Generally, the bulletin is printed during the week and distributed on Sunday. But why couldn’t we prepublish the bulletin to the web site? It would give the members a heads up on the plans for worship this weekend. For some, this would help them prepare by prereading the scriptures for the sermon. For others, this would be an opportunity to see what is going on so they can plan accordingly, rather than be surprised on Sunday morning.

Given the fact that most Churches today use computers to publish the bulletin, it wouldn’t be hard to include a step that published it to the web site of the Church. It would go up when the bulletin was finalized – i.e. printing on paper. At that point, there are no more changes to be made. (However, the web site copy can always be updated.) Many Churches no doubt already send parts of the bulletin out already – e.g. announcements of various events coming up via email. This would just expand upon that process.

If you have all of the lyrics for the songs on screen, then why do you still need a bulletin? Many Churches have decided to drop the paper bulletin, since all of the information was a duplicate of what appears on the video screens anyway. However, there are still some advantages to having a paper bulletin:

• People can take home the paper bulletin.
• A printed page can be written on; for example, you can have a sermon outline.
• People still like to have something to read before and after the service.
• You can put stuff in the paper bulletin that you don’t have time to announce.

Does your Church still publish a paper bulletin each Sunday? If so, what do you put in it that is different from the information content of the worship presentation? And how do people in the congregation like it?