SCL

PS If I give you back the offering envelope, also unused, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m a sweaty heathen who doesn’t give to the church.

I mean, yes, I AM a sweaty heathen. (But I’m a girl, so I prefer glowing heathen.) I just give the whole amount once a month. See? Going green with envelopes AND checks.

seriously, you could probably save the money by not printing one or making it abundantly smaller because all it does is clutter my floor board. if i look at it, it’s when i am bored of listening to announcements anyway. if i want to know something about your church i will usually just go online any way. like other “traditions” bulletins will probably stick around though…

I dunno, Jon…

I like a fresh, clean bulletin. Let’s face it, we get enough bretheren on our hands during the shake and howdy time. I need to know that my soon to be doodled on bulletin is relatively free of sweaty man handedness.

Is my personal comfort worth the cost of a tree?

Yes. Yes it is.

Well, this is a shocking reversal of the previous bulletins-must-be-doodled-upon philosophy that I thought had governed this site. I don’t know who I am anymore…

What katdish said …

Should I feel guilty about grabbing a couple extra bulletins? It’s a financial thing… the closest Chick-fil-A gives a free chicken sandwich with the purchase of a side item and medium drink on Mondays, if you give them a recent church bulletin. Why the extras? We need to cover our kids, because they go to the children’s program and don’t get bulletins.

If it makes it any better, I am at church for 2 or 3 services, depending upon which campus I attend. That’s only one bulletin per service. And, we usually have extras at church. If we run short on bulletins, I will return mine for reuse.

Sometimes I return the offering envelopes. My family utilizes the online giving option. I always thought that I would be against giving online because it wouldn’t be personal… but I LOVE it. Since I usually run sound at church, I would need to chase down someone from the host team to give them our offering. And, now I never miss a week!

wait a minute, how do you reuse a bulletin? Is you church going to do the same exact thing next week?

wv- psyncho: apparel worn by psychics to repel rain fall

from a bulletin-maker’s perspective, far better that it gets given back rather than trampled on the floor, waiting to be hoovered up by the ushering/cleaning teams!

I prefer to go another route. During the last worship song I light it on fire and simulate the day of Pentecost. Well I use to but after the incident I’m not allowed to have a bulletin. It really wasn’t my fault. That lady had way too much hair spray. I swear it looked just like katdish from the 80s with giant Texas hair. Well then it looked like a bonfire but fortunately the baptistery was full so problem solved.

On a side note if I’m visiting your church and someone didn’t get the “don’t give him a bulletin memo” don’t sit in front of me with giant Texas hair wearing a white blouse.

I hope the kids at the church you and I attend are paying attention.

I think the 2″ “notes” section is the equivalent of the asian sample tray girl in the mall food court, tempting me with tasty-bits-o-chicken-on-a-stick. You aren’t supposed to take notes there. You are supposed to get the “taste” of taking notes all over your hungry, vulnerable, note-taking fingers.

Then, once the words of the almighty have worked your fingers all up into an lather, you enter the church resource center and fall prey to the cheap, ugly, faux-moleskine journals with the Jesus fish on the cover.

MORAL: Never go to the mall food court without your own, real, moleskine notebook.

peace|dewde

Don’t feel guilty about handing the bulletin back to an usher (they are called “care cards” at my church… when i am on the door i use the tagline “the card that cares’ )

You are actually saving the ushers lots of work… between services they have to pick up all the ones abandoned and left behind…

I’m worse. I don’t take them in the first place. They end up stacking up in the front of my Bible and I have to toss them. So, I just stopped taking them. The ushers always give me a little look like “You don’t want one of these lifesaving bulletins? How will you stay informed? How will you know what’s happening? How will you take notes during service?”

I feel like a heathen.

Our church gets around this one by placing a recycle bin near the door specifically for bulletins. We’ve even had major discussions about special Sundays and what to give to people to help drive home a point, and how we need to avoid “trunk trash” aka the papers that float in a person’s car forever.

The recycle bin works because we also have the paper recycling dumpster at church, the fundraising one. So the bulletins will eventually come back to church anyway and end up in the dumpster. We’re just saving the folks a trip.

I’m so bad, I write ALL OVER the bulletin. All over it. There’s no giving it back.

Back in a church I used to go to, the bulletins were indispensable. When the time would time to sing a hymn, instead of the worship leader or whomever going up to the front and saying, “And now let’s praise God together by opening our hymnals and singing hymn number 326, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy’. Please stand, hymn number 326″, they just… started. No segue, no transition, the last part would end and the music would start playing. I have no idea why they did it this way, but you had to be on the ready with your hymnal open to the hymn referenced in the bulletin.

This has nothing really to do with recycling bulletins, I just like the story. I keep all of my bulletins. They’re pretty.

Our bulletin is 10 pages (yes, I said 10) so recycling sounds like a great idea!

Do we really need 10 pages of bulletin?

We have recycling baskets at the exits for people to use on their way out of the building.
I personally have no aversion to throwing away a bulletin- a wedding program is a whole other story. I mean, someone went to the trouble of attaching a color-coordinated ribbon or adding an overlay of vellum, so I feel the need to save this momento. The problem is, what to do with this keepsake? They usually end up shoved in a drawer somewhere where they die a slow death as they get crumpled or torn over time. I should just throw them away immediately and save them this agony.
I’m pretty sure this is how scrapbooking got invented- by people who can’t stand to throw away meaningless bits of paper.

wv- aghtf: the sound a dying bulletin makes as it is thrown away

Twice a year we visit a church about forty minutes north of us where the announcements are e-mailed to people mid-week, and with this church’s demographic, I can assure you that 97% of the people are online.

There is no bulletin. If you wanted something in print to prove you were there, you’d be out of luck.

@Scott – do all Chick-fil-a’s do this, or just yours? I love a good deal! Plus I could feel all holier-than-thou around the heathen chicken eaters who didn’t get a discount, and all chummy with the clerk who ‘must’ be another believer since he/she works there…

Ha! My dad’s a “roller.” *shakes head*

my father-in-law has kept every bulletin from every church service he has ever attended in the last 50 years (and he goes to church a lot). He has whole filing cabinets of church bulletins and likes to pull them out and say things like “remember that beautiful anthem they sang on January 10th 1981 honey?” Brings tears to my eyes.
My advice — even if you doodle, give it back to the usher.

And, why don’t churches go to digital bulletins–like for an iphone? then we can store billions of bits of useless bulletin data for centuries to come all on a handy handheld device. Talk about green!

wow, you totally hit all the nails on the head:

postage stamp area to take notes

ink repellant paper

smudges on my hand in 3 seconds

rock on!

See, now, I just try to “give back” the bulletin by sneaking it into one of my brothers’ pockets when they aren’t looking. Sadly, rolling is necessary for this, and I’m not very sneaky.

There is also the recycling box, of course…and I hope they don’t “recycle” by handing them out at the next service, because mine is always full of doodles and critiques of the sermon.

After starting quite the bulletin collection in my Bible, I now try to avoid getting one in the first place. My mom writes the bulletin where I grew up and the longer I have it, the more urge I have to edit it (I do that where ever I go-last week we had people at out church singing up to give food the the family with the new baby). This works until the Usher thrusts it upon me and it’s rude to reject the “gift he’s bestowing.” And don’t get me started on “fill in the blanks” sermon notes. I start listening for that one word and not the message. If I start to doze off, I have the cheat off my neighbor to get the answers.

At our church, we have the recycling bin but any of your unused bulletins can be stacked neatly on top of the bin for the greeters to re-handout.

I usually take a bulletin just so I can get a headstart and write down all the verses used in the sermon into my notebook.

My grandmother, keeping it old school, keeps her bulletins.

I got to imagine my grandson growing up in a world where he has to ask, “Gramps, what is a bulletin?”

To which I reply, “Back in the day in the beginnings of the internet, many people thought that the “information superhighway” and “personal computers” were all a fad and preferred their church information to be printed upon a piece of paper.”

To which he follows up, “What is a paper?”

That’s funny! I oftentimes bring my bulletin home to throw it away so that I don’t chance someone seeing it in the trash at church.

But then I’m a graphic designer that doesn’t like seeing my work in the trash either.

My grandpa kept each weeks bulletin in the coat pocket of his suit jacket, that way he knew when he last wore a particular suit and was able to make sure not to repeat suits too frequently.

Our church calls them programs, people seem confused when I say bulletin.

Interesting website with a lot of resources and detailed explanations.

I have to admit it, I like bulletins. If I don’t like the message, it gives me something innocent to do instead of listen. My biggest complaint re them, however, is that, next to making a mess in my truck, (don’t even get me started on all the ‘artwork’ my kids bring home and leave in the car), they produce real guilt when, at the next week in church, the old bulletin is still there! Makes me think that people will think that I haven’t bothered to pick up my Bible since last Sunday. I try to be really careful and get my bible cleaned out before church, but sometimes….

So is it blasphemy to use the bulletin as a wrapper for my chewing gum when it loses its flavor? Because if so, I’ve got some repenting to do…

I use them to start fires in my wood stove. They burn pretty well. There’s nothing wrong with that… is there?

My parish has the bulletin on line as well as printed, so I just say I already read it on line. Which I did. Yes. I was THAT child in school…the one who did the Spellng Unit for the next week on Saturday morning.

I prefer a cardstock bulletin, bleached on nonrecycled paper. I grab a whole stack as I walk into service. Afterwards I wad them up, take them outside and throw them at endangered birds.

I could never give the bulletin back because:

1) My church is tiny and therefore has one service.

2) My usher is easily confused.

3) I scrawl mockeries, snide remarks, cartoons and such. The moustaches I have drawn on the Happy Christian Family clipart, while magnificent, may be seen as irreverent, and we can’t be having that.

This post reminds me of the guilt I feel about leaving a Prayer Request sheet on the table after our Wednesday nights. You don’t want to be “one of those guys” that blatantly doesn’t care about the concerns of others.

Instead, I usually fold them up nicely in my Bible and wait for a more discrete time to discard. I know, I’m calloused, but it’s honest.

Hey, where I live (another country) we must be green without knowing it.

NO OFFERING ENVELOPES. Well there are some, but just to distinguish between offering and tithing. No such thing as a tax donation receipt so I don’t bother using them. And they do reuse them from week to week.

And bulletins??? Have not seen one in over three years. HMMMM. And what’s and usher? Maybe I need to visit a “big” church so that I can have some “real” dilemma’s to think about when I go to church.

Right on…although I also worry that if I give the bulletin back for re-use then they will have way too many for the second service (b/c obviously everyone else will have the same train of thought I do) & so in my efforts to save paper, I'll actually be contributing to more unnecessary paper waste. And I feel sorry for the guy deciding how many bulletins to print each week who is trying to calculate how many people like me will return their bulletins every other week because they can't decide what the "proper" thing to do with them is-so I switch it up every other week or so between keep & re-use.

But then again, I'm one of those people who saves the wedding invitations & programs in a shoebox in my closet. And the ones for the people I don't know that well get cut up into paper scraps for me to re-use to make a wedding card for someone else.

Oun – I don’t think that all Chick-fil-A’s do this, but have come across two that do. I suppose you could ask…

To make things easier and promote a greener lifestyle, our church will now be offering an electronic bulletin. Just follow these simple steps.

1. Go to http://www.GracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorthRiverElevate.org/northcampus/forms/electronic_bulletin_203/register
2. Register your name and e-mail address
3. Print out the registration form
4. Fill out the form and fax it to our office
5. Receive your pin number in the mail
6. Go back to the Web site with your pin number
7. Download the appropriate software to your computer (Currently only compatible with Windows 98)
8. Install the software
9. Connect your Personal Digital Helper to your computer using the provided serial cable
10. Synchronize your PDH
11. When arriving at church, please point your PDH at the usher to download your bulletin

My new church has one big bulletin a month, all other announcements are made from the pulpit or emailed around. They also don’t leave space for sermon notes because they trust that whoever wants to make notes is responsible enough to bring their own paper. And we only have one service..

And we don’t use offering envelopes either. A collection sack is passed around after the sermon, and you tithe through your bank. (the tithe is called your “standard voluntary contribution” and a lot of jokes are made about that because there are guidelines on how much you are supposed to give, depending on how much you make, if you’re married or have kids etc. For some weird reason 2 single people would pay more than 2 married people. They really take that “let’s marry everyone off” thing seriously)

Now, that’s just funny…

Too funny. There is a local pizza buffet in our area that gives free drinks on Sunday if you bring in your church bulletin. I lost some good sermon notes one week before I figured out that said buffet would keep my bulletin! Now I am less than “green.” If we are going there for lunch, I have to get an extra bulletin on the way out of church so I have one to let the restaurant keep and one so I can keep my sermon notes.

Where I live, that bulletin might as well have a picture of George Washington on the front… On Sundays, Firehouse Subs gives you a free drink or dessert with your sub if you show your church bulletin. Needless to say, we are regulars. Mmm, mmm good!

I haven’t taken a bulletin in almost three years now…. The ushers still look at me like I have lost my mind. The bulletins haven’t had the order of service on them in about a year. Ever since one of our pastor mused about what he would do different if he was “in charge” of a church again, one of the things would be to get rid of the order of service printed in the bulletin. So now all the bulletins have in them is the songs for the worship packet and pages of announcements that are projected before each service anyway. And because I volunteer for AV I get a copy every Thursday in my email inbox.

HA! Jokes on you guys. Our church literally has “Bulletin Recycle” bins at the doors so you’re SUPPOSED to drop them in there on the way out.

ha ha… not that I needed an excuse. I would just strategically set my stuff down on the welcome center to “look for a pen”? and then forget to pick it back up. Oops! Was that mine?

oh no! i never have dared to give a bulletin back to the usher
( especially because we only have one service and they never come back to their “handing bulletin positions” )
i just inconspicuously leave them behind on the pew .
i’m a terrible person .. i litter .. in church .. *gasp*

Ha ha. I actually feel guilty for throwing bulletins away after church. Most of the bulletins I get have Bible verses and prayer requests, etc. on them so I keep them in hopes of looking at the information during the week. I never do, though and the bulletins pile up in my purse until I do a massive cleanup (which usually happens about 1x per month)