Answering the questions you are asking is one of my primary purposes in creating the content for this website and the article here and the video linked to it were prompted both by the question below that deals strictly with newsletters for seniors and several questions I've had lately about typography.

The Question:

What is the best way to send at least a monthly newsletter out to an older congregation when some don't think it is worth the expense, and others complain that we are not communicating with all our members, but only those that show up in a given week? Not everyone uses email, or texts because of the age of the congregation.

There are really several questions intertwined here, which is what makes it difficult to answer. The first part is somewhat simple and straight forward. The second part is a little more challenging.

Let me reword each part slightly to be able to handle them clearly.

Part # 1 of the question:  What is the best way to send out a monthly newsletter to an older congregation when not all of them use email or text?

This part is easy to answer, though it can be challenging to carry out, because there is no one best way. We live in a time of both/and, not either/or in all of our communications. Though it would make our church communication lives so much easier if we could create communications for any one group, one way, it doesn't work that way anymore.

To communicate effectively to an older congregation with a newsletter (which is an excellent communication tool) the best way to do it is to do one version in print and then another online. Again, that is probably not what most people want to hear, because it seems like extra work, but if you do it in the way suggested below it doesn't need to be difficult. Here are some tips on that: [Read more...]