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The Bulletin Rules

June 26th, 2006 · 7 Comments · 103 views

We are redesigning our bulletin at Grace. Mainly because it breaks rules 1, 3, and 6. That’s just sick and wrong.

Here are my completely authoritative bulletin rules.

1. It should fit in a standard sized Bible. The largerst a bulletin should ever be is 8 1/2 by 11 folded in half.

2. No clip art. Clip art is lame.

3. Graphics clean and should match web design or signage out front.

4. Order of Worship is completely optional. Personally, I don’t like them in there but hey…we’ll give some grace here.

5. Space for sermon notes…or love letters if service is boring.

6. Give me highlights, not novels. If you can’t communicate an event in two sentences….you shouldn’t be writing for the bulletin.

7. Use some color. If you are going to print a bulletin, don’t bore me with black and white.

8. Tell me how to communicate with you. Email addresses, web page, phone numbers - good things on a bulletin. Tear off tabs are even better.

I do reserve the right to add to this list as situations present themselves.

Tags: church & emergent musings

7 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Linda // Jun 26, 2006 at 9:49 am

    I like #5. But not always used for sermon notes in our family pew. When my kids were younger it was used for tic-tac-toe and my sorry attempts at drawing Bert and Ernie or Barney enough to amuse my kids to be quiet.

    Now my kids use those spaces for important messages like “who is the guy on the blue shirt?” or “do you have any gum?”

    My pet peeve of bulletins is run on sentences in the responsive readings and prayers. Our current pastor is known for this.

  • 2 Grant // Jun 26, 2006 at 10:00 am

    Linda - what’s so awful about run-on sentences? What about words that are misspelled/mispelt/not spelled right?

    You and Catbird ought to get together and create a ministry called “Grammarrains For Those In Ministry!”

    Insiders would secretly call this ministry “Grammar Hell” but would love the fringe benefit of looking smarter than what we really are.

    By the way, my favorite game in church is the Hymn title game. One person sends the hymnal open to a song and that becomes the first part of the sentence. The second person sends it back completing the sentence.

    Example…

    I go to the garden alone just as I am.

    This needs to be a seperate post…we could have some fun with this one.

  • 3 Mike R // Jun 26, 2006 at 11:09 am

    Doesn’t a church need hymnals to play that game? :-)

  • 4 H // Jun 26, 2006 at 12:14 pm

    Shouldn’t there be a disclaimer regarding pastoral titles and duties?

  • 5 Linda // Jun 26, 2006 at 1:16 pm

    I don’t notice many misspelled words or typos in our bulletins lately. But I am sure they would bug me if they were there…lol.

    Run on sentences are just a pet peeve of mine. And sometimes I need to take a breath!

    :)

  • 6 wayne // Jun 26, 2006 at 5:49 pm

    Why not black and white? Think how much $’s could be saved if we just put the announcements on a 5×7 piece of paper and printed on a laser printer. Plain, simple, to the point. All the left over money not spent on 4-color printing could go to kingdom advancing things…like more church flowers.

  • 7 Shawn // Jun 26, 2006 at 10:46 pm

    Another one that always gets my OCD going…
    … no overdoing the fonts! A good bulletin will employ no more than 2 fonts MAX. It drives me up the wall to see church bulletins that look more like ransom notes from all the font changes. A good serif font (like the good ol’ Times New Roman) contrasted with a sans serif (a la Arial)for headings or something - that’s okay.

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