10 Free Church Newsletter Templates You Can Use Now
Church newsletters help a church say in touch with their congregants through the course of the calendar year. The church newsletter templates in this blog will show you how to layout, design and write the best newsletters for your congregation.
The reason templates are useful is to cut down the amount of time it would take you to put something together. Without the right templates, you find yourself stressing and spending too much time in the setting up phase.
To begin with, we will look at a summary of what the best written church newsletters should entail. After that, we will show you some church newsletter templates we like.
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1. The 3 Components of the Best Written Church Newsletters
In the past few weeks, we have looked at various topics in the church newsletters series. One of the topics we looked at was how to write the best church newsletters that people will read.
In case you missed out on that one, here is a summary of everything we discussed below:
A. Layout & Design
A great layout and design shows organisation. It also improves ease of reading and encourages your readers to read the newsletter for longer.
In addition, Harvard Business Review found that …
Image Credits: Lucidpress
And also ….
Your church is not the conventional type of business but it is an organization with people and these findings also apply to it. You will also see a lot of this in the church newsletter templates later.
The following pointers should help you achieve this;
- Brand your church newsletters to communicate your brand in the choice of colour, fonts, visuals and logo.
As a rule of thumb, have the following sections:
- Header with logo and Church name
- Title and subtitles of various items
- Body of text with call-to-actions or links to more information
- Date
- Footer with contacts
B. Newsletter strategies
It is possible to think that your newsletter strategy is solid when it is not. The way to measure is through open and click-through rates.
When your open and click rates are nothing to be happy about, there is no need to worry because the strategies below should help improve that:
- Create a consistent schedule to send out your newsletters. Your congregation requires your consistency and ability to stick to a schedule. People work better with established habits and schedules. As do newsletters, it seems.
- Create an intriguing/interesting subject line that makes people want to click. Be creative.
- Start with basics like announcements, scripture, pastoral message, etc. Master the basics before going into more complex things.
- Provide useful information. Not all information is useful. Keep all your newsletters short and focused.
- Add call-to-actions. Ask people to “register now” or “click to read” etc.
- Create lists whenever possible. Everyone likes counting down.
- Add flavour content like podcasts, interviews, videos, and photo updates to spice up your church newsletters.
- Have some sense of humour.
- Integrate images and GIFs. Check social media for some funny Christian memes too.
- Ask for feedback from your church members to find out where the newsletters need to improve.
When you integrate the strategies above into your newsletter and content, you will definitely see increased interactions and engagement.
C. Content Ideas
There is a wide variety of content ideas to have on your church newsletters. As you will see in the church newsletter templates in the next section, the options are endless.
Here are some ideas to help you get started:
- Full round-ups
- Events and celebration announcements
- Interviews
- Pastoral messages
- Weekly scriptures, quotes, or memory verses
- Children ministry updates
- Volunteer missions updates and photos
Another good rule of thumb is “Content is KING”.
It is an old saying and it applies across the board from newsletters and social media posts to articles on blogs and the whole lot.
Interesting content will capture your readers’ emotions and invoke action.
You want people clicking on your call-to-actions? Create great content.
2. 10 Sample Church Newsletters Templates
#1. Christmas Church Newsletter Template
This Christmas newsletter template is impressive because of its graphics and simple layout.
There is a lot of effort that has gone into creating the header and footer images before embedding them into the newsletter.
This is good for a pastoral Christmas message together with a schedule of Christmas events on the left side.
You can also adopt this template for the upcoming Easter Holidays too.
#2. Core Principles Newsletter Template
Perhaps you have been wondering how to best illustrate the core principles of your church. Using this sample church newsletter template, it should be easier.
The structure is simply divided into 2 columns.
The body of the text has a very elaborate text about the church and its founding principles. Additionally, the left side has a column with some important and urgent updates.
This can be used for church culture and vision reminders as well as quick sermons.
#3. Easter Egg newsletter template
One of the ways Christians celebrate Easter is by using Easter eggs to symbolize the emergence of Jesus from the tomb and resurrection.
This church newsletter template helps communicate that through the visual on the header that is integrated with the logo, title and church name.
Moreover, this template is important because it uses the visual abilities and a simple layout structure to provide lots of information.
You can use this same layout — with a visual symbolizing the death and resurrection of Jesus in the upcoming Easter Holidays.
Include:
- A pastoral message
- The immediate church events
- An update on any project that is in progress
#4. Church Culture Newsletter Template
For that welcome newsletter, this template would come in very handy. It has a good outlook for welcoming new church members and inviting them to join some of your events that are more geared towards new church members.
In addition, this church newsletter template has powerful branding both in terms of colour and consistency of fonts.
This can also be used for:
- Linking to interesting articles
- Sharing inspirational quotes
- weekly updates
#5. Pastoral Message Newsletter Template
This is one of the best church newsletter templates for delivering that pastoral touch to your congregation. It is elegant and has been executed very well by this church.
You can use it to deliver:
- Pastoral messages
- Scriptures of the week/month
- Full round-ups
Take a keen look at the design, use of branding colours, spacing of elements, content ideas, and how precise it is. These are the keys to giving your church a great newsletter.
#6. Fellowship Newsletter Template
Are you wondering how to create the full round-up newsletters? Well, wonder no more because we found the best template for that.
Here we have a full round-up newsletter that executes the following:
- Inspiration
- What is important (first)
- Information about holiday services
- Scriptures
- Pastoral message
- Christian education
These messages can be a set of anything really. What is important is the hierarchy and importance of each. It is the ideal example of a newsletter that focuses on important information only.
Consequently, create a weekly or monthly round-up like this one and your newsletter might just have that level of engagement you are looking for.
#7. Service Schedule Newsletter Template
It is important to send out church newsletters before the church service. In this template by an Indiana church, we see a great implementation.
It details the service schedules and a scripture for the month. In addition, at the bottom it has been used to deliver little nuggets of text for the Christmas season.
Easter Holidays are coming up. Borrow a leaf from this template.
#8. Mother’s Day Christian Newsletter Template
To celebrate Mother’s Day around the world, churches send out newsletters to their congregants focused on various objectives.
This church newsletter sample highlights a great story about the speaker’s mom and a prayer for mothers to make.
Now, the layout doesn’t have to be exactly the same, but the objective of the newsletter is what makes this a good template.
#9. Easter Holiday Newsletter Template
This newsletter is quite voluminous. However, it is easily readable because it has a focus. It delivers only one message aside from the little updates on the left column.
If you are looking to send a huge text, do not couple it up with many other elements and text. This newsletter is a good example of a narrowed down update to deliver an important message about Easter celebrations only.
You can choose to narrow down your newsletters. Nonetheless, due to the body of text, you can only send this out every once in a while.
#10. Basic Church Newsletter Template
This is a more generalized church newsletter template with a near semblance to the first three templates we looked at.
You can use this template for more general leadership updates and interviews.
