Lovely examples of order of service?

Another request. I’m looking for lovely samples of orders of service. Necessarily available in a downloadable format online, and preferably from a small church (of whatever stripe) or one that works with a tight budget. Feel free to chime in, even years from now.

There’s something dispiriting to visit a church and find something that was clearly made with love (I’m trying to be nice here) but is ugly, disorganized, jam-packed with add-ins or otherwise unpleasant to use.

I’d ask the same for newsletters, but those are harder to find in print. Alas.

3 Replies to “Lovely examples of order of service?”

  1. I don’t have any great examples. My own church has an issue with clutter in the bulletin involving musical history notes. But I do want to speak up in favor of the bulletin.

    With more and more stuff being projected onto screens, the bulletin has become a bit despised in some circles. But I still find them very valuable when I am in the pews. Why?

    1) Sometimes if there is a screen, my view of the screen is blocked, or the slide is changed before I am ready and I stumble to follow along.

    2) If the bulletin has a few important and timely announcements I can take the bulletin home and it serves as an additional reminder about the upcoming important thing.

    3) Last month I was guest preaching at a lay led church which was only using a screen to lead the service. The service leader skipped over a slide in the set for Sunday, and as a result we also totally skipped over prayer concerns. This caused both confusion, and some hurt among people who had heavy concerns on their hearts. While this can still happen with a bulletin, I’ve noticed it is much less likely to happen when there is a bulletin (opposed to when people are only using a computer screen slide show, or only their liturgical memory).

    4) If there are actions to take as part of the liturgy, the bulletin helps me anticipate the action I will need to take (standing, sitting, getting my donation ready for the offertory, being ready for a communal reading or prayer, etc.).

  2. I appreciated the layout of the Covenant Church bulletin.

    As an aside, I read all the way to the end, and felt such grief at the sight of the “no handguns in church” notice at the bottom of the bulletin. I know it is necessary, but I feel such grief about the whole phenomenon of weapons brazenly carried into the House of God.

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