Click on the article title by Natalie Fee, Tips on Writing Effective Missionary Newsletters, for some very practical advice on writing your newsletters.

Here are some principles to help you write compelling newsletters

Be clear in your goal

What is the purpose of your newsletter? By definition, it should share some news – stories are new. Limit your appeal for trying to raise funds.

Who is your intended audience?

Try to think about who you are writing to by envisioning 2 or 3 of your recipients in your mind. Think about what they look like, what kind of language they understand, and the type of relationship you have with them.

Pray

Ask God which stories God wants you to tell. Pray that God will speak to you recipients

How will your letter be distributed?

Print? Email text only? PDF? Web site? Knowing this before you start your layout will help you make appropriate choices as you decide on colors, photo resolution, software and other things that will affect your end product.

Decide what you write about and show

Make a list of the stories you will include and the various details that are important to each one. Work towards a logical order of your stories; making an outline can be helpful.

Share your heart

Tell stories about God is doing. As Lynn Green says, “If you are following God, people will want to hear from you.” Don’t just share the facts, share your emotion and passion. Be real.

Let your personality and your relationship with God shine though

Be yourself. People are interested in you! Intimacy with God is our first calling, not the tasks of our ministry, so give your readers insight into your relationship with God. Share your experiences of walking in both the presence of God and the vision.

Make your newsletter attractive

People are more likely to read something that is good looking rather than something that is cluttered and disorganized. Use as many images as you can, which is easy this day with digital photos. Get clip art or other free images from http://images.google.com/ or other sources.

Tell stories

People love stories. Tell a story of something that actually happened, a meaningful encounter with someone, a description of a need or how a need was met. Use descriptive language.

Don’t use too many statistics

If you must use them, consider turning your numbers into tables or graphs.

Get the facts straight

Be honest and do not exaggerate the details. Do your research to make sure everything you are reporting is accurate. Verify facts with credible sources. Share facts but also get to the heart of a story.

Make sure your letter uses good grammar and spelling

If you are writing on a computer, use the grammar and spell-check features. Then ALWAYS show your letter to at least one other person. Another set of eyes will catch missing words, confusing sentences and other problems that will make your letter difficult to read.

Nobody wants to read letters than ramble on and on.

In the end, tell your stories with interesting ideas, descriptive words and compelling photos. You have stories to tell and people need to read them.

“Most persons who write ill do so because they aim at writing better than they can, by which means they acquire a formal and unnatural style. Whereas, to write well, we must write easily and naturally. For instance, if you want to write a letter to me, you should consider what you would say if you were with me, and then write it in plain terms just as if you were conversing. Take as little trouble as possible. By that means, you will by degrees write perfectly well, with east.” - Excerpt of a letter written by Lord Chesterfield to his son Philip Stanhope Isleworth, September 19, 1739

Newsletters are more effective when you can use photos or other visuals to help tell your story. They can be laid out in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word, or a layout program such as Adobe's InDesign or Apple's Pages. Pages is an especially easy-to-use application (Mac only) that comes with multiple templates to simply pop in your text and images.

Here are two examples below which highlight the differences various programs offer. The one on the left was done using a simple word processing program like Word. The one on the right was done in Apple's Pages.  Today there are many options.  Microsoft Word and Apple's Pages, for example, offer a lot of templates that can be modified to fit your needs.  They can help your newsletter look professional even if you're not a designer.  If you have a more developed design bent, you can use programs such as Adobe's InDesign to create a layout from scratch.