How to Harness the Power of a Parishioner Spotlight Article

Recently, our team at LPi did a research project together. We examined a selection of hundreds of the different church bulletins that we print every week in order to learn about current trends in parish bulletin design and content. One piece of content that stood out to us as a super-engaging addition to a parish’s printed bulletin was a parishioner spotlight article.

In fact, last year we interviewed Daniela, the social media coordinator at St. Augustine Parish in Coral Gables, Florida for an article about parish social media success and she spoke with us about why they include parishioner spotlights in their church’s bulletin and social media content. She also explained why parishioner spotlight articles were so important to their community.

“We want to know who our parishioners are so we can create a stronger community. We have a lot of parishioners who attend Mass every Sunday, and we know who they are, where they sit, who their kids are, but we might not know their names. The Parishioner Spotlight posts bring a little more information about our lovely community members to the church as a whole. We sometimes like to highlight parishioners who are especially active in a certain ministry so that we can shine a light on that ministry as well.”

How to Craft a Parishioner Spotlight Article

Step 1: Determine Who to Interview.
Make a list of some of the people, couples, or families you’d like to include. Consider starting with some people who are ministry leaders at your parish, volunteers, people who have recently received a sacrament, or members who contribute something unique to your community. Feature a single member or an entire family in one article! If you aren’t sure who to feature, ask around at Mass to see who others might nominate for the spotlight.

Step 2: Build Your Questionnaire

Most churches seem to ask the same questions to each spotlight recipient. This way, readers know what to expect from the interviews. Don’t be afraid to step outside the box, though, and ask some follow up questions if your subject has a special interest or something particularly interesting to share!

Some examples of questions you might include are:

• Where are you from originally?
• How long have you been part of the parish community?
• What are some of your hobbies/interests?
• Do you serve with any specific ministries and why? How has your experience been?
• What keeps you coming back to the parish?
• What is one thing you would tell a visitor to the parish about the community?
• What is your favorite type of prayer?
• Is there a special Catholic tradition that you love?

Step 3: Create an Image

Make sure to get a nice, high-resolution image of the parishioner(s) that you’ll feature. Most smart phones are perfectly adequate to use for this task! You could photograph them with your pastor or photograph them while they are engaging in a church event or ministry.

Another option is to ask them to share a recent photo that they like with you. If you are interviewing a couple who recently got married at your parish, they might want to use an image of them at their wedding or if you are interviewing a family who recently baptized their child, you could use a photo from the baptism. The sky’s the limit!

You might consider taking an extra step and creating a template to use with each image like St. Augustine does: