The Importance of Maintaining Your Bulletin

As the potential for lower Mass attendance and even possible parish closings are coming as a result of the COVID-19 virus, it is vital at this time to maintain good communication in your parish for the immediate and long term unity of your community and faith life of your parishioners.

During these uncertain times, your weekly bulletin remains an essential piece to your overall communication plan. While you may require less printed copies, there are a very large number of Catholics who now rely on the digital distribution of your bulletin as a way to stay informed of news and events in your parish community.

Understanding that your parish is busy focusing on many different issues related to the current situation, we put together this helpful reference to help ensure that more of your parishioners are continuing to access your print and digital bulletin.

 

Don’t Ignore Your Bulletin
First and foremost, keep creating and sending your weekly bulletin. We have taken the necessary steps on our end to make sure that your bulletin service goes uninterrupted. With five locations around the US, we will continue printing even if some facilities are impacted by the virus.

Your Digital Bulletin
As the threat of lower mass attendance and potential closings loom, your digital bulletin is readily available and easily accessible. We make this easy by automatically uploading your bulletin to DiscoverMass.com, as well as your website and myParish app if you are also using those Diocesan services. 

Catholics nationwide are now accustomed to looking to these locations for access to your bulletin. Be sure that you are still present there. Let’s take a moment to look at some strategies with your digital bulletin. 

Your Bulletin Subscribers on DiscoverMass
With nearly 1,000,000 pages views a month from people looking for parish information, mass times, contact information and bulletins, DiscoverMass.com has become a go-to location for Catholic on the go, in the digital world.

A key service provided through DiscoverMass is the ability for visitors to receive your bulletin every single week via email. The service is free to everyone and you don’t have to manage anything. 

Use the DiscoverMass bulletin mailing service
One of the easiest ways for you to distribute your electronic bulletin is to let us do it for you. We highly recommend that you encourage parishioners to locate your parish listing and subscribe with their email address. Rest assured that these email addresses are only used to deliver your bulletin. Nothing else.

myParish App and Your Bulletin
The myParish App is designed to keep parishioners connected to your parish and their faith life. As a bulletin customer, we automatically upload your bulletin to your app making it accessible to everyone using your App. You don’t have to take any additional steps. We take care of this for you.

Encourage Parishioners to use your App.
This is the perfect time to remind parishioners to download the myParish app to access your bulletin. Simply instruct your parishioners to text “app” to 88202 to download the app. Once installed, parishioners select your parish and access is complete. We recommend reminding parishioners to download your app during Mass announcements, via email, on your website, and through your social networks. 

Not Using myParish App?
The myParish App is free of charge to all Diocesan bulletin customers. If you are not currently using the App in your parish, please call us right away and we can help get your parish launched very quickly at no cost for the next 4 months. There is no catch. The important thing is that you are connecting with your parishioners when they are not able to visit the parish in the coming weeks. 

Reduce Bulletin Count
If you would like to change the number of bulletins that you receive, simply enter the new number during the upload process. Easy as that.  

Reduce the number of pages
We realize that your parish office may run into its own complications surrounding COVID-19. Whether it is the extra time required to manage messaging and events or losing office staff members to quarantine, please feel free to take the strain off your office staff and decrease the number of pages in your bulletin. 

Just give us a call at 800-994-9817 and we can provide guidance on how to best accomplish this. 

The Last Resort
If you find yourself in the position of not having the resources to create a bulletin, please let us know. We can help you create a slimmed-down version of your bulletin that includes Mass Intentions, a letter from Father or the Bishop, readings, announcements, information about how your parish is handling the current situation, emergency contact info, etc… Just provide us with some basic content and we will build the bulletin for you using one of our print-ready templates.

 

Please join us in praying for our world and all those affected by this virus. St. Rocco has stood the test of time as a faithful intercessor and the patron of plagues and contagious diseases. Please join us in offering the following Novena to St. Rocco. Novena (from Latin: novem, “nine”) is an ancient tradition of devotional praying in Christianity, consisting of private or public prayers repeated for nine successive days or weeks.

Novena Prayer to St. Rocco

O Great St. Rocco, deliver us, we beseech thee, from the scourges of God; through thy intercession, preserve our bodies from contagious diseases, and our souls from the contagion of sin. Obtain for us salubrious air; but, above all, purity of heart. Assist us to make good use of health, to bear suffering with patience; and, after thy example, to live in the practice of penance and charity, that we may one day enjoy the happiness which thou has merited by thy virtues.
St. Rocco, pray for us (say three times).

 

(NOTE: This prayer is also available for you to share with your parishioners in the Prayers feature of myParish App.)