Announcements. Not a big deal to most people, but to those of us in church leadership “announcements” can be equivalent to a four-letter word.
You’ve probably had the same experience that I have: You’re having an amazing worship service – the music is just right, the message is spot-on, the Holy Spirit is moving and you can see on people’s faces that God is dealing with them – until… it’s time for the dreaded announcements.
We’ve eliminated announcements from our worship order at The Journey for this very reason. Any time I mention that, I get email after email from pastors asking how we’re able to do that and still have people show up for our various events and activities.
Here are a few ideas to help you eliminate Sunday morning announcement time:
– Announcement slides before and after the service (similar to what you would see in a movie before the movie previews)
– Email blasts – Send an email blast each week or every two weeks depending on what events are on the schedule. www.ConstantContact.com is a great resource for this, but there are dozens of similar mass email companies that will help out immensely in keeping people in the loop.
– Point people to your website. Stop right now and check your church’s website. Is it up to date? If you’re like most churches, you probably take great pains to keep your website updated. Make sure you use that as a tool to communicate your events.
– Small Groups – No matter what’s coming up, have your small group leaders announce events and remind people of what’s going on.
– “Preach Your Announcements” – this is the biggest tool of all! When you’re preparing your message, ask yourself, “What events are we preparing for that will help people apply this message?” This will also make sure that your church activities have a purpose. Churches can have greater effectiveness by reducing the number of events to only those that help people apply what’s being taught.
– Over time, you can also train your church to look for the announcements in the bulletin. This may take some time, but it will happen. You may also want to have event info at your resource table so that if someone is looking for more information they can pick it up there.
– When you preach, tell stories of how previous events have impacted people’s lives. Example – share a testimony on how small groups impacted someone and then briefly announce the sign up. Or tell the story how someone was impacted by community event and tell people why they need to be involved in the next event.
– Have your ministries take responsibility for getting people involved in the event or activity. Let them know that the stage is for communicating the weekend message not publicizing events. Have them take ownership of getting people involved in the activities by personally inviting people. A personal invitation is more effective than an announcement.
Lastly, people don’t need the announcements as much as we think they do. The goal is not how much we communicate but how effective we are at communicating it. Preaching an announcement is far more effective than actually announcing it. Telling a story about an event is far more effective than announcing it.
I hope that helps.
P.S. For more on planning dynamic, powerful Worship Services, check out Planning Worship Services for Life Transformation.
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