Church Communication Tools: Why Being Behind on Tech Is Good News

Microsoft Publisher is gone for Microsoft 365 users, and AI use among church leaders nearly doubled in a year. If your church feels behind on tech, that might be the best news you've heard all year.

October 1st was the day Microsoft Publisher disappeared for anybody using it through a Microsoft 365 subscription. A program that's been around since 1991... that's 35 years of church bulletins! And if you have one of the older copies you bought outright (maybe on a CD, maybe even a floppy disk), support for that one ended on October 13th.

Meanwhile, the number of church leaders using AI went from 25% to 45% in one year. One year!

So if your church feels a little behind on church technology right now, that might be the best news you've heard all year. Let's talk about why, and about the church communication tools worth a second look.

Most of Us Inherited Our Church Communication Tools

Here's something I've been thinking about a lot, and once I say it, I think you're going to see it everywhere: most of us didn't choose our church software at all. We inherited it. It got handed down to us, kind of like that casserole dish in the church kitchen that nobody remembers buying and nobody's allowed to throw away.

Every church has a version of this. Somebody's nephew built the website back in 2014. The bulletin lives in Publisher because that's what the last admin used. And there's an email platform the church pays for every single month, and nobody's totally sure who has the login.

I have my own collection of these, of course. One of the first things I inherited at my current job was an old WordPress website. The bulletins were built in Adobe InDesign, which sounds like a gift (it's a professional tool!), except nobody really knew how to use it particularly well, so it was basically a very expensive way to make a bulletin feel really hard to do. And there was a Hootsuite account where we were paying way too much money for social media support.

And here's what all of that has taught me, which surprised me a little: sometimes what holds a church back is the stuff it already has. The overpriced, overhyped tools somebody signed up for with the very best of intentions tend to stick around long after anybody remembers why we got them. (Friendly reminder to check your budget. I found a line on mine this year from a company I had never heard of, and we think it's from about three years ago.)

Owning a Tool and Using It Are Two Different Things

There's research on this too. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research, the team behind Faith Communities Today, looked at congregations over a number of years and found that relatively few churches made real use of the tech they had beyond the basics, like email, a website and Wi-Fi in the building. And the churches that had the tools and gave them very little attention tended to fare about the same as churches that didn't have the tools at all.

Isn't that wild? Publisher is kind of the poster child for all of this. For so many churches it's the tool that's always been there, and now it's gone. If that's you, I see you, and I've got good news for you in a minute.

Why Being Behind on Church Technology Is Good News

Let's be honest: churches have a bit of a reputation for being ten or twenty years behind on tech, and a lot of the time that's a fairly accurate read. Pretty much every church office I've ever walked into has some version of the "oh, we should really update that" feeling.

Here's what I'd love to flip for you, though. When you're fifteen years behind, you get to leapfrog. A church that's still on Publisher and a paper sign-up sheet can skip every phase everyone else (including me) has slogged through: the thing everybody adopted in 2012, the thing that replaced it in 2017, and the thing that replaced that. You get to jump straight to the tools that exist right now, which tend to be cheaper, more powerful and so much easier to use than anything you'd have caught up to back then.

And the timing is really good. In the 2026 State of Church Technology Report from Pushpay and Barna, 95% of church leaders agreed that technology opens up new opportunities for ministry. (A small grain of salt: Pushpay sells technology to churches, so they have a stake in that answer. Barna running the study with them helps, and the numbers are still worth knowing.) That same report found the biggest things driving churches to pick up new tech are ease of use, price and reputation, which are exactly the things that have gotten so much better in the last few years. And Pushpay's 2025 report found that millennials are twice as likely to join a church that embraces technology, so leapfrogging is also kind of a gift to the young families you're hoping to reach.

The best tool is the one your people can actually use and keep using.

I have a client who inherited the bulletin from someone who stepped away, because Publisher going away meant learning something new. My client said, "Okay, I'll learn it," partly to grow her own skills and partly so she can teach whoever comes in next. I love this so much, because that's what leapfrogging looks like up close: building something the next person gets to inherit on purpose.

The full conversation goes deeper than this, including what pastors are doing with AI at home and why so few churches have an AI policy. Listen below.

The Tools Got Better While We Weren't Looking

Remember that AI number from the top? By this year, the Barna and Pushpay report found about 60% of church leaders use AI personally at least once a month, and only a third say their church is using it in ministry or operations. So pastors are using it at home and the church... isn't yet, which is the inheritance thing all over again. And this one made me laugh: 64% of church leaders say it's important for a church to have an AI policy, and 5% actually have one.

Lifeway Research found that about one in ten pastors are regular AI users, a third are experimenting, and close to two in five are either avoiding it on purpose or ignoring it. (My Lutheran friends: Lutheran pastors were among the most skeptical, so congratulations to you. I see you, and I love you.) Scott McConnell at Lifeway made a point I really like, which is that AI is built into so many of the tools we use every day, for better or for worse, so some pastors are probably using it without even realizing it.

That's the whole point of this episode, really: there's power sitting inside the tools you already have. Pushpay's 2025 report found that 86% of churches now use church management software and about two-thirds use an app (for many, that's one and the same tool). The free version of something now tends to do what the paid version did a few years ago, and the stuff you already pay for has probably picked up features you haven't had a chance to play with yet.

My Church Communication Tools Finds (and a Couple of Duds)

Trying out software is my happy place. I'm super weird, I know this, and I try this stuff so you don't have to.

Affinity, now free. Canva bought Affinity, a fully professional design and page layout program, and made it completely free. And when I tested it a couple of weeks ago, I found that Affinity can now open Microsoft Publisher files directly. I'll say that again: Affinity can open .pub files. Until now, the advice was basically to save every Publisher bulletin you have as a PDF and hope you'd never need to edit them. Now you can open that file in Affinity, clean up the formatting a little, and everything is there. I literally jumped for joy.

Buffer, still testing. I learned that Buffer, the social media scheduling tool, has a nonprofit discount. I'm mid-dabble and will report back.

The duds. Hootsuite is just so expensive for what it is. And the Adobe suite makes me a little rageful with how complicated and expensive it is. How is it that all of us feel like absolute beginners when we use it? I say this as somebody who's pretty good at software: if Adobe has ever made you feel like you're doing something wrong, that's on them. The fancy, expensive, everybody-says-it's-the-professional-choice tool tends to be a rough fit for a church office.

Your Homework: A Little Software Audit

Grab the back of an old bulletin (or the back of an envelope, which is what I tend to use) and answer three questions about your church communication tools:

What are we using? Who chose it? And when did anybody last check what else it can do?

That's it, just a little list. There's a pretty good chance you'll find at least one thing you're overpaying for and at least one thing that can do way more than you knew.

Frequently Asked Questions About Church Communication Tools

What happened to Microsoft Publisher?

Microsoft Publisher disappeared on October 1st for anyone using it through a Microsoft 365 subscription. Support for older copies bought outright ended on October 13th. Affinity, which is now free, can open Publisher's .pub files directly.

Is it bad that our church is behind on technology?

It can be good news. A church that's years behind gets to leapfrog the tools everyone else adopted along the way and choose today's church communication tools, which tend to be cheaper, more powerful and easier to use.

How many church leaders use AI?

The number of church leaders using AI went from 25% to 45% in one year. The 2026 Barna and Pushpay report found about 60% use AI personally at least once a month, and only about a third say their church uses it in ministry or operations.

How do we audit our church technology?

Make a short list and answer three questions for each tool: what are we using, who chose it, and when did anybody last check what else it can do? You'll often find something you're overpaying for and something that can do more than you knew.

My question for you: which tool at your church did you inherit, and when did anybody last check what else it can do?

If Publisher's exit has your bulletin in limbo, Bulletin Rescue is my course for learning Affinity. Find it at studiokons.com/bulletin-rescue.