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When church communicators Marta Kramer and Genie Hambrick were preparing for their plenary session on newsletters at the 2009 Big Tent Event, they asked those “in the field” for comments on the “good, bad and ugly” in church newsletters. The responses they got ranged from the name of the newsletter, to the fonts, and even the type of closure used to shut the newsletter for mailing (apparently, the use of tape is a peeve to many). Not everyone is on the information superhighway of email, web surfing, and social media, and your printed newsletter is the only thing you can count on the reach 100% of your congregation. But if the content is dull and the design is poor, your newsletter will go straight from the mailbox into the trash.

There is a glut of bad newsletters out there, and most often the reason is simply that the editor doesn’t know how to do the newsletter any better. More likely than not, your church’s newsletter editor does not hold a degree in graphic design, marketing, publishing or communications. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t have a great publication. Taking the time to clean up your newsletter allows it to be used for what it was intended: information, education, and building a sense of community and loyalty for those in your church.

Creating good content is a huge hurdle in creating a good newsletter. Your newsletter is not a list of events in your church. If that’s all that’s in there, then you’ve turned it into a glorified calendar. Talk about people, celebrate accomplishments, and balance your subject matter. How? Think about what’s going on right now in the life of your church. Are you planning a Kirkin’ event? Interview one of your long time church members on how it has evolved over the years, what it means to them, and what special or funny stories they may have from previous events. Do you have a circle or class that has just completed a new curriculum? Have someone write a short review of it for other church members, along with sharing a personal story of what they got out of it. Are the majority of your articles focused on what the youth are doing? They aren’t the only ones doing great things. Balance it with stories from other groups in your church.

Your content shouldn’t be too wordy and institutional. If the newsletter is starting to resemble a newspaper, you need to edit your word count FAST! People are interested, but busy. If it looks like it will take more than a few minutes to read, they won’t bother. Put the most important information on the front, and use action headlines for your stories so that they are easy to browse and create interest. “Info on the Circle Three Offering” does not draw you in like “Group Raises Money for New Wells in Africa: Idea Sparked by Member’s Visit to Kenya”. The first sentence of your article should ALWAYS have the most important or most compelling piece of information. Put the same topics in the same places so that your reader can jump to their page of interest. DO NOT print meeting minutes in your newsletter! This is a very common practice, but also very boring. Write a small story about the meeting, highlighting the most exciting work, and then tell everyone where he or she can get a copy of the minutes. Don’t alienate people by using “insider language”. Avoid acronyms (PNC, VBS). Give all pertinent information for events and meetings (why, where, when, who, contact information, how much, childcare, etc.). Your newsletter also goes to visitors and members who aren’t consistently involved. They will stay both if you don’t give them information.

Once you get the content under control, your next and most visually obvious place to tweak will be your newsletter design. Typography, layout, pictures, and production – they can be a symbiotic flow of good design, or just a plain mess, and the messier it is the less people will want to read it. Pick up any publication that you enjoy reading and focus on the things that visually stimulate you. Take note of what makes your eye draw to a certain title or picture. If there is a page that has a bunch of different information on it, and you are drawn to read each piece, ask yourself why. Look at the number of fonts used, and how titles are sized in relation to the text, how quotes are “pulled out” from the story for emphasis (called “pull quotes”). Keep these discoveries in mind as you look at your newsletter. It doesn’t take sophisticated software or high-tech machines to create a good looking document. Sometimes it takes a fresh eye, a desire to change, and a lot of discipline.

Typography is, in the technical sense, the creation of fonts and the use of them to print. For our purposes, it means what type of font you use and how you manipulate it. There are two types of fonts: serif or sans serif. A serif font has small lines at the end of each stroke on the letter. An example of this is Times New Roman. A sans serif font means that the font is sans (without) those small lines. An example of this is Arial. In print, sans serif fonts are typically used for headlines, because they are eye catching, and serif fonts are typically used for the body text, because they flow easily, which aids reading. In digital media, sans serif fonts are typically used because they look better on the computer screen. No matter what type of font you use where, don’t overdo it. Rule Number One in typography: less is more. More than three different fonts spell visual trouble. Pick two: One for titles and one for text – and be consistent. Pick a third to use where you want the look to be a little different from the rest of the document. To keep it readable, don’t size any font under 10 point. Avoid the overuse of bold, italic, underline, “word art”, all caps, font sizes, and any other typing tool, both alone and combined. These things are often used to emphasize a word, phrase, or sentence, but if they are used too much, the very thing you wanted to emphasize gets ignored. Keep it simple.

Layout habits are tough to crack. It’s easy to do it the same way each time, but you might be creating a monster with your creative designing. White space is space on the page that does not have something on it, and it’s not a bad thing to have. Resist the urge to fill every inch of your page. Use white space to create separation between items, or your newsletter ends up looking like one big story. Avoid using too many formatting styles, like a box for every story with a different border on each (and a different font inside each box). It gets too busy and confusing. Use space and titles to break up your stories, with only a box here or there. Don’t waste space. Organize your items so that they fit well with each other on the page. Don’t be afraid to move stuff around. A well-organized newsletter means fewer pages (and less money!) and looks better too.

Pictures and clip art can spell disaster for your newsletter if not used properly. Graphics are the best way to gain interest in your stories, but they have to be used wisely. Most church newsletters are done in black and white on a copier, and it is really hard to reproduce a photograph properly in this format. Simple images reproduce better. When you use photos, make sure they are “action shots”. Crop out the stuff that isn’t the focus of the photograph, or crop it so that you create a focus. Most people don’t realize how little of a photo they are actually seeing when they look at a professional document. Clip art can be useful, but be careful. Most clip art reproduces well, as long as it’s not photo quality and doesn’t have a lot of shading, which makes it very useful for black and white publications, but don’t overuse it. One or two per page or long article is a good rule of thumb.

Production of your newsletter is the final step in good design. Since most newsletters are black and white, a lot of churches like to print on colored paper, so make sure the color is readable (stay away from bright and neon). Avoid using paper of different sizes. This primarily makes production of your newsletter more difficult and time consuming, and it also makes the document awkward to handle and read. Save everyone some time and frustration by making the odd-sized pages the same size as the rest of the newsletter. If you have to put your newsletter into an envelope to mail, you are wasting your church’s money and your valuable time. Your newsletter should be mail ready when folded, or you need to reformat it. Take advantage of bulk mailing, which can be used on as little as 200 pieces, and can cut your postage costs by half or more. Your closures are important too. Staples and tape are difficult to open and can tear the document. Perforated tabs are cheap and easy to use. What about your printing costs? Is it cheaper to copy it or send it to the printer? Account for all your costs (including your time), and you might find out that one or the other works better for you.

No one ever said it was easy to publish a church newsletter. Creating compelling content is hard work. Editing a clean document requires time. But the fruits of these labors is a well-done, well received, and well-read newsletter, which is a necessary and useful component of your church’s communication “tool-box”.

Up Next: “Your Website - It's Easier Than You Think"

This series is based on the Lewis Center for Church Leadership's "50 Ways to Communicate Effectively" and workshops held at the Big Tent Conference in June 2009, specifically the workshop led by Marta Kramer and Genie Hambrick.

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