Doing it in Word
Word will do this. The question is what it costs you every week, and what happens when the person who built the file leaves.
The overwhelming majority of Church of England service booklets are made in Microsoft Word, and it is worth saying plainly that this works. Word can set a booklet, it is on every parish computer, and whoever does it already knows how. Nothing below is an argument that the resulting booklets are bad — many are excellent.
What Word does well
- Typesetting. Styles, fonts, spacing: it is a word processor and this is the job.
- Availability. Already installed, already understood, no new subscription.
- Total control. If your parish does something unusual, Word will let you do it.
- Booklet printing, sometimes. Layout → Multiple pages → Book fold does real imposition, and when it works it works well.
Where it starts to cost
The weekly edit is find-and-replace
The readings, hymns, psalm, collect, date and notices all change; the liturgy does not. In Word there is no distinction between the two, so every week is a careful edit of a document in which one wrong click can alter the confession. The failure mode is not dramatic, it is slow: small errors accumulate in a file nobody rebuilds.
Book fold fights back
Word’s Book fold changes the page size, which reflows everything, which moves your carefully placed section breaks. Parishes routinely end up with a separate document per format, or abandon imposition and staple in the corner. See imposition explained.
The readings have to be typed
Somebody looks the lectionary up and types the citations in. This is where the wrong psalm gets printed, and it is particularly likely in November, when Common Worship and the RCL name the Sundays differently.
Seasons mean surgery
Removing the Gloria for Advent and putting it back at Christmas is a manual edit of a long document, done twice a year in a hurry, four times if you count Lent and Easter.
It is one person's file
This is the real cost, and it is not a Word problem so much as a documentation problem: the file encodes a great many decisions nobody wrote down. When that person is ill, on holiday, or moves away, the parish discovers how much was in their head.
If you are staying in Word, three things worth doing
- Separate the fixed from the weekly. Keep the liturgy in a locked master and the changing parts in a one-page insert, or at least in clearly marked regions.
- Write down the decisions. Which confession, which eucharistic prayer, why the Gloria disappears in Advent. One page, kept with the file.
- Make a second person do it once a quarter. It is the only reliable test of whether the knowledge is in the file or in somebody’s head.
Questions
Can you make a church order of service in Microsoft Word?
Yes, and most parishes do. Word handles the typesetting well and its Layout > Multiple pages > Book fold option can impose a booklet. The costs are the weekly find-and-replace edit, typing lectionary readings by hand, manual seasonal changes, and the file becoming one person's undocumented knowledge.
How do you print a booklet in Word?
Layout > Page Setup > Multiple pages > Book fold, then print double-sided flipping on the short edge. Note that switching to Book fold changes the page size and reflows the document, so it is best set before you lay the content out.