chris Denham]

Great move guys and I love the new look you've made.

Producing our programme has evolved massively over the last 10 years from producing weekly bulletins on templates that we fed through a photocopier to then a monthly magazine, then a bimonthly magazine - now we produce a quarterly magazine and try to make it creative and interesting to read - but it also means our designers don't have to work constantly on the same kind of project. It also forces the church to think ahead when it comes to its programme.

[Kyle Rudge]

I am wondering if someone ever printed out the enews and brought it with them to church to read as the bulletin.

[Julian]

Thanks!
We created a monthly publication similar to @Park last year, but due to the nature of our congregation (average age about 40) we still do the weekly bulletin as well. We have a church Facebook group and another one for the youth group, a couple pastors have blogs, and we have talked about doing event sign-ups online, but haven't reached the tipping point for on-line communications. This is a crossover stage that I believe many churches will have to go through for another 5 years or more.

[Jayce Tohline]

The reasons were right... The benefits, too... EXCEPT the one about saving trees.

Trees for paper are grown on purpose... for just that use. It is a part of the American economy. The "green" people have deceived the American public into thinking every sheet of paper helps to encourage those dirty lumberjacks who are hell-bent on ridding the planet of trees. Nothing could be further from the truth...when it comes to paper products.

See my post for more information...
http://www.tohline.com/articles/save-the-trees-riiiiiiiight/

[Scott Aughtmon]

What do you do about offering envelopes?

[Pastor Chris]

Thanks for posting your story. For too long, I've noticed bulletins/programs that recycle stale information.

What was most helpful was sharing the reasoning.

Chris W
EvangelismCoach.org

[Garrick]

Passing this along tonight! Dig the idea of pushing folks toward the electronic distribution and interaction...really dig the notepads vs. printing sheets for folks that don't want to take notes. Check out "ShareThis" for your blog we just put it on our new site.

[Jeremy Scheller]

I'm in the process of this transition at my church. I'm wondering if you could give an outline of your "steps to the revolution."

How did you do it?
Who are the players?
How long did the planning take to switch over?

[BillB]

We did this over three years ago and never looked back. The tyranny of the weekly bulletin is over. It's a waste of time and resources.

For the worship services, we provide a very simple printed piece that integrates an art element, scripture, place for notes and a very short, simple and brief text box that rotates among some common informational elements that we want to present and reinforce to the folks who walk thru the door.

The monthly magazine contains "ads" for ministries in the back, a general information section that reads more like the classifieds that contains all the hubris that typically clutters a bulletin, several quality articles (up to about 1200-1500 words) some shorter articles (700-1000 words) and some artistic spreads. The standard issue is 24 pages cover to cover (two color ink and occasionally more pages). . . and it is the best thing we could have ever done in making the information relevant, interesting and comprehensive.

One key factor - decide what you are going to run and what you are not. We've set the bar quite high.

Our articles have to "say something". They should be thought provoking, provocative and have substance. Unless it's a comedic piece and then the standards are even higher (dying is easy, comedy is hard).

Decide on a look and stay with it for awhile. It will evolve over time as you become more comfortable with what reflects the ethos of your community. Let it grow and change organically so that it remains familiar even when you make stylistic changes.

We also distribute the last Sunday of the month. Run, do not walk to this process. You will be glad you did :)

Feel free to contact me at bill@irvingbible.org if you have questions.

Bill Buchanan
Storyteller
Irving Bible Church