A lot of Churches are switching from printing their newsletters to eMailing them. This has tremendous advantages:

• Cost: The incremental cost of another paper newsletter is postage and handling, which is going up May 12th. The incremental cost of another eMail newsletter is zero.
• Timeliness: A paper newsletter can get delayed in the mail, arriving days after the target date. An eMail newsletter may get delayed 20 minutes, but still arrives the day it was sent. (However, there are issues with Spam to contend with.)
• Turnaround: To edit a paper newsletter, you have to print it and pass it around so people can add edits. To edit an eMail newsleter, you just eMail the draft to everyone and solicit comments. Then you have to redact the comments and re-edit the original copy. Nothing gets lost.

Given all of these advantages, most people would conclude that it is a no-brainer to switch to eMail Newsletters. However, there is a learning curve involved. You have to learn the software that generates these newsletters. It can get as complicated as writing a web page, since it involves HTML. There are some powerful tools available, but they also tend to be expensive and require training. I wonder if it is worth it. What do you think? Does your Church have a newsletter, and how is it distributed? How many people does it go through on the way out the door? Is there an efficient way to handle this process? Please comment below.