The Church bulletin is your first impression—don’t blow it!

8/11/20094:47:14 PM Link 0 comments | Add comment

I was visiting a friend that lives in East of Austin and we decided to drive into Bastrop. Bastrop is the kind of town that you wink at as you drive through on your way to Houston. A sleepy little farm community getting little publicity except when there is a raid on an independent farmer trying raise an illegal cash crop. There we were walking on Main Street which has taken on a fresh new look that could stand up to the likes of Fredericksburg some day. Fresh paint on restored old buildings sporting cafes, saloons and gift shops.

Every time I visit a town I like to stop in at a local Catholic Church. As a church bulletin publisher and a visitor to the town it gives me perspective about the pastor and the community that worships there. I went in to the sanctuary to pay my respects and pick up the bulletin. The bulletin was one of those legal-sized wrappers, or shell with the generic message on the outside. To my surprise there was no printing on the inside page which is the way it is designed to be used but another printed legal sheet stuffed inside. Not the kind of impression one likes to see upon their first visit.

The problem with church bulletins is the person in charge might not think it is important; That no one pays attention to it…they don’t read it. We are a church working with volunteers what do you expect. On the contrary, most people take pride in their church and they want to see their bulletin look presentable.

In this day and age there is no excuse for not having a clean, presentable information piece like the bulletin. My mother always says if you are going to take the time to do something you might as well do it right. Now there might have been circumstances that prevented that bulletin from being printed on the shell . . .but I don’t think so.

If you choose to print your church bulletin yourself on a copier or have a publishing service print it for you, please take the time to make it look presentable. That visitor might come back.

Thomas Miner

President, Bartleby Press