14 Questions To Brainstorm Regarding The “Form And Function” Of Your Sunday Morning Church Bulletin

Form Always Follows Function.

If you were to sit down with an architect and say, “I want you to design a building for me,” one of the first things she/he would ask you would be, “Tell me what you plan to do in it.”

In other words, what is the “function” you plan to do in and around the building?  What are you going to use it for?  Once you can define that purpose, then the designer or contractor has a pretty good idea about how to begin designing the building in order to suit your needs (the function).

If you don’t know what you plan to do in and around the facility, your designer will have absolutely no idea how to best assist you in achieving your “form.”

Sounds pretty logical, doesn’t it?

But do you realize that the same goes for church buildings and everything else that happens in and around the church building as well (i.e. ministry).

Here’s what I mean…

If you decided to create, design, enhance, or accelerate the Youth Ministry or the Women’s Ministry at your church, you would need to determine what—exactly—you wanted to accomplish in that ministry.  What do you want the Youth or the Women at your church to do, to learn, to practice, to focus on?  Once you had a clear objective for that ministry (the function), you would then start designing the “form” of your plan in order to accelerate that ministry in the direction you want it to go.

Make sense?

The same goes for practically everything that happens inside the walls of your church.

For example, consider your church’s Sunday morning bulletin and try to answer these questions about its Form and Function:

1. What do you want to ultimately accomplish with your Sunday morning bulletin?
2. What information is important to the pastoral leadership that must be included each and every Sunday?
3. What information do the church attenders need and/or want to read about?
4. Do the people even bother to read the bulletin or—worse yet—are they reading it or doodling on it during the pastor’s sermon?
5. Are you looking only to provide information or do you hope to actually have your people “do something” with it?
6. Will you be looking for your bulletin to merely provide data (information) or do you want it to alter behavior?
7. Do you want your bulletin to be diversified in order that the “form” can be changed/altered each week on an “as needed” basis?
8. Do you plan to have loose handouts in the bulletin or can such handouts be better utilized by being added into the content of the bulletin itself?
9. Do you want your church bulletin to be evangelistic as well as informative?
10. Do you want your church members to be able to use the bulletin to invite their friends to your next service or church event?
11. Would you like to be able to use perforated “tear offs” in the bulletin in order to ask survey questions of the church attenders/members (gather information)?
12. Do you want to use the bulletin as a means to driving participation and interest to your church website, Facebook page, Google+ page, etc?
13. Do you plan to offer any advertising in the bulletin?  In other words, are there any business owners that are members of your church that provide a good service that you’d like to be able to mention and/or recommend to your members?
14. Do you want to better promote and educate your people about your supported missionaries?

You see, there are so many things that a church could do with their Sunday morning bulletin.  You could design it to do practically almost anything.

But are most of the churches “out there” utilizing their resources to the best of their abilities…and for the glory of God?

The apostle Paul said, “Whether, then, you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31, emphasis added is mine).

Your church’s Sunday morning church bulletin is to be used for the glory of God.  How are you doing with that?  Got a bit of work to do on it?  Then get busy!

PLEASE COMMENT BELOW ON ONE OF THESE QUESTIONS:

1. What are some things your church uses the Sunday morning bulletin for?

2. What changes to the form and function has your church made to its bulletin lately?

3. What ways can churches better utilize their bulletins for the glory of God? 

   [* Photo credit: Sauderkraut]