Why We Use Printed Booklets

Many years ago, I read an essay from a Year 10 student who had visited my church for a religious studies assignment. The first thing he commented on was how strange it felt having everyone staring up at a screen the whole time. He said it felt a bit like karaoke.

His honest reflection was a good reminder that what feels normal to us as Christians can sometimes be quite strange to others. It made us think: have we become so used to screens everywhere that we've stopped noticing how they shape our worship—not just practically, but spiritually? At Merri Creek Anglican, we want church to feel a little different—more human, more grounded, more attentive. That's why we print simple service booklets each week instead of projecting the liturgy and song lyrics onto a screen.

A Break from Screen Saturation

Most of us spend our days surrounded by glowing rectangles—phones, laptops, TVs, tablets. We scroll, refresh, click, swipe. Our attention is pulled in a thousand directions at once, our focus fragmented by notifications and the endless churn of content. Sunday worship is a chance to step out of that digital current and rest our eyes and hearts.

Holding a booklet feels different. It slows the pace, invites stillness, and helps us engage with words and prayers in a tangible, embodied way. There's something about the weight of paper, the physical act of turning a page, that anchors us in the present moment. It reminds us that we are bodies, not just minds floating through virtual space. And in worship, this matters deeply. We come to God not as disembodied intellects but as whole persons—body, mind, and spirit. The simple act of holding something real, of marking our place with a finger, of reading from a shared page, roots us in that embodied reality.

Screens, by their nature, are designed to pull us forward, to keep us moving. They condition us to expect constant stimulation, rapid transitions, and the next thing. But worship calls us to dwell, to linger, to return again and again to the same words until they sink deeper. A booklet allows that kind of return. You can pause, look back, reread a prayer, or sit with a phrase. The page doesn't disappear when the service leader moves on.

Welcoming for Visitors

Printed booklets make our services easier to follow—especially if you're visiting for the first time. You can see what's coming next, where you are in the flow of the service, and what's ahead. It's a simple act of hospitality: no guessing, no pressure to "keep up" with a screen that might move faster than you're ready for.

When I visited Tim Keller's church, Redeemer Presbyterian in Manhattan, back in 2010, I noticed immediately that they used booklets rather than screens—and it was clearly a deliberate choice. In that cultural context, it made perfect sense. When you go to a Broadway show in New York, you're handed a Playbill booklet with all the details of the production—the cast, the story, the songs, the creative team. It's part of the experience, a tangible piece of something significant you're about to witness. Redeemer understood that for their context—a sophisticated, culturally engaged congregation in the heart of Manhattan—a well-designed booklet communicated dignity, thoughtfulness, and excellence. It said: What happens here matters, and we've prepared carefully to welcome you into it.

That insight has stayed with me. The booklet isn't just functional; it's formative. It shapes how people experience their arrival, how they understand what's about to happen, and how they perceive the value the community places on worship.

But there's something deeper here too. When you walk into a church for the first time, you're often anxious. Will I know when to stand or sit? Will I say the wrong thing? Will everyone know I don't belong? A booklet quietly answers those questions. It says: you don't have to guess. You're not expected to already know. Here's the map—you're welcome here.

For visitors who are exploring faith, or returning after years away, that physical guide can be surprisingly comforting. It doesn't require you to crane your neck upward or search for the right screen. It's right in your hands, moving at your pace. You can flip ahead if you're curious, or stay where you are if you need more time. It respects your autonomy and meets you where you are.

Keeps Our Services Organised

Our booklets also help us coordinate the flow of the service beautifully. Everyone—from the service leader and musicians to readers and prayer leaders—can follow along from the same page. It keeps us unified, prepared, and calm. For teams serving across our two congregations, the booklet provides a shared structure that makes everything run smoothly and consistently week to week.

This might sound merely practical, but there's a theological dimension to it as well. Good liturgy is a communal act—we pray together, sing together, respond together. When everyone is working from the same text, there's a unity of purpose and rhythm that's harder to achieve when different people are relying on different cues or screens. The booklet becomes a kind of score for the whole congregation, a shared script that helps us move as one body.

And for those serving—especially volunteers who may be nervous or new to a role—the booklet is a gift. It reduces anxiety, provides clarity, and allows people to serve with confidence. When worship leaders aren't worried about clicking to the next slide or whether the projection is working, they can focus on what matters: leading the congregation into the presence of God.

Helps Us Communicate Well

Each week's booklet also carries the little things that matter: upcoming events, ways to get involved, and notices that keep our community connected. In a world of overflowing inboxes and fleeting social media posts, the humble printed page helps us communicate clearly—people can take it home, stick it on the fridge, or pass it to a friend.

But beyond mere logistics, there's something significant about the permanence of print. A digital announcement flashes on screen and vanishes. An email gets buried. A social media post scrolls out of sight within hours. But a booklet goes home with you. It sits on the kitchen bench. It might get scribbled on by a child or tucked into a Bible or left in the car. And in that physical persistence, it continues to speak.

It's a tangible reminder that you belong to a community that's doing things this week, next week, in the months ahead. It's an invitation that doesn't require you to remember a website or find an email. It's there, in your hands, a small but steady connection to the life of the church beyond Sunday morning.

Not as Wasteful as It Seems

Sometimes people worry about the environmental impact of printing. And it's a fair concern—we should be good stewards of creation. But the truth is, our booklets are printed on recycled paper. Their footprint is minimal—especially compared to the energy, equipment, and e-waste involved in running and maintaining projectors, screens, computers, and all the associated infrastructure. The manufacturing of electronics, the energy consumed by running them week after week, the eventual disposal of outdated equipment—these have environmental costs that are easy to overlook because they're less visible.

So the "green" argument against paper is a bit of a furphy. It's one of those assumptions that feels intuitively right but doesn't hold up under scrutiny. And perhaps that's a reminder in itself: not every "modern" solution is automatically better, and not every traditional practice is automatically wasteful. Sometimes the older way is actually the wiser way.

We Still Use Screens—Just Wisely

We're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We do use screens—for images, short videos, and the occasional promotion or visual illustration. But we don't want the whole service to revolve around staring at a screen. Our goal is to create a space that draws our attention toward God and one another, not toward pixels and projectors.

The question isn't "screens or no screens?" but "what do screens do to us?" They're not neutral. They shape how we see, how we pay attention, and how we relate. When a screen dominates a worship space, it subtly reorients the congregation. Eyes go up. Necks tilt back. The posture becomes passive, receptive in the way an audience is receptive—waiting for the next thing to appear, to entertain or inform.

But Christian worship isn't meant to be a performance we watch. It's a communal act we participate in. We're not an audience; we're a congregation. And our posture matters. When we hold a booklet, our heads are slightly bowed. Our eyes are down, or level, meeting the eyes of others across the aisle. We're aware of the people around us in a way that's harder when everyone's gaze is fixed upward on the same point.

Screens also create a kind of distance. They mediate our experience, putting a layer of technology between us and the words we're praying. It's a small thing, perhaps, but small things accumulate. Over time, they shape our imagination, our sense of what worship is and what it asks of us.

The Heart Behind It

Ultimately, our choice is about forming a community that's present to one another. A booklet keeps our eyes in the same place—on shared words, on the page, on the people around us—rather than on a screen above. It's one small way we resist the constant pull of digital life and create a more grounded, prayerful space for worship together.

And this is where the decision becomes truly theological. We live in an age of distraction, of fragmented attention, of endless digital noise. The culture we inhabit trains us to skim, to scroll, to consume information quickly and move on. It values speed, efficiency, and novelty. But the life of faith requires something different: depth over breadth, presence over productivity, attentiveness over efficiency.

Worship is practice. It's a rehearsal for a different way of being in the world. When we gather on Sunday, we're not just doing religious activities—we're learning to be human in a particular way. We're practicing attention, gratitude, lament, intercession, communal singing, and shared silence. We're cultivating a way of life that resists the dehumanising pressures of our technological age.

The booklet is a small gesture toward that larger vision. It says: here, in this hour, we will slow down. We will use our bodies—our hands, our eyes, our voices—in ways that are becoming rare. We will read together from the same page, sing the same words, and bow our heads at the same moments. We will be present to one another and to God in a way that's tangible and unhurried.

It's also an acknowledgment that not everything needs to be upgraded, optimised, or innovated. Sometimes the older way is actually richer. Sometimes tradition carries wisdom that technological progress overlooks. And sometimes faithfulness means choosing the slower, simpler path—not because we're against progress, but because we're for people, for presence, for the kind of attention that makes room for God.

That Year 10 student was onto something. He noticed what we'd stopped noticing: that a room full of people staring at a screen feels strange when you're supposed to be worshipping together. It feels like something's missing—and something is. It's the sense of shared presence, of embodied community, of being gathered in a particular place with particular people at a particular time to do something that can't be done alone.

So we print booklets. Not because we're technophobes or nostalgic for some imagined past, but because we believe worship matters, community matters, attention matters. And the tools we use shape the people we become. We choose the booklet because we want to become a people who are fully present—to God, to one another, and to the grace that meets us when we slow down enough to notice.