Since Sabbath worship involves the largest gathering of church members each week, it's an efficient time for church leaders to communicate concerning future activities. Still, many ministry leaders face the blank stares of members coming up to them asking, "Why didn't anyone tell me there was potluck today?"
Announcements on Sabbath morning are efficient, but let's talk about how announcement time can be more effective.
DOn't Under-communicate
We shouldn't assume that everyone reads the bulletin, checks the church website each day, or read through our text chain. As ministry leaders, we can be tempted to think that because we consider what we're doing to be important that everyone else has circled and starred our event on their calendar. Yes, it's reasonable to expect people to see the announcement slides and to read the church bulletin, but people don't often see as much as we might expect.
Most leaders are nervous about promoting their ministry too much and coming across as the proverbial squeaky wheel, but our assumptions about how much people are paying attention more often than not leads us to under-communicate. We assume people are more informed than they actually are.
DOn't Over-communicate
When churches have a lot of ministries going on, they naturally want to make sure all of their ministry leaders get equal "air time" to talk during announcement time. No one wants to be accused with favoring one ministry over another. The problem with giving everyone equal air time is that it often leads to over-communication.
Brady Shearer writes that the announcement time should never go over 15 minutes and that "the shorter, the better." When our announcement time gets too long at the beginning of a service, we are cutting into the pastor's sermon.
Over-communication is just as ineffective as under-communication. The difference is that over-communication took up 10 or 15 minutes of your worship time in order to essentially leave them as partially informed you found them.
Over-communication is just as ineffective as under-communication. The difference is that over-communicating takes up 10 or 15 minutes of your worship time in order to essentially leave people where you found them.
So how do you communicate our church announcements without over- or under-communicating?
Fairness doesn't matter
Let's get one thing out of the way: Fairness doesn't matter.
The late Tony Morgan, founder of a church consulting organization, has said: "When fairness drives your communication strategy, your least important message has the same weight as your most important message." The good of giving everyone a chance to promote their ministry is often at odds with the goal of communicating effectively.
The good of giving everyone a chance to promote their ministry is often at odds with the goal of communicating effectively.
In the end, good ministry leaders want to see more attendance at their events and will be happy if that happens without them having to get up front to do announcements each week.
ANNOUNCE 1-2 important things
If you are only going to announce one or two things, how do you decide what to announce? Phil Bowdle, in his book Rethink Communication, suggests that no announcement should come before the church that doesn't impact 80% of the congregation. (Brady Shearer sets that number at 50%)
This doesn't mean that events that fall short of being relevant to 80% of the congregation are simply ignored, however. When such an event comes up—say, a children's event—Bowdle says these things can be announced in kid's ministry classes or in a newsletter for parents.
Create Communication Segments
This gets at a communication weakness for many smaller churches: the lack of segmented communication. Most church our announcements are broadcast: they are either all printed in the bulletin, all put on slides, or all mentioned from up front. The result is that our congregations have to sift through a lot of words which may or may not be relevant to them.
Katie Allred, in Church Communications, encourages us to send people "content they want, not aimless, untargeted messages. Have a mission and use words that hold value; be succinct and bring messages with merit, not junk mail, to their inbox."
Give people "content they want, not aimless, untargeted messages. Have a mission and use words that hold value; be succinct and bring messages with merit, not junk mail, to their inbox."
Standing in front of the entire congregation to announce everything is actually only relatively efficient. Yes, it is the one time most of the congregation is gathered together, but having a communication strategy to reach different groups (segments) within your church with announcements that are most relevant to them is both more efficient and more effective.
What might that look like?
You can create a newsletter for parents of young children, or a group text, or a Facebook group. The same could be done for women's ministry or community service teams.
This achieves two things for you: First, if I'm a member of one of these segments then I know that when I get a message it's relevant to me. Second, it can shorten the announcement time at church and this means whenever something gets announced from the front we know it will be relevant to almost all of us so we had better listen.
How do you get people into a segment? Create a connect card (or form on the website) allowing people to sign up to hear more about different ministries. Instead of 10 ministries making 10 announcements, you're making one announcement that leads people to 10 ministries.
Announcing from the front
Even though you are down to only one or two announcements, you should still be mindful of making them as effective as possible. The goal, Brady Shearer writes, is "inspiration over information." A good announcement will surprise people in some way.
Shearer goes on: "The church announcements formula = One Story + One Next Step."
The church announcements formula = One Story + One Next Step.
Tying an announcement to a short anecdote or to a grand narrative makes it "stickier" and therefore easier for people to remember. In inviting others to decide for baptism, your story could be about how your own baptism was memorable or meaningful. If you're announcing a church potluck, you could share a story of someone who brought 15 gallons of beans one time and remind people that it's not necessary to bring so much food. By using a story, you are trying to tie the announcement to an emotion so people will better remember it.
The "next step" is about asking the question: "What do you want people to do with this information?" If it's a potluck announcement, the "next step" might be signing up to bring a dish. An announcement that merely builds awareness—"I wanted to let you know this is coming up"—is much less effective. Every announcement should end with a next step—an action you want them to do.
The Communication Column is written by Matthew J. Lucio, Assitant to the President for Communication.