It’s Missions Sunday at Westgate Chapel, or at least it was a few weeks ago. For this week’s peer review we take a look at their bulletin. You can always submit your church’s finished or in-progress marketing materials for a peer review.
Samples: Sunday bulletin for a monthly Missions Sunday emphasis.
Front and back:
Inside pages:
Notes:
Westgate Chapel
Edmonds, Wash.
Created by Brian Hepler
Westgate sets aside the third Sunday of each month to focus on missions. Part of the goal is to remind people to continue their support of specific missionaries or projects. Along with the special bulletin, they also have vertical banners in the foyer and show a 2-minute video highlighting a missionary or project. So far the missions emphasis has worked well. The bulletin itself is a legal-size tri-fold. They print enough color shells for the entire year and then have the printer run the black text each week.
Questions:
- What do you like about their Missions Sunday campaign?
- What’s working for this bulletin?
- How well does it serve its purpose?
- What could be improved?
- What could your church learn from Westgate’s experience?
Betsy
August 11, 2005
WOW. Love it all. Very, very nicely done.
I love the graphics on the front, and how it’s repeated inside. The fonts, colors, everything, are really wonderful. The text layout is clear and easy to follow.
For content, I think the following are great:
*Mission statement clearly stated on back
*Tiny explanation of giving for guests
The only thing I can see to be improved, and it might be my misunderstanding, but shouldn’t it be “Missions Weekend”? You’re focusing on missions that weekend. It’s not the Weekend that belongs to Mission. In other words, I think the possessive is unwarranted.
From this bulletin alone, I would like to visit the church. Not only that, but when I visit the website, it REINFORCES the good feeling I have about the church. Great job.
Michael
August 11, 2005
I think you’ve done a nice job. You have definetly put a face to the work being done by the missionaries.
Couple of thoughts:
Instead of blending the images together, I would bring them up full color and box them out just as you’ve done with the map and the bottom.
I also think the inside needs something, there is a lot of copy there and it needs to either be parred down a little or broken up somehow.
I do agree the it should be Missions Sunday.
Keep at it!
Dave
August 11, 2005
A little busy on the inside, may want to consider breaking up Focus area type/font, but agree with other comments about front/back cover graphics, inviting and warm.
Guests vs. Visitor center: doesn’t exactly fit. Should consider one or the other, assuming they like their ‘guests’ coming back and staying, not just visiting every now and again?
Steve
August 12, 2005
The graphic design is nice, although I’m no expert on the subject.
One question — shouldn’t it be “Missions Sunday” sans the apostrophe? You wouldn’t have an “Evangelism’s Sunday”. Also, apostrophes are not used to denote a plural. CD’s can just be CDs.
Also, I notice some inconsistency in the pronoun usage through the bulletin. Sometimes it’s in the first person plural, i.e., us, we, our. But sometimes I would see it in the third person you. For example, the tithing note talking about those who belong giving *their* tithe, which is 10 percent of *our* income.
But those are minor quibbles. Overall, I think the bulletin works well, brings across the key points, and does so in an eye pleasing manner! Nice work!
kevin
August 15, 2005
I like that you even have a Missions Sunday every month. As a kid my church had a Missions Sunday once a year, which was a huge deal, but it was just too little attention. This is a great way to give attention to missions, and tailoring your communications to reflect that is awesome.
I’m less impressed with the content. Less than 1/6 of this bulletin’s content relates to missions. The rest is general announcements. Graphically it’s all about missions, but the content doesn’t say much. I think it’d be cool to add a little more about what’s happening with missions. Maybe a news byte or a missionary bio.
I also think the graphical emphasis is interesting. The front page seems to focus on Africa, and the globe on the inside mostly shows the eastern hemisphere. I think an important component of Missions is to help people realize that missions happens everywhere. It happens in Madagascar and it happens in Minnesota. We’re all missionaries, it’s just that some of us do it in foriegn countries.
Unless your church specifically focuses on Africa, to the exclusion of the rest of the world, I’d want to see a more worldwide focus.