Discover how to leverage technology in your church

If I don’t write down that I have to do something, I will immediately forget it. No joke. Whether it’s homework assignments, work duties, or personal chores, if it doesn’t get written down, it doesn’t get done.

Let’s be real—creating newsletters is a pain. Especially if you’re creating your document in Microsoft Word, where formatting can be a real issue.

Whether you make newsletters for print or email, it’s a struggle to keep your announcements down to a page or two. But if your newsletters are much longer than that, readers lose interest and resort to skimming or throwing away the paper completely. Here are some tips to keep your newsletters short and informative: 

When it comes to taking photos at events, it’s hard to capture a moment that actually looks good! All too often, event pictures turn out blurry, dark, or out of focus, or they manage to catch someone right as he puts a huge bite of cake into his mouth.

When your church is without a pastor, it can feel like you're on a boat without a captain—sailing aimlessly and without direction.

The church office might be the place where the pastor is missed the most. Questions about bills, membership, and bulletins have no answer, forcing staff like the church secretary or office administrator to take on even more responsibility than usual. So how can your church office survive without a pastor—whether it’s for a month or a year?

If you’ve spent time on Instagram, you probably know that almost every day of the week has a hashtag to accompany it. For example, there’s #ThrowbackThursday (endless baby pictures), #FlashbackFriday (last weekend’s lake pictures), and #SundayFunday (mimosas and bloody marys).

If these are foreign concepts to you, count yourself lucky!

Basically, there’s an unofficial schedule to indicate what pictures to post when, and most people follow it; they’ll save their baby picture for Thursday rather than posting it on Monday.

The concept of scheduling social media posts is not inherently a bad one, and it does apply to your church (although hopefully you’re not posting too many embarrasing baby pictures of your pastor).You should have a general schedule for posting that you stick to throughout the week.

I hate Comic Sans.

Truly. I do. And just about everyone in the world agrees with me!

“But Comic Sans is fun!” you protest.

I’m going to stop you right there.

Its curved sides and round handwriting script were originally designed to resemble comic book text (hence the name), and I’m even hesitant to allow it to be used in comic books because it simply isn’t the best out there.

You can like Comic Sans and use it for your family Christmas card, but it really has no place on your church website or any documents you produce professionally.

In The Social Network (2010), which is arguably my favorite movie of all time, Mark Zuckerberg tells his best friend about his initial idea for what would eventually become Facebook: “I’m talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it online.”

When my dad was a pastor, I’d spend afternoons in his office playing on his computer, making copies of my hands, and coloring with highlighters. People would occasionally walk in and ask for money for gas, food, or a payphone (at least I think there were payphones still around in 2002). The secretary would point them to the nearest food pantry or homeless shelter, unable to do more than direct them to locations that could provide help.