Why we're building Gathad

Let me be honest with you for a moment. I'm not here to get rid of the printed bulletin. I grew up with it. I've made it, held it, handed it out, and loved it. So why would someone like me want to build something new?

Let me show you what putting a bulletin together actually looks like, and I think you'll understand.

It's Wednesday, and the announcements still aren't in. You send out a few reminders. Some come back as texts, some as forwarded emails, one as a note somebody pressed into your hand last Sabbath. You piece it all together. Then you send it off to be proofread, and the person reads it on their phone, because who still opens Word, and texts you the fixes one at a time. Change the time. Spell her name with an i. You fix it, send back a PDF, and they catch one more thing. But it's a PDF now, so they can't touch it. So it's back to texting. By the time it's finally right, it's Thursday night and you're in the car, driving across town to get it printed before Friday.

Have you lived that? I did, for years.

Or maybe you've lived a different side of it. Maybe you're the pastor who opens the bulletin for the first time on Sabbath morning, right there at the front, and that's the moment you spot the typo. Maybe you've announced the same event three weeks running, because you have no way of knowing who actually heard you the first time.

Or maybe you're the one in the pew. You read about something you'd love to be part of, you think, "I should sign up," and then life happens. By the time you remember, it has already passed.

Different seats. Same quiet frustration. The bulletin does its job beautifully on Sabbath morning. And then everyone goes home, and it just stops.

That was the part I could never get past. Not that the bulletin was bad. I loved the bulletin. It was that it worked so hard for one morning, and then it couldn't follow anyone into the week.

So here is something you might not know about me. I've spent a long time in this. Before Gathad, through DelMethod, I spent years helping churches communicate. How to reach their people. How to meet them where they actually are. Because that is what communication really is, isn't it? It isn't just sending. It's being received.

And that is exactly where paper quietly breaks. Think about it for a second. A printed bulletin is easy for the sender. You print it, you hand it out, you're done. But what about the person on the other end? They can read it in the pew, sure. But can they act on it? Can they tap to RSVP, save the date, give, or reply? The moment they walk out the door, the conversation is over.

Real communication goes two ways. There's a sender and a receiver, and it only works when it works for both of them.

So ask yourself: where are your people, really? Why does social media hold billions of them? It isn't an accident. It feels natural, and it's already where they are. If you want to reach someone today, you don't ask them to come to you. You go to where they already are. And for almost all of us, that's the phone in our pocket.

I see it even in my own home. I love one church, my wife loves another, and the kids love a third, the one where their friends are. We are all committed. And still, keeping up with each other's churches is almost impossible.

So no, I'm not trying to replace what your church already loves. I'm trying to give it a second life. The same bulletin, lifted off the pew and placed right into people's hands. Where they live. Where they will actually see it. And finally, where they can act on it.

I'm not building this from the outside. I've made the Friday-night drive. I've sent the messy PDF. I've spent years helping churches reach their people. Gathad is everything I've learned, in one place.

For your church. And for mine.