Church flyers serve as dynamic invitations, illuminating an upcoming event, Sunday services, or other community initiatives. They’re essential in capturing the attention of both current and potential members, providing a visual snapshot of the church’s offerings. A great design on a church flyer can effectively communicate the essence of an event, leaving a lasting impact on the audience.
Maintaining a cohesive visual identity is vital for any organization, including churches. Create professional designs by using any of the church flyer templates found on the amazing sites we recommend. We know it can be overwhelming to start with a blank page, which is exactly why we want to erase those nerves!
We all know that having professional-looking flyers and advertisements for your event or program is essential to people attending or signing up, but let’s be realistic — how many graphic designers have a lot of time on your church staff to make them?
If your answer is “none!” then we hope we can help you find some inspiration and church flyer templates to help guide you along the way.
Estimated reading time: 14 minutes
Table of contents
- Creating Your Church Flyer
- 11 Simple Do’s and Dont’s
- 1. Do choose fonts that complement each other
- 2. Don’t use lots of different fonts
- 3. Do leave space
- 4. Don’t include every detail you can think of
- 5. Do include key details
- 6. Do include photos that reflect your church life and culture
- 7. Don’t use obvious stock photography
- 8. Do get church publicity printed properly
- 9. Don’t use loads of different colors
- 10. Don’t reinvent the wheel
- 11. Do try out new tools from time to time
- Church Flyer Examples
- Church Flyer Inspiration
- More Resources on Church Flyers
Creating Your Church Flyer
When beginning to design your church flyer, there are a few things you must think about. Don’t worry though, there’s a huge selection of customizable church flyer templates that will help you save time!
Define Your Purpose
Before diving into the specific design process, it’s essential to define the purpose of your church flyer. Clarify whether you are promoting a specific event, inviting newcomers to worship services, or showcasing community programs. By having a clear purpose in mind, you can tailor your design, messaging, and visuals accordingly from there.
Identify Your Target Audience
To effectively connect with your community, it is crucial to identify your target audience. Consider their demographics, interests, and needs. Are you targeting families with young children, young adults, or seniors ? Understanding your audience will guide your design choices and enable you to create content that resonates with them and is specifically for them.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the phrase “work smarter, not harder”? When it comes to church events, having a work smarter goal can save you some major headaches over the course of your event planning.
Craft Attention-Grabbing Visuals
Visual appeal plays a crucial role in capturing attention and conveying your message effectively. Incorporate captivating images, graphics, and colors that resonate with your audience and showcase the warmth and spirit of your church community. Use visuals that create an emotional connection and intrigue the reader in your church flyer design.
Create a Compelling Headline
An eye catching headline is essential for grabbing the reader’s attention and enticing them to explore the flyer further. Craft a concise and impactful headline that captures the essence of your message. Utilize words that inspire and resonate with your audience, igniting curiosity and drawing them into your church’s offerings.
Keep the Content Concise and Compelling
Avoid overwhelming the reader with excessive text! Keep your content brief, focused, and compelling. Highlight the key details, benefits, and unique aspects of your church service, ministry, or event. Use clear and accessible language that evokes emotion and encourages action. Incorporate testimonials or personal stories to add authenticity and build a connection with your audience.
Too Many Words!
The worst thing anyone can do when trying to design an effective flyer is to put way too much information on it. Remember, a flyer is not a brochure. Flyers are not meant to share every single little piece of information about a program or an event. All of your event’s details can be outlined in a program, webpage, or brochure that your flyer ultimately directs people to.
The purpose of a flyer is to grab a person’s attention, create interest, and to invite a call to action. That call to action might be to sign up, visit a website to learn more information about something, pick up a brochure/program, or to simply show up! Before creating your flyer, ask yourself what the most basic important information is that needs to be communicated.
Highlight a Clear Call-to-Action
No church flyer is complete without a clear call-to-action as mentioned above. Guide your audience on the specific actions you want them to take, whether it’s attending a service, participating in a ministry program, or seeking more information. Provide contact details, website information, and any necessary instructions for registration. Create a sense of urgency or exclusivity to motivate prompt engagement.
Distribute Strategically
Even the most stunning church flyer will only be effective if it reaches your target audience. Consider strategic distribution locations such as local businesses, community centers, schools, and popular gathering spots.
Collaborate with like-minded organizations or events to broaden your reach. Encourage your church community to share the flyers within their personal networks, and even create a digital version for sharing online. Embrace digital distribution by utilizing email newsletters, social media platforms, and your church website to reach a broader audience
The specifics that are most likely needed on your flyer include your event’s:
- Location
- Date
- Time
- Who the event is for/Who is invited
- Contact Information
- Cutoff date for registration or RSVPs
- QR code to a web page with more info or instructions on how to learn more
If you’re planning events for your local church, like Sunday services or Bible studies, church flyers are a great way to promote those. With a good church event flyer, you can connect with your local community and generate awareness for all the gatherings your church offers.
11 Simple Do’s and Dont’s
1. Do choose fonts that complement each other
Almost all marketing includes text, and for good reason: a picture may be worth a thousand words but if it can’t fully communicate your message, your flyer will be lacking.
Choosing well-written text is so important, but almost as important are your font choices.
Whenever I’m impressed by a design, the typography is a large part of the reason. Without getting in to technicalities, let’s just agree that some fonts work better together than others.
2. Don’t use lots of different fonts
While it’s a good idea to pick several different fonts that pair well, don’t go overboard! Let’s just say less is more and we’ve all seen print publicity that has far too many fonts.
There are actually certain fonts that no one should use. You know the ones, that are blocky are almost illegible. It’s trendy to hate on Comic Sans as it is with Papyrus. The truth is, they’re fine, for certain uses, but let’s go with something easier to ready perhaps!
3. Do leave space
It’s usually a good idea to leave a fair amount of white space – otherwise known as ‘negative space’. Proper use of white space not only frees up the design from being overcrowded and cluttered, but also serves to draw the eye to the details that are important.
4. Don’t include every detail you can think of
If you’re inviting your audience of young parents to a family event, they probably don’t need to know right now that your church has a ministry for young adults! They also probably don’t need to know that it meets at 7pm at the community building. Or that it only meets on the third Thursday of the month.
The more details you include, the more elements there are to distract your audience from the message you actually want them to take away and act on right then.
5. Do include key details
It’s vital that you include clear next steps for people to take after viewing your church poster or flyer. We need to lead our audience to learn more and to perform an action as a result of viewing the publicity – make it obvious! Use button shapes, larger type or contrasting colors to help your call to action to stand out.
6. Do include photos that reflect your church life and culture
Great photos are easy to come by in the age of camera phones: it’s more a case of ensuring we capture the right things, and often. Do you have photographers that are capable of taking pictures so that you can display your own images? Plan your events with this in mind, and build up your photography library for your church communications team to use. Church activities that happen on a Sunday involving a wide age range and diversity of people is a great place to start.
7. Don’t use obvious stock photography
Stock photography is sometimes a necessary evil, but this seems to be more widely recognized these days, so there is an increasing number of sources for actually good stock photos. We still stand by that stock photography will rarely, if ever, portray an accurate, honest, and helpful picture of your church life.
Pictures taken at your church are the best pictures that you can use! After all, it’s the unique people that make up your community and it’s even fun to see them on flyers and other promotional material!
8. Do get church publicity printed properly
The value is evident to those who pick up your flyer, so don’t just photocopy your leaflet in-house on flimsy paper. Use an external printer and print on a half-decent weight of paper, with a nice finish.
Remember to use the layouts provided by your printer, for example, these templates from Solopress – this ensures your content will go right to the edge of the page and won’t be cut off during the printing process.
9. Don’t use loads of different colors
Just as with fonts, less is more when it comes to color choices! We can overload a design with too many colors, in the hope the it will stand out. Ironically, this often makes these different elements blend together, confusing the overall look and message of the leaflet or flyer. Your leaflet should have ‘life’, but it doesn’t need to be a rainbow.
There are colors that compliment each other, and others that don’t. If you’re unsure of your final design, take a step back and have someone else take a look! It never hurts to have another design opinion on something important.
10. Don’t reinvent the wheel
There are a lot of templates out there that you can use, including loads of free ones. It’s important, though, to be aware that they aren’t all equal in terms of quality! For a bunch of good paid options, check out Creative Market, or Adobe Stock.
Be aware that you’ll need the right software to edit the template that you choose. This is often Photoshop although some sites offer print templates for Microsoft PowerPoint. There are often hundreds of templates to choose from, so pick the one that first stands out to you, as it grabbed your attention for a reason.
11. Do try out new tools from time to time
You may or may not have access to professional design software, but there’s a lot out there that you can get for free. Tools like Canva, for example, are worth taking a look at. It’s essentially a light version of Photoshop, that lives online, running in your web browser – and it’s free. It offers default layouts for both prints and digital end products, such as Powerpoint slides, social media graphics and banner images.
We’ve even made a video explaining all the uses of Canva and a breakdown of how you can best implement this for your church!
Church Flyer Examples
Now it’s time to look at some great examples of church flyers. These examples are chosen because we like the color choices, word amount, font choice and overall design. Take a look below and see if anything jumps out at you. We’ve pulled some great options from PosterMyWall, Elegant Flyer, MyCreativeShop, and Canva.
PosterMyWall
Over 250,000 free templates to choose from!
Elegant Flyer
Over 1,000 free templates to choose from, as well as premium paid options.
My Creative Shop
For $19.95 a month, you’ll have unlimited access and unlimited downloads to all of their designs.
Canva
Canva comes with thousands of free design templates to choose from, with premium options also available.
Church Flyer Inspiration
We hope that you feel inspired to create a professional and informative church flyer! There are a lot of great templates as you saw above to get you started. Remember to keep it simple, and don’t feel like you need to overwhelm the church flyer with too much information.