THE VIBRANT PARISH NEWSLETTER

Brilliant Tips for Successful Summer Events

Chances are your church staff is starting to plan for summer events and we’re willing to bet that you already have your date for your parish picnic on the calendar. Whether your summer gatherings include a BBQ, Mass on the grass, live music, games, cakewalks, or pastor dunk-tanks, make sure you start out strong with our list of summer event planning essentials. For the sake of this blog, we’ll use a parish picnic as an example, but, feel free to apply these tips to any gathering you plan to have this summer, or beyond!

1. A Personal Invitation

Picnics are great events to engage in outreach to your neighborhood and surrounding community. Consider sending a personal invitation to your neighbors inviting them to the party! Every Door Direct Mail by the USPS makes sending out neighborhood invitations like this incredibly easy and affordable. You can save even more time by using one of our pre-designed parish picnic invitation templates. Just plug in your event information, download it, and send it out!

2. Bulletins

Don’t forget to set your most recent church bulletin out for those in attendance. This way, if a parishioner brings a guest, or a family from the neighborhood attends because of the personal mailer they received, they can go home with more information about your parish. Be sure that your bulletin includes ways to join the parish, contact details for staff/ministry leaders, and any other information guests might desire. Display the bulletins near the name tags or the entrance/exit to the picnic for better visibility! If your bulletin feels like it misses the mark and doesn’t quite seem to illustrate exactly how wonderful your parish is, our design team specializes in refreshing church bulletin designs. Work with us to better represent your vibrant parish community within the pages of your weekly bulletin.

3. Nametags

When we asked our church-going staff members about what they like most when it comes to their church’s parish picnic, everyone said the same thing — the opportunity to meet and connect with people in the parish that they wouldn’t normally cross paths with. Events like a parish picnic go a long way toward fostering an environment that strengthens your community due to the new connections made between members who wouldn’t, otherwise, be in the same place at the same time. Make these new connections even easier by providing nametags for everyone.

4. Celebration Banner & Signage

Jump into WeCreate and download one of our parish picnic graphics to use in your welcome sign, banner, or other signage during the event! Having sign-in tables, food options, entrances, exits, bathrooms, and parking clearly labeled aids in creating a welcoming environment for all!

5. Church Staff & Ministry Leader T-Shirts

To easily identify those in leadership at the parish, make sure they have matching T-shirts with the church logo on them! Don’t have an awesome t-shirt-worthy logo? We can help you design one or, simply, refresh it to look more professional, modern, and great on a T-shirt!

Some of the best things about being part of a church community are the community celebrations, feasts, and holidays. We hope you have a wonderful parish picnic this year!

—Ecclesiastes 8:15

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SOCIAL MEDIA INFOGRAPHIC

Celebrate the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Father’s Day, Juneteenth, and more this month with some fresh social media ideas for your parish.

CHECK IT OUT

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This, Not That — Are You Making These Common Church Website Image Mistakes?

At LPi, we work with churches across the USA to help them design and maintain their websites. In doing so, we’ve discovered how significantly the inclusion of sub-par photography can negatively impact a parish’s image when it’s used in their website design. To help you avoid those trends, we’ve collected the most common mistakes we encounter and provide some alternatives to help you enhance your parish’s web presence.

1. Photos of the parish building and grounds — Instead of making your hero image a photo of your parish building, feature photos of the people in your parish community. When people thinking about visiting your church navigate to your website to see what the church might be like, they will feel much more welcome and enthusiastic about visiting if they see images of people living their faith. Church websites who focus primarily on the building and pictures of empty sanctuaries miss out on the opportunity to showcase the same beautiful spaces, but with members of the parish included in the photo. Remember, your parish is the people, not the building. Making sure to include community members in your building and sanctuary photos will foster that sense of a community when people visit your site.
2. Photos of statues and other art — We hope that every church has art in their sacred spaces that they feel proud of. This being said, filling your website with pictures of your statues of Mary or images of your Stations of the Cross carvings can make the website feel a little impersonal. Instead, feature the beautiful art and culture of your parish with images of parishioners interacting with the art. For example, does your parish celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe? If so, take some photos of the celebration that feature people as well as the statue of Our Lady, during the celebration! Do you have special days during Lent when your parish prays the Stations of the Cross? Include images of those prayer days to showcase the vibrant life of your parish alongside your artwork.
3. Blurry, pixley, and incorrectly sized images, especially of staff members — We are big fans of having photos of staff members and ministry leaders on your parish’s website under a “Meet the Staff” or “Contact Us” link. One mistake we encounter, though, is that parishes sometimes use blurry, outdated, or incorrectly sized imagery for these staff profiles. Often, some staff members will have professional head shots while others have what looks like a badly scanned image from the 80’s. Solve this problem by setting up a date every year — maybe during a staff meeting or your staff retreat for example — to take updated photos of everyone specifically for the parish website. Hire a professional photographer, or just take them with your cell phone using our layperson’s guide to smartphone church photography! The important part is that everyone gets a nice, updated photo for the website.
4. Outdated images — Speaking of badly scanned photos from the 80’s, don’t fall into the habit of always using the same old images of your community over and over again every year. Encourage different ministries to provide the parish office with updated imagery of the work they do and don’t forget to get images of important holidays and other celebrations. As a bonus, families often love seeing themselves featured on their community website so be sure to share the images being used to your church’s social media profiles to make sure your parishioners know that you’re featuring them!
5. Photos only featuring one age group or demographic — Lastly, it’s pivotal that the imagery of your community featured on your website includes images that correctly portray the entirety of your community. Don’t forget to feature young families, youth, young adults, single adults, married couples, and the elderly! Do you have a variety of cultures represented at each Mass? A variety of abilities and disabilities? Be sure to reflect that diversity on your website! This way visitors to your site will be able to see themselves reflected in your community and may feel more comfortable choosing your church as a place to visit and, possibly, join!

We’ve been publishing a lot of tips for creating the best parish websites recently. Dive deeper with our Catholic Tech Talk blog. Don’t have photos of your community just yet? We also have a growing collection of beautiful Catholic stock photography in WeCreate to get you by.

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40 Ideas for the Best Church Merch

Church merchandise and swag is always a good idea! Be it a gift for visitors to your parish, a special parish anniversary ornament, or aprons for the kitchen team, your community will always appreciate the thought behind a little church merch. Before we dive into our extensive list of ideas, though, let’s quickly cover how to create these items.

How Do I Create Customizable Church Merch?

First, before you buy anything, you need a professional-looking church logo. The better your logo, the more likely your parishioners will want to sport your merch and swag! If you don’t already have a logo that you love, our design team can help you refresh or even redesign it.

Second, find out if there are any printing companies who are already connected to your church. Is a local business who prints custom clothing and merchandise already advertising in your church bulletin? Use Parishes Online to find out. Another option is to inquire if anyone else at the parish has used a local company to create merch in the past. Partnering with a local business is a great way to enhance your connection to your community. If you can’t find someone nearby, simply do an internet search for the type of merchandise you would like to customize and you will find that there are a plethora of options out there.

Finally, remember to always make sure that the company you choose to buy swag from is ethically sourcing its material and labor before buying from them. It is counterproductive to Catholic Social Teaching to support unethical companies who abuse their workers and pollute the environment. So, consider the impact of the choices you make for your church swag. Cheaper may not always be better — morally speaking.

Now, onto the list!

The Best Church Merch Ideas:

1. T-shirts and other clothing
2. Baseball hats, beanies, and other headwear
3. Ceramic Mugs
4. Magnets
5. Keychains
6. Calendars
7. Magnetic fridge to-do lists/paper notepads
8. Bracelets
9. Sunglasses
10. Draw-string sports bags
11. Reusable grocery totes
12. Canvas bags
13. Stickers
14. Lawn signs
15. Christmas tree ornaments
16. Frisbees and other sports equipment
17. Window Clings (removable)
18. Candles/votives (made from left over Paschal candle wax)
19. Christmas cards/other holiday cards
20. Reusable water bottles
21. Reusable coffee tumbler/thermos
22. Bookmarks
23. Prayer cards
24. Custom candy/chocolate
25. Aprons for people serving in the parish kitchen/cookouts/picnics
26. Custom playing cards & other games
27. Notebooks/journals
28. Door hangs
29. Lanyards
30. Masks
31. Coasters
32. Buttons
33. Hacky sacks
34. Mints
35. Pens/pencils
36. House plant pots
37. Socks
38. Dog bandanas/prayer dog tags
39. Car window ice scrapers

Don’t forget — when you give these gifts to your parishioners, make sure that you give them in a bag with your church’s logo on it!

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Using the Facebook and Instagram STORIES Tool for Engagement

An awesome tool that both Facebook and Instagram have developed over the last few years is their STORY feature. This tool is so robust and a great (free!) way to engage with your community when used correctly. In this blog you will find some tips and tricks on how to utilize the social media story feature to share your own vibrant parish community with the world!

Stories? Why should I have to learn ONE MORE THING?

Social media is an extension of the wonderful community that your church has already built and, simply put, the way that the majority of your parishioners are communicating with each other in their daily lives. Did you know that 82% of people in the United States use Facebook to communicate with each other on a daily basis? Since this is the case, churches should consider using all of the tools that Facebook and other social media platforms offer in order to connect daily with their community and keep their community connected!

The story feature on Facebook and Instagram is designed specifically to encourage your following to message you and engage with each story post you make. Story posts expire after 24 hours and are usually quick and sweet while also incorporating easy to use tools for engagement. For this reason, using the stories feature makes it easier for you to engage with your followers on a daily basis! Stories are also a quick and easy way for you to collaborate with followers and repost their content — another tool you can use to engage with your community and lift up your parishioners!

So, What Exactly ARE Social Media Stories?

On Facebook and Instagram, a story is a post you can make that consists of either a photo or a short video. These posts work like a slide show and offer a new photo or video after a few seconds. Story posts show up in your STORIES FEED instead of on your regular ol’ newsfeed. Stories expire in 24 hours, so this feed is constantly refreshing. This is appealing to your users because they know that they should look at your stories if they want to find quick, current content from you. This attraction is evident in the fact that most posts using the stories feature get many times more views and interactions than newsfeed posts do. This is due to the allure of quick, current content, as well as the fact that Facebook provides more access points for users to view your stories than it does to your permanent newsfeed.

Why does Facebook prefer to promote story posts over regular newsfeed posts? In part it’s because story posts have a bunch of options for INTERACTIVE features that you can add to your photo or video which keep people using the app for longer amounts of time. These features are how you can direct more engagement with stories, and Facebook is ALL ABOUT getting as much engagement as possible.

Engagement tools you can add to story posts:

• Captions for accessibility for all users!
• viewer polls
• donation buttons
• question and answer prompts
• quizzes
• products to buy
• links
• music
• Countdowns
• Food orders
• Small business support shout outs
• mentions & tags

All responses to a story post will go to the app’s messaging feature as a direct message to you instead of being posted as a comment or a “like” as is standard on newsfeed posts. You can then message the user who interacted with your story, “like” whatever they sent via messenger, or use the engagement data collected from that story post. For example, if you are doing a poll and you get poll results, you could put those results in a new story post for even more engagement! Engagement, engagement, engagement!

What Kind of Content Should I Be Posting in Stories?

It’s this author’s opinion that all regular newsfeed posts should also be mirrored in your stories as story posts. Remember, more eyes are usually on stories than on newsfeed posts so one way to draw attention to a new newsfeed post is to also post it as a story!

Need help getting started? You’re in luck! In WeCreate, LPi’s digital library of ready-to-use content made specifically for you, there’s an entire selectin of images created specifically to be used in social media stories.

In WeCreate, these images can all be found under the section titled "Social Media Stories.” If you click that section and then use the search bar, the words you search will only turn up results that are sized and designed specifically to be used as Facebook and/or Instagram stories. Often these images are grouped in WeCreate with other images that are visually similar to them so that you can use them, one after the other, for multiple story slides! Basically, we made it really easy for you to just take our ready-made images and create in-depth stories for your church in the blink of an eye! You can simply save them from WeCreate and then drop them into whatever platform you are using — or if you are feeling fancy, you can overlay one of the special engagement tools (mentioned earlier in this blog) onto them.

Remember that for maximum viewership, it’s important to make sure that the privacy settings on your stories are set to public. This way, anyone who visits your church’s Facebook or Instagram can view them and interact with you!

The All-Important Story Highlight Menu

For Instagram users, your stories don’t actually have to have a 24-hour expiration date. To avoid this, make sure to build a library of your most important story posts by using Instagram’s Story Highlights tool. When you highlight a story, you are effectively building a catalogue of story content that you want to save permanently on your Instagram feed. You can separate these permanent story posts into categories of your choosing like news, milestones, staff introductions, polls, parishioner highlights, or whatever else you can come up with. This library of story content will show up as part of your Instagram profile and viewers will see these category options for story highlights before they even see your main newsfeed!

Conclusion — Tag us!

Want to connect with us? Tag LPi in your stories! Tagging another user in your story post makes it possible for that user to easily re-post your story into their own story feed! This is a great way to promote each other online by sharing content so, if you use our WeCreate story resources, feel free to tag us and maybe you will find your story reposted on our own social media accounts! On Facebook we are @LitPub and on Instagram we are @LPi_Community. See you in the social sphere!

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