Flying without a net

It's funny how we become so accustomed to certain ways of doing things that we often forget how much things have changed over the years. We had a case study yesterday on Sunday morning when for the first time in my ministerial career, we did not have a bulletin prepared for Sunday morning. I'm the one at fault, but not because we weren't prepared. Shortly after my last post to this blog, I discovered that whatever bug that had run through the Fanning-Crowdis household, had rendered Lesley at home sick. I feel guilty that she must have picked it up from me at some point. The end result was that despite having all the necessary information completed on time, because both Lesley and I were sick last week, it meant that neither of us were in any shape to have a bulletin ready for Sunday morning.

It got me thinking...

Church bulletins as we know them today are 20th Century technological innovations that really have only been part of church culture since copying technology has made it convenient to be used on a congregational scale. My earliest memories of this type of thing would have been in the early 70's with mimeograph style machines that were produced by using a typewriter on carbon paper, and then running them through a rather fierce looking contraption erupting with strange smells. Before that, it was only the largest churches that could afford to have some sort of bulletin published... and usually in some sort of permanent form that would be handed out and collected every week. They would rely on the hymn boards at the front of the church to tell people what was coming up. Despite their apparent redundancy, we've still held onto those hymn boards in most churches. Yesterday I was glad we did.

I figure if the church has managed to get by for the vast majority of its history without a printed bulletin, I think we managed pretty well having a Sunday without one.