Creating a bulletin
How admins build a weekly bulletin in Psalmly — picking a date, the gather-the-week prefill, the order of service, the prayer, giving, events and announcement sections, reordering and turning sections on or off, choosing a theme, and letting AI draft the warm parts.
A bulletin is your church's weekly handout, gathered in one place: the order of worship, this week's events, the prayer list, a giving note, and your announcements. Psalmly pulls most of it together for you, so building one is mostly tidying — not typing from scratch. You'll find Bulletins in the admin sidebar.
Starting one
Click New bulletin and pick a date. A bulletin can be for any day — most are for a Sunday, but a Christmas Eve service, a Wednesday gathering, or a special event all work the same way. You can even have more than one bulletin for the same date (say, a 9:30 and an 11:00 service) — just give each its own service time so they're easy to tell apart.
When you start a bulletin, Psalmly gathers the week for you — it pulls in your upcoming events, recent prayer requests, your latest announcements, and a giving note, and lays them out as a starting point. Nothing is sent or shared yet; you're just shaping a draft.
Already published last week's? Use Start next week to clone it as a fresh draft for the following week — the layout and theme carry over so you're not rebuilding each time.
The composer
The composer is a split screen: you edit on the left, and on the right you see a live preview of exactly what your congregation will get. Use the Printed sheet and Email tabs above the preview to switch between the two views.
The header
The top of every bulletin shows your church name and logo, the date, and an optional service time (free text — type "9:30 AM Service", "Christmas Eve", whatever fits). Your logo and church identity stay constant no matter which theme you pick.
The order of service
The order of service is the heart of the bulletin — the run of the gathering, line by line (Welcome, Opening Hymn, Scripture, Sermon, Benediction, and so on). Each line has a kind (a small label like Hymn or Prayer) and a title, and hymn lines can carry a number or reference.
- Add a line with the quick-add chips, edit any title inline, and remove what you don't need.
- Reorder lines by dragging the grip handle on the left of each row.
A sensible order is pre-filled the first time, so you're editing, not starting blank.
The week's content
Below the order of service are the gathered sections. Each one has an on/off switch — turn off anything you don't want this week, and it simply disappears from the bulletin (no empty placeholder).
- A word from the pastor — a short, warm welcome at the top.
- This week — events gathered from your calendar. Tick which ones to include.
- Prayer list — recent requests. Anonymity is always kept: a request marked anonymous shows the words but never the name.
- Giving update — one gentle line, pre-filled from your giving summary.
- Announcements — your recent announcements, pulled in, not retyped. Choose which to include.
- Add your own — free blocks for anything else: a verse, a thank-you, a sign-up.
Drag the section handles to reorder these blocks top-to-bottom. The order you choose is the order everyone sees — on the printed sheet, in the email, and in the app.
Choosing a theme
The Theme control recolors the bulletin — the printed sheet and the email — with a preset season color or a custom color you pick. Your church logo and identity stay the same; only the accent changes. The brand option tracks your church's own color.
Letting Psalmly draft it
If your church has the Psalmly AI assistant, you'll see Draft the whole bulletin. It reads the week you've gathered and writes the warm connective parts — the pastor's welcome and the giving note — which you then edit. It writes the prose, never the facts: your events, prayers, and announcements stay exactly as gathered. It won't invent names, amounts, or scripture.
The snapshot — what "gathered" means
A bulletin is a snapshot of the week you gathered. That's deliberate: once you've built it, it won't quietly change as your calendar moves on. If you add a new event to your calendar after starting the bulletin, the bulletin won't pull it in on its own — you stay in control of what's on the sheet. You can always edit the bulletin by hand, including after it's published.
When you're ready to put it in front of your congregation, see Publishing and sharing a bulletin.