First of all, sorry for the blog title.  I'm really not a fan of puns, but sometimes I can't help myself.  Second of all, people who know me know that I'm not into stirring up controversy.  I'm a pretty "straight and narrow" type of fellow but today I've got to break out of that because I've got something that can't be ignored... yes, I'm talking about fonts in ministry.
     Young pastors out there, please don't underestimate the power of the perfect font!  Teenagers will be reading your propaganda and deciding, based on your ability to advertise in print form, whether or not they will attend your event.  Your event that you've planned to be as fun as the X-Games, as relevant as Toms Shoes and as moving as the day of Pentecost, an event that will bring students  into community with believers and change their lives forever!  Choosing the fonts in your media could be the difference between raising the next John Piper vs the next Rob Bell!  (Told you I stay away from the controversy, for the record, on a scale of Piper to Bell, I'm exactly in the middle)
     So here's the break down.  Arial (which didn't make my top corner list but is shown in the example here) is a safe go-to font.  It's vanilla, no one gets excited about it, but also, no one complains about it.  You can read it, your not distracted, everyone's happy, no one gets hurt.  If you are feeling a little crazy, spice it up with "Arial Bold". 
     Pretty near as safe (but much less common in my experience reading church bulletins) is Times New Roman.  You can't go wrong with it.  Once again, it's not distracting.  No church saints (that I'm aware of) have ever gotten a headache or sprained an eyeball trying to decipher Time New Roman on a youth poster.
     OK, here's where it gets fun!  I remember being a youth intern back in the late 90's.  My youth pastor was old and out of touch (also younger than I am now) and was happy with Arial and Times, but I was determined to go beyond the box (shout out to Bill Easum) and sought out a relevant font.  I came across Comic Sans!  (For the record, I'd been using Comic Sans for a few years already, but I thought the story sounded better if I told it that way... passing of a fake story for true will be an upcoming blog post!)  Comic Sans was young and hip, no hard lines or solid edges.  It screams, "We're not into business!  Fight the man!  We're cool and hip!"  That lasted for a few good years, but then Children's Pastors got a hold of it and have been riding the Comic Sans train for over a decade now.  These days if I see Comic Sans all I can think of is Goldfish crackers and apple juice.
     When I became a youth pastor in the early 2000's I hooked onto Typewriter.  I still love that font, I don't use it anymore, but if you look at any of my advertisements (written and video) from 2003 you will see a solid stream of Typewriter!
     The next big font to the hit the youth scene was Papyrus!  (In fact, my youth intern in the 2010/2011 school year loved this font!  Talk about out of touch!  Shout out to Li'l Mellie)  Papyrus, I'm convinced, was created for youth ministry!  It's edgy yet classic.  It looks like something Jesus wrote and read!  It was super cool, until Senior Pastors got a hold of it, then our party was over, we had to find a new font.  One so offensive to the elders' eyes they would never steal it from us.
    The youth world was ready for something new and we got it in the form of Bleeding Cowboys!  It was all loopy and cool, unlike Comic Sans it had hard edges (so you know the Children's Ministry won't take it) and unlike Papyrus it was an uncrackable code for older folks (so you know Senior Pastor isn't touching it).  It was super cool, until picnik made it available to the masses and every 13 year old girl on facebook started using it in their "edited" photos.
     Lately I've been more into that grungy type of font.  I personally like 28DaysLater (and ABite for the odd occasion).  It looks like someone wrote graffiti on the ground then skateboarded all over it, then the church custodian tried to scrape it off the pavement before Sunday but couldn't get rid of it. 
     So, take heed of my words youth workers, put in the time to find the perfect font!  I'm not saying it's a matter of life and death... but it is.  So tell me, what are your favorite fonts past and present?

Find your perfect font at one of my hangouts... 1001 Free Fonts