Growing up, I remember always receiving a bulletin every time I entered the sanctuary for worship. The tradition of bulletin usage for all services continue when I was a seminarian and during the early years of my experience in parish ministry.
In 2015, I stepped away from full-time parish ministry. As I began visiting churches, I started collecting their bulletins. Those shown below were mostly collected in late 2015 to just before the COVID-19 pandemic.
To create the visual I first sorted the bulletins by size. I eliminated a handful that were uniquely sized and then fanned out a sampling of each of the three common sizes. Within each size the primary visual difference is clear: the presence or absence of color. Less clear, but equally noticeable upon closer inspection is the variability in the number of pages primarily determined by whether it included the full liturgy or simply basic worship information followed by announcements.
So What?
Printed bulletins are still part of many worship services, but their gradual fading is hard to miss. Their story mirrors broader patterns in church life: changes already underway before the pandemic were sharply accelerated during it, then settled back into a slower, uneven pace.
This is, of course, a wide-angle view. It can’t account for the many local factors that shape worship practices, such as architecture, congregational age, traditions, or levels of formality. And for some congregations, bulletin use hasn’t changed at all within my lifetime. Still, I find myself curious about both the larger trend and the small, particular stories behind it.
Do you miss printed church bulletins or still rely on them? I’d love to hear how your congregation’s use of bulletins has changed (or stayed the same) over the past twenty years. And, if you call them something other than a bulletin, what name do you prefer (worship guide, program, order of service, etc)?