Stationery

Stationery Should Make a Good First Impression

Sometimes, the first contact people have with your church is through your letterhead. Make sure it leaves a good first impression. A poorly-designed or poorly-printed letterhead will communicate negative impressions of you and your church.

Guest speakers who have never visited your church before may arrive with a negative impression because of the letters you sent in arranging the speech.

So use an attractive design on quality paper, and take it to a commercial printer.

Don't just print out letterhead straight from your computer with each letter. Sure, you can do it, it's convenient, and it makes you feel very computer savvy. But the quality isn't good enough for your church. You want to make a better impression than that.

Stationery Normally Includes Three Printed Pieces

Letterhead. This is your official church stationery, the 8.5-by-11 inch piece of paper with your church name, address, and phone number on it.
Envelopes. The envelopes should use the same paper, typestyles, colors, and general design as your letterhead. In other words, they are a matched set.
Business cards. The business cards should use the same paper as used with the letterhead and envelopes, but in a heavier stock. The design elements and typestyles should be consistent. All staffpersons should have their own business cards, with that person's name and title. All other elements of the business cards should be the same.

Information to Include on Letterhead

The church name and logo, preferably designed as a unit, are the dominant element on letterhead. Here are other things to include:

Church address.
Church phone number.
Church fax number.
Church slogan.
Church logo.

What About Internet Info?

Too many churches keep changing website addresses and email addresses. They plug into free services that offer webhosting to churches, but before long move on to something else. If your church has its own domain name, then that address is transportable from one internet service provider to another. In that case, go ahead and put your website address onto letterhead. But if you're just tagging along with some hosting company, and your address is a long long long URL--it might be best to just skip it. Otherwise, as soon as you change addresses, your web address will be obsolete. And so will your stationery.

Same thing with email. If you have your own domain name, you may have a church email address at that domain. For example, if your church is located at the domain www.reallygreatbaptist.org, you might have an email like this: info@reallygreatbaptist.org. But putting a pastor's personal email address on expensive letterhead is an invitation to obsolescence.

Also: If your website is really cheap looking--do you want people going there?

Letterhead Design

Letterhead seems like it should be easy to design, but the world is filled with terrible stationery. Some tips:

Use a light color of paper--ivory, beige, tan, cream, light blue, light gray, or even white. Dark colors make the text more difficult to read. You'll be printing black on the stationery (using a typewriter, inkjet printer, laser printer, or photocopier), so the darker the paper color, the less contrast there will be between the black ink and the paper--which means the less the words will stand out. And the words are the reason for the letter.
Invest in a quality grade of paper (Royal Fiber and Royal Linen are two nice ones). Give your letterhead a professional look.
Print the letterhead in one or two colors. With a light colored paper, a one-color printing will give the appearance of two colors (cream paper and blue ink, for instead); the black that you add from your laser printer appears to be a third color.
Avoid putting staff names on letterhead. As soon as you do, there will be a staff change and your letterhead will be outdated. In a small church, you need to print a large quantity of letterhead to be cost-effective, perhaps with the assumption that your successor will be using it at least for a while.
Print a minimum of 1000 copies. That will last a while, and a press run of less than 1000 isn't cost-effective.
Don't make the church name and logo so big that they overwhelm the page. Many contemporary stationery designs--and some of the most elegant designs--keep the name and logo small and unobtrusive.
Make sure the letterhead includes all the information someone would need to contact you. That means you should include the area code for the benefit of people living outside your area.
Include the web address, if the website is up-to-date and attractive. A website is a good promotional tool IF you make it a good promotional tool.
Sometimes, a slogan will be put at the bottom of the stationery, in either quotes or in italics, with the address right under it in a little smaller type, like this:

Information to Include on Envelopes

Church name and logo.
Church address.
(Skip the phone numbers.)

Information to Include on Business Cards

Church name and logo.
Church address.
Church phone and fax numbers.
The person's name and title.
Optional: the person's email address and home phone number.
Optional: church service times.
Optional: church slogan.
Church web address.

Suggestions for Business Cards

If you include all of the information given above, the business card will be overcrowded. Leave plenty of empty space. It makes the card more inviting to read, and allows room for you to write notes (like service times, an email address, or other things).

Some churches print a simple map to the church on the back.

Business cards can be printed in a tall or wide format. The standard size is two-by-three inches.