The Best Way for Your Congregation to Follow Your Service

Faithlife’s online church bulletins provide you with a convenient way for your congregation to follow your service. For those in your church who are always skeptical of downloading new apps or guard their email addresses with their lives, this is the simplest way to keep up with the sermon on your phone.

Everything you can create in Proclaim Signals, you can add to your online bulletin: contact cards, online giving, surveys, and more.

Nobody needs to have an app or even sign in on Faithlife.com. All you have to do is set up your church bulletin on faithlife.com and tell people where to find it.

Put the URL to your church group on the screen, and tell everyone to tap the bulletin tab and connect to today’s bulletin. (Pro tip: give each bulletin a clear name and date to make it easy to find.) You can share how to follow along in your pre-service loop or during your announcements.

So what can you do with these bulletins?

Add your slides automatically

Churches without Proclaim can manually add the slides from their presentation to the bulletin so people can follow along.

Every presentation you start in Proclaim, however, automatically creates a bulletin with all your slides. This bulletin appears in the church group associated with your Proclaim subscription. It updates whenever you or your team make changes to the presentation in Proclaim. You never have to worry about if the bulletin matches your presentation, and you don’t have to manually add your slides.

Use digital connect cards

Every bulletin you create in Faithlife includes a “connect card” you can use to take attendance and gather contact information. Faithlife automatically puts it into a spreadsheet, so nobody has to go through stacks of paper bulletins to turn scribbles into information your church can use.

Your congregation can choose how much or how little information to give you, and they can even use these cards to invite you to contact them.

Provide an online giving option

On any slide in Proclaim, you can add a donation request. In your online bulletin (which automatically updates to reflect your Proclaim presentations), this creates an interactive field.

You can edit what the request is for, the PayPal account the donation will go to, and the suggested donation amount.

Share events and contact information

When you want everyone to attend an event, a single announcement probably isn’t going to get the job done. Some people will add the date to their calendar, scribble it down in their notes, or remember to save your paper bulletin. But most people won’t remember unless they’re reminded, and they won’t write it down or save the information unless it’s convenient.

That’s one of the reasons these digital bulletins are so valuable. You can add downloadable calendar events right to your presentation. Anyone following along on their phone or tablet can download your event straight to their calendar—they don’t have to type or write or remember anything.

Similarly, Proclaim lets you add contact cards so that your congregation can download phone numbers, addresses, and emails directly to their contact lists. Next time you want everyone to connect with a small group leader, your pastor, or an event coordinator, you can bake it into your presentation.

Highlight Scripture and share links

When you add Bible references to your presentation, the entire passage appears in your bulletin with a link to read more. People who leave their Bibles at home don’t have to be lost in translation, and those who want to keep exploring the passage you’re discussing can keep digging.

Since your bulletin is online, you can also include links in your presentation for people who want to keep learning about what you’re preaching on. You could link to your own blog, articles, books, or anything else that might help your congregation connect with your message in new ways.

Since there’s nothing to recycle or accidentally leave behind, your bulletins can continue to be a valuable tool for people to learn, connect, and grow, long after they step out your door.

Take live surveys

If you want to create more engaging services and help your congregation remember your message, a live survey is a valuable tool.

In Proclaim, you can add survey questions to your presentation. Anyone following along with your online bulletin can respond directly to your question, and the answers your congregation selects are displayed live in a bar graph or pie chart.
You can ask questions people might not be comfortable answering with a show of hands, get a better idea of what your congregation really thinks, and stir up conversations about your message.

Start using online bulletins now

If you already have Proclaim, make sure your presentation group is connected to a church group. Find your church group on Faithlife.com and select the bulletins tab. You can start a new bulletin, or play around with one of the auto-generated ones modeled after your presentations. You can also start one by creating a new presentation in Proclaim—try adding some Signals!

Don’t have Proclaim? No problem

Your whole team can try Proclaim free! We’ll even throw in a few thousand pieces of church media for you to use however you want.

Download Proclaim and start your free trial.

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Written by
Ryan Nelson

Ryan Nelson is a writer for OverviewBible, where he uses Logos to explore the characters, groups, places, and books of the Bible. He has served in a variety of volunteer ministry positions, primarily through Young Life.

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Written by Ryan Nelson