A weekly blog of Creative Ideas for Leading Worship
Constructing a Service - Part 6
Designing & Typesetting the Order of Service
Benefits of Reading This Post
By reading this post, you will:
- Understand why good design matters for an Order of Service and how it enhances the flow of worship
- Learn how to use Microsoft Word effectively to design a service sheet without needing expensive design software
- Get clear, step-by-step instructions for formatting A5 booklets, including margins, fonts, and spacing
- Discover how to format prayers, hymns, and liturgies to improve readability and congregational participation
- Learn practical ways to avoid bad line breaks that disrupt flow and clarity in both print and slides
- Save time with smart formatting tips like using Find & Replace and paragraph spacing shortcuts
- Gain confidence in preparing professional-looking Orders of Service that are easy to read and print
- Learn how to print your booklet using Adobe Reader’s booklet settings, whether your printer is duplex or not
- Pick up tips on organising service files efficiently, ready for use on Sunday
- Access a real-life sample to inspire your own formatting choices
Introduction
A well-designed Order of Service document helps the service to flow smoothly. A poorly laid-out Order of Service can distract people from the worship and make it harder for them to follow along.
I use Microsoft Word to create my Orders of Service. It’s simpler than using more sophisticated and complex design software like Publisher or InDesign, and Word gives me all the control I need.
Here are some practical tips for good design.
Use Word for Design and Save the Document as a PDF for Printing
I’m assuming that your Order of Service will be printed on two sides of A4 sheets and folded to make an A5 booklet.
Step-by-step:
-
In Word (or your preferred word processor), create an A5 document:
in the top menu go: File | New | Layout | Size | A5 -
Set margins to 1cm on all four sides:
Go: Layout | Margins | Custom Margins, then set Top, Left, Bottom and Right margins to 1cm - Set page orientation to Portrait
-
When finished, save your Word document as usual, then save a copy as a PDF:
Go: File | Save As, and in the dropdown where it says Word Document (*.docx), click the down arrow and choose PDF (*.pdf), then click Save.
PDF files are easier to print as booklets — see Printing Your PDF Booklet at the end of this post.
• • •
Formatting Your Text
Use one font only throughout the document — e.g. Calibri — and stick to one colour: black.
Use font size, bold and italics to differentiate headings, body text, credits etc., rather than different fonts.
Set all body text — hymns, prayers, and liturgy — to the same size, e.g. 11pt.
These factors unify the design and make the document easier to read.
Click here to view the PDF of my 23 March 2025 Order of Service for examples of the design tips I outline below.
• • •
Cover Page
Aim for a clean, uncluttered layout with plenty of white space. Centre the text and image on the page.
At our church, we typically show the following on the cover:
- Church logo
- Church name and street address
- Website address
- Date and which Sunday it is in the church year
- Welcome in te reo Māori and English
- An image that reflects the theme of the service. (See also this blog post about creating worship images using AI)
- Title of the service theme
- The congregation’s vision statement
- A short statement about the nature of our church
- Greetings in the languages of our four congregations and in te reo
• • •
Page 2 and Onwards
Start with these details centred at the top of page 2:
- Order of Service
- Congregation name
- Date and which Sunday in the church year
- Names of the leader(s), organist, and any other featured musicians
The rest of the service text then follows using the structure I outlined in this earlier post.
Formatting tips:
- Make section headings bold and align them with the left-hand margin
- Insert a hard line break (ENTER) before each heading to create white space between sections
-
Indent the body text of each section one level to the right: select the text and press CTRL+M (To undo the indent: press CTRL+SHIFT+M)
• • •
Formatting Prayers and Liturgy
For responsive prayers, use plain text for the leader’s parts and bold for the congregation’s responses.
Avoid formatting it like this:
Leader: text
People: text
— that takes up too much space and isn’t as clear.
- Use a soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER) after the leader’s text to begin the congregation’s response on the next line
- Use a hard line break (ENTER) at the end of each response to split stanzas into paragraphs
To control paragraph spacing for the whole document:
- Select all the text
- Go: Home | Paragraph | Options icon (bottom-right corner)
- In the Spacing section, set:
- Before: 0 pt
- After: 4 pt (or 6 pt for more generous spacing)
- Line Spacing: Single
- Untick “Don’t add space between paragraphs of the same style”
Click OK.
• • •
Show or hide hidden characters
It helps to display paragraph marks (¶) and line break symbols (↵) while editing.
- Go: Home | Paragraph section | ¶ symbol
or press CTRL+SHIFT+* to toggle display of hidden characters on or off
This lets you clearly see soft line breaks (↵) and paragraph breaks (¶) — which is especially helpful for formatting responsive prayers and hymns.
• • •
In some cases (e.g. Words of Assurance, Lord’s Prayer, Blessing of the Offering), you may want to indent the text one more step for visual clarity. Select the text and press CTRL+M.
• • •
Formatting Hymns
Each line within a verse should end with a soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER) — only the final line of each verse or refrain should use a paragraph break (ENTER).
If copying hymn text from a source like Hymnary.org:
- Paste the text into Word
- Select all the hymn text and reset to Normal style: CTRL+SHIFT+N
- Delete any existing verse numbers
Turn on hidden characters with CTRL+SHIFT+*. You’ll probably see a paragraph mark (¶) at the end of each line.
You can:
- Manually replace each paragraph mark with a soft line break (SHIFT+ENTER), or
- Use Find and Replace to do it quickly:
- Press CTRL+H
- In “Find what”, type: ^p
- In “Replace with”, type: ^l (that’s a lowercase L)
- Do you want to search the rest of the document?: click No.
This will reformat the hymn into a continuous paragraph.
Then, at the end of each verse, select the soft line break and press ENTER to insert a paragraph break.
Now:
- Set paragraph spacing to 4 pts
- Indent the whole hymn one level: CTRL+M
- Indent each refrain one additional level: CTRL+M again
Add verse numbers:
- Select the whole hymn text
- Go Home | Paragraph | and click the Numbering icon (1. 2. 3.)
- To remove numbering from a refrain, select it and click the numbering icon again
- If numbering starts at a number other than 1:
-
- Click the dropdown next to the numbering icon
- Choose Set Numbering Value
- Tick Start new list and set value to 1
• • •
If you're short on space and want to reduce the number of pages in your document, you can try setting the hymn in a two-column table. For example, see the final hymn Jesu, lover of my soul in the 23 March 2025 service sample.
Steps:
- Go: Insert | Table and Choose the number of columns and rows
- Paste each verse into a separate cell
- Make cells borders invisible in the printed document:
-
- Select all cells
- Go: Table Design | Borders | No Border
Formatting hymn text in table cells can be fiddly — give yourself time to adjust the layout, numbering and spacing.
• • •
Avoid Bad Line Breaks
Here’s an example of a poorly laid out hymn verse. The bad line breaks and the fact that the hymn and tune (while attractive) were new to us, meant that the singing did not go well in the service. It wasn’t clear where the lines ended and hence where to take a breath.
Poor version:
We are the young, our lives are a mystery; we
are the old, who yearn for your face; we have
been sung throughout all of history, called to
be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in, the lost and the forsaken; gather
us in, the proud and the strong; give us a
heart so meek and so lowly, give us the
courage to enter the song.
Improved version:
We are the young, our lives are a mystery;
we are the old, who yearn for your face;
we have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in, the lost and the forsaken;
gather us in, the proud and the strong;
give us a heart so meek and so lowly,
give us the courage to enter the song.
Use the same principle for prayers: read the text aloud and insert line breaks where it feels natural to pause or breathe — usually at commas or full stops.
Apply the same care to hymn texts in PowerPoint slides. I use 36pt black text on a white background. Don’t reduce the text size to squeeze in a whole verse — split it across two slides instead.
• • •
Credits
Where I include credits for hymns and Bible translations within the service text, I make these much smaller, e.g. 8 or 9pt.
At the end of the Order of Service, I include:
- Details of prayer and liturgy books used
- Image titles and sources
- Websites referenced
- Our church’s CCLI licence information
• • •
Formatting Not Working?
If text formatting is behaving unpredictably, try this:
- Select all text
- Reset to Normal style: CTRL+SHIFT+N
This will left-align everything and revert to the default font (e.g. Times New Roman)
Bold, italics, and line breaks will be retained
- Then:
-
- Choose your preferred font (e.g. Calibri) and size (e.g. 11 pt)
- Reset paragraph spacing to 4 pt
- Re-apply indents and numbering as needed for prayers, hymns, and liturgies
If you are struggling to get text in various places to fit on one line, try selecting all the text and choosing a half step smaller text size for the whole document, e.g. reducing from 11 pts to 10.5 pts. Don’t go any small than this as it will be too hard to read.
• • •
Printing Your PDF Booklet
If you haven’t already, install Adobe Reader software which is free: Download it here
To print:
- Open your PDF in Adobe Reader
- Go File | Print
- In the dialogue box, set:
-
- Pages to Print: All
- Page Size & Handling: Booklet
- Booklet Subset: Both sides
- Binding: Left
- Orientation: Portrait
- Tick Auto-rotate pages within each sheet
Click Print.
If you have a duplex printer, it will print both sides automatically.
If your printer is single-sided, follow the on-screen instructions to re-feed the pages manually.
Once printed, collate and fold the A4 sheets to create your A5 booklet. Proofread carefully and make final edits in Word and resave the document as a PDF, before printing copies for the congregation.
Having completed my PDFs I then email them to our church office who print the Orders of Service and also email copies to the congregation.
• • •
Top Tip
I create a separate folder for each service I lead, called, e.g. Wesley 2025-03-23 PG
Into this folder I save all related files — Word documents, PDFs, PowerPoints, images, sheet music, video and sound clips. On Sunday, I copy the entire folder to a USB stick and take it to church, ready to plug into the laptop for projecting slides and playing media.
• • •
Summary – What We Learned in This Post
A well-designed Order of Service helps the congregation stay focused and supports the rhythm of the worship experience. Using Microsoft Word, you can create professional, readable, and attractive service sheets without needing graphic design software.
We explored how to:
- Set up an A5 layout in Word with correct margins and orientation
- Use one font, consistent sizing, bold/italics, and spacing to unify your design
- Structure your document with clear headings, logical indents, and thoughtful use of white space
- Format prayers and responsive liturgies using soft and hard line breaks for better readability
- Reformat hymn texts efficiently, including how to use tables and soft breaks for improved layout
- Avoid awkward line and page breaks that interfere with singing and reading
- Use Word’s styles and formatting tools to fix or simplify problematic layouts
- Print a polished PDF booklet using Adobe Reader’s booklet print settings
- Organise your files in a dedicated folder so everything is at your fingertips on Sunday
By applying these principles, your Orders of Service will be easier to prepare, look more professional, and support a more seamless, meaningful worship experience.
The Constructing a Service series
This is the sixth post in the Constructing a Service series.
Previous posts covered:
- The Elements of a Service
- Choosing Hymns, Songs and Waiata
- Finding or Writing Prayers and Liturgy
- Writing Your Sermon, and
- Making Worship Come Alive: The Introducing the Theme / Story Time / Children’s Talk section
The last post will cover:
- Two sample services led by Philip
Ngā mihi
Philip