Working Smarter on Weekly Production

It’s Friday evening. The printer is humming happily as it spits out its 700th bulletin. “Whew!” you think as you glance at the now-empty supply cabinet, “Just enough paper!” Suddenly you hear your name as the pastor comes rushing into the room. One of the youth ministry announcements is being pulled from page 3. Can you fix it quick? Staring at the mountain of crisp bulletins still holding the printer’s warmth, you wonder how late Staples is open tonight.

Sound familiar?

Coming from the advertising industry to work at a church, I wasn’t prepared for the lack of structure in the weekly production of Sunday materials. The fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants strategy wasn’t intentional. It was just the natural byproduct of the church’s growth. The staff was doing what they’d always done – what had worked well when the church was much smaller. But now the process was not sustainable without threatening everyone’s sanity. As a growing church, the creative team needed to take measures that would help us work smarter instead of harder.

Through a lot of trial and error, we began to tweak the weekly creative workflow. This short list of ideas sees constant revision, but it has helped us streamline our creative work and given us some room for margin in our weekly production:

1. Create a schedule with the whole team in mind. In a church environment, the creative team typically has recurring weekly responsibilities which all contribute to the Sunday service. By establishing these deadlines together, the team works as one unit, and productivity and creativity increase.

2. Don’t put weekly announcements in bulletins. At Liquid, we’ve trained our congregation to go online for announcements. As a result, we update the bulletin cover about once a month, but the inside content (general info about the church) doesn’t change. Not only does this change save A LOT of paper from week to week, it allows us to print our Sunday materials one week ahead of time…

3. Print Sunday materials a week early. We print our bulletins in house on this fabulous high-capacity color laser printer. I love this printer, but sometimes it doesn’t want to cooperate. Whatever the problem, I don’t want to deal with it at the 11th hour while I’m duplexing and assembling 1000 bulletins. When Murphy’s Law kicks in, that week of margin I give myself allows me to breathe easy while the printer gets a tune-up, and I still have bulletins done in time.

4. Be aware of vendor timelines and build in buffer. When looking for quotes on outside jobs, check out turnaround times. I’ve learned to allow most vendors about 3 weeks for production and shipping time. Remember to build in an extra few days for proofing and emergencies too. Adding buffer time to outside jobs saves me stress and the church money since rushed jobs and overnight shipping can dramatically increase cost.

5. Take time to build rapport with your vendors. Remember that the local printer down the street isn’t simply a vending machine – he has deadlines too. Yes, vendors are there to serve you: the client. But being a considerate client gives vendors added incentive to bend over backwards for you when last minute rush job comes up.

Let’s face it - last minute projects and revisions can’t always be avoided. But making little changes to your production schedule that help you work smarter instead of harder can make a big difference in the end.

Beth Laky
Senior Designer

Comments

[Kenny]

Love the structure you are recommending for the unstructured world of ministry.

I do want to challenge your thoughts regarding publishing generic, timeless bulletins. Without even approaching the environmental issues, I wonder if this decision prioritizes logistics and excellence in image/look/feel/production vs. making every piece of communication the Church engages in with the lay people intentional. If everyone is in fact trained to go online for church-related information, is there really a need to hand thousands of printed paper bulletin out each week?

If the generic bulletins with general info about the Church is aimed at newcomers, why not redirect the funds used to print 50+ thousand complete bulletins a year toward a much more focused display/kiosk just for new comers so that all visitors - the intended audience - receive the information you want to communicate.

Or why not have all visitors text their email to a SMS service and then auto-forward dynamic Church details/video message from the pastor/etc to them so that they can review it on their own time, at their own place, after they have left the Church. Perfect way to follow-up.

To take this idea further, you can have people text in different versions to a "visitor" vs. "regular attender" -- the regular attender could be sent church-life specific schedules/information, etc. The visitor could be sent the welcome/profile/initial relationship building materials and invitations to come back. The benefit would be that you would also get a head count and people wouldn't have to fill out those pesky "church visitor information cards" that feels so awkward and pressured to write up.

Contemporary churches that seek to rewrite the rules of "doing Church" sometimes forget the church bulletin is an artifact of the "old Church" as well. Perhaps it is time to re-think this piece through too?

On a lighter note, I guess with the generic approach, you'll avoid church bulletin bloopers like these!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXBXsZKRq7g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYaaTqqvxtw