8 min read

Free Church Newsletter Templates

A church newsletter is an effective way of sharing information with the church members, especially if it is prepared appealingly and effectively. Whether by email or print, having a fantastic newsletter will help spread the required information properly among the church members and the churchgoers.

Church newsletters are beneficial and essential in a church. You can not only communicate but also help your church grow, engage your church members and even create a platform that will help you generate feedback about church activities and events.

With this article, you will learn how to prepare a meaningful church newsletter, whether online or in print, to ensure that you effectively and successfully reach out to the church members.

What is a Church Newsletter?

A church newsletter is a print or email publication used to inform readers, that is, church members and congregants, about the expected events in and around the church. Print newsletters are primarily distributed during church service, while email newsletters are distributed anytime. Therefore, it is best to use the email newsletter to inform your church members about church events and activities effectively.

A church newsletter is also called a church bulletin, church magazine, church newspaper, or a church publication. 

Reasons to Use a Church Newsletter

Before making your church newsletter more appealing to your congregation, you need to understand why it is vital for the church to have a newsletter. Here are some of the reasons why you should use a church newsletter.

Build a sense of community

 A church newsletter helps to build and promote a sense of community. This is achieved in that the church members can continue to feel connected even when they are not gathering together. They get a sense of togetherness that creates a sense of community.

Keep congregants informed

You should use a church newsletter as it helps keep the congregants informed about the activities and events in the church. With this publication, you can easily share information and update the church members about matters of the church, such as fundraising. This will promote engagement, attendance, and interaction.

Encourage immediate action

Also, the church newsletter encourages immediate action from the church members. Since not everyone will be in church every other week, having a newsletter will help inform them and allow them to contribute to the congregation and support the church activities. It is essential to add a call-to-action to encourage immediate responses from church members, for instance, in case of donations or volunteer work.

Provide transparency

With a church newsletter, you can guarantee and provide transparency. Church contributors and the community can stay updated and understand how the money is handled by reading the newsletter. With such transparency in the church newsletter, you can easily attract more donations for the different activities and events.

Who Can Write a Church Newsletter?

When it comes to who can write a church newsletter, it all depends on the church’s structure and how church members are divided into different roles. Usually, a church newsletter has different information, and a qualified person writes each detail.

Here are some factors you will need to consider when selecting who can write the church newsletter:

Content

Regarding content, that is, blog content for the newsletter, the person responsible for this section should be the church staff and the leadership team. These people are qualified and will significantly contribute to the writing.

Scripture

It is best if a pastor writes the scripture section for the church newsletter. It can either be scripture or a bible reading suggestion. Whatever the case, church members are more likely to relate to this section if it comes from someone they connect to on a spiritual level, such as a pastor.

Distribution

For the distribution part of the newsletters, the most qualified personnel are the church administrators. They are more capable of scheduling, sending newsletters, and reviewing analytics. This is especially effective if you use the online email platform to send your church newsletters.

News

The final part is the news section of the church publication. Again, church members are most effective as their words can be included in the newsletter. This is beneficial as it will make them feel special and appreciated. The church staff and leaders should be the ones to ask the church members to write the news section to improve the sense of community and togetherness.

What to Include in a Church Newsletter?

After establishing the people who can write the church newsletter, it is also important to identify what to include in the newsletter. This is because including the required details will increase the effectiveness of your church newsletter.

Note from pastor

Including a note from the pastor in the church magazine is crucial as it is a powerful way of sharing the word and encouraging readers. Also, it is beneficial for church members who would appreciate a message from their spiritual leader. It will also increase the authority and credibility of the newsletter.

Ensure that the note from the pastor is unique and welcoming. Remember that apart from the prominent pastor, the newsletter can include a note from the youth pastor, college pastor, worship pastor, and children’s ministry leaders.

Calendar of upcoming events

The newsletter should also include a calendar of the upcoming church events. This calendar can include special events, fundraisers, essential meetings, volunteer opportunities, etc. It is important to list each event alongside its date to ensure no confusion, especially if there are many events. In case to fit multiple events in a single newsletter, focus on the most urgent ones. You can also direct the church members to visit the church’s website to get the full details of the upcoming events.

If the church prefers print, then you can print out an events flyer and attach it to the church newsletter when distributing it. This is best done at the beginning of the month to ensure members are aware of all upcoming church events and can keep track of when the events will happen.

Call to volunteer or donate

For volunteer work and donations, the church newsletter is the best place for you to inform the church members and call them to action. Ensure that you include the correct details about these activities and welcome your church members to participate and support the process. 

Congregation news

The church bulletin should also include congregation news; this will make the congregation feel like a part of the community and proud of achieving a particular goal. The different content you can include as the congregation news includes: current news stories about the church, community events, new members to the team, celebrations relating to the church, and also any local, national or global news involving the church.

Scripture

You can also choose to include scripture in the newsletter. This is usually preferred by churches that always have themes for their church publications. You can include a short verse, a sermon series, or even a passage from the bible. Ensure that you encourage bible memory among your church members by always including a different verse in every church bulletin.

Empower readers to take action

Another important detail you should include in the church bulletin is a message that empowers them to take action once they are done reading. Some of the actions you can ask them to undertake to include helping others, praying for each other, journaling to express gratitude, memorizing scripture, volunteering, and sharing their testimonies with others. This is a way of helping them grow their faith.

A few good photographs

To ensure that your church newsletter remains appealing, you need to ensure that your format contains text and a few good photographs and images. Adding images helps to break up the blur that comes with too much text, giving the illusion that the bulletin is just a quick read.

Also, with images and photographs, your readers are more likely to remember the information in the newsletter easily. Using photographs properly will make the readers more excited to read the following newsletter. You can easily access affordable graphics online for your church newsletter to format it appropriately.

Contact information

It is important to include contact information such as email address, phone number, and mailing address in the church publication. This will help current and potential church members easily reach out and contact the necessary parties for help.

Church Newsletter Templates

Creating a Church newsletter is an easy but time-consuming process, so to make it even more comfortable and less time-consuming, you can download our free Church newsletter templates and customize them according to your needs!

We hope that our tips and templates will help you. Do check out our other free resources!

Church Newsletter Template 01

Church Newsletter Template 02

Church Newsletter Template 03

Church Newsletter Template 04

Church Newsletter Template 05

    How Long Should It Be?

    The church newsletter should be 500 to 100 words with 1 to 4 lines in each paragraph. This is about 2 to 4 pages long. This will be short enough to encourage your readers to go through the whole publication. The format should also be appealing enough to maintain the readers’ engagement and interest.

    10 Writing Tips an Appealing Church Newsletter

    You need to observe tips to write an appealing church newsletter. Here are some of those essential tips:

    1. Make the content exclusive

    If your readers want to remain interested in reading the newsletter, you must make the content exclusive. Repeating the same content will not attract new readers or maintain the old ones. In addition, ensure that you include information that has not been mentioned elsewhere since your readers will realize that the publication is essential and benefits them.

    2. Get creative

    Ensure that you get creative with your church newsletter by including graphics such as images and photographs alongside the texts. For online newsletters, you can even include GIFs and short videos to make the newsletter more creative and exciting to read.

    3. Keep it short and sweet

    The idea is to ensure that these church members read the whole newsletter. This can be achieved by making it short and sweet. Avoid crafting long newsletter emails but ensure that you remain brief and straight to the point. Also, you can highlight the critical details in a way that makes it easier for your readers to identify them.

    4. Make it visually appealing

    Humans are more likely to remember a particular piece of information if the channel used to transmit was visually appealing. Since that is the case, you need to make your newsletter more visually appealing by creating attractive headings and subheadings, using images, and including short messages under the images. With an appealing newsletter, your church members will become more engaged and eager about the following newsletter you will send.

    5. Add contact information

    The time, address, phone number, emails, and name of the church events and activities should be included in the bulletin. Adding this contact information to your church newsletter layout makes it easier for people to follow the instructions and perform the required tasks.

    6. Avoid getting too wordy

    A wordy newsletter is not likely to get any readership. Try and remain brief by breaking your newsletter into small readable sections. For an email newsletter, you can attach a link to a particular blog or website for the reader to access more information. That way, you avoid being too wordy with this church publication.

    7. Get a little funny

    Ensure that you make your newsletter fun to read by including funny anecdotes and Christian jokes. This will make your readers laugh and encourage them to read the newsletter. This is because if you get a little funny, people tend to anticipate more laughter and will end up reading the entire newsletter. 

    8. Use a variety of content

    The readership will drop tremendously when your newsletter is viewed as boring. That is why you need to use various content in your publication. For example, you can include jokes, answers to particular questions, volunteer spotlight to celebrate them, volunteer thank you notes, inspirational stories, worship signs, bible verses, scriptures, prayers, and many more, depending on your church.

    9. Ask your members

    Another vital tip you should observe is to involve your members in the writing process by asking them to suggest what they want to see in the publication. From the feedback, you will get to understand your readers’ likes and dislikes. Also, they can provide you with a list of content they want that will help you come up with more creative ideas for the newsletter. Observing their suggestions is likely to increase your newsletter readership.

    10. Have a purpose for each newsletter

    The final tip is to ensure you have a purpose for each newsletter you write and prepare. You can set a theme for each newsletter to ensure it serves its purpose. With the correct purpose, you can easily add the right content and ask for related contributions from the church members. In addition, creating a theme and purpose will get the members excited for the following newsletter. 

    Conclusion

    A church newsletter, also known as a church bulletin, is an essential publication that you can use to inform church members of any upcoming church activities and events. In addition, this publication is a fast and effective way of updating your readers on different church news and encouraging them to grow their faith by participating in different helpful actions.

    Since not every church member will be present in church every other week, having both print and online newsletters will help to pass the message to the members efficiently. To ensure your church newsletter is effective and serves the intended purpose, ensure that you include the required content, format the newsletter appropriately, and make it appealing to your readers.

    Keep reading