Create your weekly bulletin

Open Bulletin in your admin dashboard. You can keep one bulletin, or one for each service, such as a Sunday bulletin and a Wednesday night one. Choose New bulletin to add another. What you edit is the bulletin your church reads online and prints, in your church's brand color.

Edit the bulletin

Click a Text block to type in it right on the page. The bar above the text sets headings, bold, italic, links, lists, outlines and quotes. Click Done or anywhere outside the block when you finish. Sermon notes keep the same formatting when the sermon block prints them.

The Order of worship is typed as the numbered list it prints as. Press Enter to start the next item; a long item wraps inside its own number, just as it will on paper.

Photos

Add a Photo block and choose Choose a photo to upload one or pick from your church's media. Type a caption under it if you like. In its settings, describe the photo in a few words for people using screen readers.

A cover page

Choose Add a cover page under the bulletin for a front page filled to the edges. It starts in your brand color with your church name, logo and the date. Type over the name, or add a line under it for a sermon series or a verse. Choose Cover on the cover to fill it with another color or a picture, and to move the words to the top, middle or bottom.

If you design your cover somewhere else, like Canva, upload it as the picture and set Words on the cover to None. So nothing is cropped, make it 8.5 × 11 inches for letter pages, 5.5 × 8.5 for a folded booklet, 3.69 × 8.5 for a letter tri-fold, or 4.69 × 8.5 for a legal tri-fold. Each date keeps its own cover, and a new date starts with a copy of the last one.

Blocks that fill themselves in

Service times, upcoming events, small groups and the sermon come from your church's own records, so there is nothing to retype each week. Open a block's settings to choose which services, events or groups it shows, how far ahead events look, or which service the sermon follows. The header's settings let you change or remove the logo.

The small groups block lists public groups only; private and hidden groups never appear. A block with nothing to show that week is hidden from readers. The sermon block only shows the sermon for that week's service, never an older one, and it picks up a sermon you have added but not published yet. It shows the title, speaker and scripture; to print the sermon notes too, choose Everything in its settings. Notes appear once the sermon is published, even in an edition you published before that. Until then readers see when the notes will be published, if you scheduled it, and nothing if you did not.

Every block has Who can see this. Choose Church members only for things like a prayer list.

Giving progress

Add a Giving progress block to show how close a campaign or fund is to its goal, such as a building fund. Each one gets a progress bar, the amount raised against the goal and, on the web, a Give link. It shows your active campaigns and any fund with a goal; a fund that already has an active campaign is shown once, as the campaign. Open the block's settings to pick exactly which ones.

Goals are set under Giving, on Campaigns and Categories. A published edition keeps the totals from the day you published it and says so under the bars, so a printed bulletin never claims a newer figure than it had.

Last week's attendance

Add an Attendance block to show how many came to each service in the week before the edition's date, with a total. It uses the same number as the attendance page: the headcount if someone entered one, otherwise everyone checked in. A service with no attendance taken is left off rather than shown as zero.

It follows the bulletin's services unless you pick others in its settings, including last week's one-off events. It starts as Church members only; change Who can see this to print it for everyone. A published edition keeps the numbers from the day you published it.

People

Add a People block to introduce your staff, a guest speaker or a missionary you support. Open its settings and choose Add a person to type someone in, with a photo, their role, a line or two about them, and an email or phone number if you want readers to reach them. If your website lists your team, pick someone from Add from your website to copy them in. A block shows up to 12 people.

Footer

New bulletins end with a Footer: your church name with its address, phone, email and website, from your church's profile in Settings, then General. Type a line under the name for anything else, such as office hours. In the footer's settings, untick anything you would rather leave off. To add one to an older bulletin, add a section at the bottom and put a Footer block in it.

A QR code for giving

Add a Give block to print a QR code that opens your giving page, next to a line you write yourself. On the web, readers tap the link instead. If you set an external giving URL under Settings, then Website, the code opens that page; otherwise it opens your church's own Give page. Until online giving is set up one of those ways, readers don't see the block.

A form with a QR code

Add a Form block to make a "New here?" section. It shows a QR code that opens one of your forms, next to a line you write yourself. People scan it from the printed bulletin; on the web they tap the link instead.

If you have a first-time visitor, connection card or plan-a-visit form, the block uses it automatically. Otherwise open the block's settings and choose a form. Only forms that are turned on are listed, and if you turn a form off later the block hides itself rather than print a code that leads nowhere.

Birthdays and anniversaries

Add a Birthdays & anniversaries block to celebrate members with dates coming up. It only lists people who said yes: a member turns on Celebrate me in the bulletin on their profile, or you turn on Celebrate in the bulletin on their member page when they ask you to.

In the block's settings, choose the week ahead for a weekly bulletin or the whole month for a monthly one. Weekly lists Sunday through Saturday of the edition's week. Monthly lists the month the edition is dated in, from the 1st to the last day. The block prints the dates it covers, such as Sun, Sep 27 – Sat, Oct 3, so nobody mistakes them for the week that just ended. Its title switches between Celebrating the week ahead and Celebrating this month to match, unless you have typed your own.

The block is always members only. It shows the day, never the year or anyone's age, and it never lists anyone under 18. A couple in the same family with the same anniversary share one line.

Notices

Use Add notice below the bulletin for announcements. Give each one a start date and, if you like, an end date. It appears in the Notices block every week in that range, then drops off by itself.

Work a week ahead

The date in the bar above the bulletin is the edition you are editing. The arrows on either side of it move a week back or ahead. Choose the date itself to pick any day, or Next month's for the same Sunday of next month, such as the first Sunday. Each date keeps its own bulletin, so changing next week's order of worship never touches this Sunday's. A date you have not saved yet starts as a copy of the closest earlier one. The page fills in that week's services, events and notices, and Save, Publish and Print all use the date you picked.

Publish an edition

Publish freezes the bulletin as an edition for the date you are working on, usually the service it's for. Readers see that edition exactly as you published it. Each date is kept, so publishing every week builds up your history. Readers get the next edition still to come, so publishing a week ahead doesn't replace this Sunday's.

Save never changes what readers see. The bar above the bulletin tells you when you have saved changes that aren't published yet.

Fix or remove an edition

Link a bulletin to its services

Open Settings in the bar above the bulletin and tick one or more services. Each one's service page then shows a Bulletin card, next to the livestream and service time, for the edition published for that week. The Service times and Sermon blocks follow the services you picked, and Publish suggests the date of their next service.

Put bulletins on your website and print

On the Bulletins page, turn on On your website to show your editions on your site, in your website menu and at the top of your community feed. In the editor, Print opens a printable copy of the date you are working on, published or not, that you can print or save as a PDF. Printed copies leave out members-only blocks, such as birthdays, since paper reaches visitors too. Tick Include members-only blocks on the print page for a copy that is only for members.

For the classic folded bulletin, set Paper under Settings to Folded booklet. The bulletin is laid out in half-letter pages, two to each side of a letter sheet, in the order that reads straight through once folded. Turn on two-sided printing and leave it on flip on long edge, the usual default, then fold the sheets in half together with the first sheet on the outside. Pages come in fours, so any left over at the end are blank.

For a tri-fold, choose Tri-fold: letter sheet or Tri-fold: legal sheet. One sheet is folded in thirds into six panels: the cover first, then the three inside panels, then the flap that tucks in and the back cover. Turn on two-sided printing, flip on long edge. With the inside facing you, fold the right panel in first, then fold the left panel over it. Legal paper gives each panel about an inch more width.

Whichever paper you choose, you edit the bulletin as it prints. A booklet or tri-fold shows each sheet unfolded, both sides, with the folds dashed and every panel named, such as Front cover, Inside left or Back cover. Type straight onto any panel. The line under the bulletin says how many pages it prints on.

Choose what goes on each page

Sections flow from one page to the next in order, and a new page starts wherever the last one fills up. To decide for yourself, point at a section and open Section in its tools:

• Start on a new page moves the section, and everything after it, to the top of the next page.
• Put on the back cover prints the section on the last page of the folded copy, with any blank pages before it. It is a good home for the footer with your address and giving QR code. On letter pages it reads Put on the last page.

Members-only blocks show in the editor in their place, but printed copies leave them out unless you tick Include members-only blocks, so the visitor copy can fall a little differently.

Plan and permissions

The bulletin is part of the Full Access plan. On another plan it shows in your sidebar with a lock, and your public site leaves out the This week page.

Administrators can always edit bulletins. To let someone else edit and publish them, give their role Bulletins access on the Roles page. The Communications Team and Office Staff templates include it.