How to Properly Structure a Church Announcement for Maximum Effect
If you are on a church staff, prepping for your weekend events, this blog should make sense to you.
You’ve got time slots for worship, meet and greet, offering and of course the sermon. Some of you will also have a slot for announcements. Some of you aren’t fond of announcements, and I understand that too.
However, church staff members and volunteers go to great lengths to put events or gatherings together so that smaller groups within your church can grow and support each other in times of joy and pain, success and failure. So, what’s the best way to structure your announcements? Here are a few tips to help you put your best foot forward.
Know your crowd. You and your staff know best what works and what doesn’t. This doesn’t mean you don’t try something new, but you know what you can always go back to in the event that “something new” is too much for them. I almost always say stay away from the really humorous approach because humor can stretch to sarcasm or cynicism very easily.
They better be correct. This is probably the number one problem with announcements. How many times do the live announcements include misinformation? I’ve been in service when the live presenter turned to the choir to ask what time the kids function started. If you don’t know what is going, and where to send people for more information, you are causing frustration in the membership. It’s far better to be right and succinct than funny and wrong.
Think of your guests and the people otherwise not really engaged with what’s going on. If you are telling everyone about an event at your church, and you think “most” of the people know what that means, you can fall into that space where you “assume” everyone knows. They don’t. Your guests have no idea what happens here.
The unengaged? They need a boost to get them involved. Give them a central location to go to for more information. Don’t use emails that take them out of your church webmail system. Use your “info@yourchurchname.org” and direct it to the proper person.
Let us reason together. Okay, I’m abusing the phrase here, but scriptures tell us to “come, let us reason together”. The context is meant to get together to work some difficulty out, but here’s a twist.
Give people “the reason” to gather together in the first place. Announcements are more than a time/date stamp. Give your congregants the main reason they need to show up at said event, and how it will benefit them. We may not like it, but there is always the “what’s in it for me” for everyone, for every event, every time.
Edit it down, then edit it more. Keep them brief and to the point. There is no reason announcements should be longer than 90 seconds to two minutes, max. Your congregation will not get all of their information from the video screen or stage anyway, it’s just a way to prompt them to get more information and sign up.
Your congregation didn’t get together this week for announcements. You came together for fellowship, encouragement, worship, evangelism, healing and learning about God. There is no reason to make announcements long and boring, incorrect, or funny and without purpose.
Your purpose with announcements is engagement. If you are not seeing engagement, then it might be time to change it up. Know your audience, have correct information, give them a reason, write well and be brief. These tips should help you get you on your way to getting this accomplished.
