Please stand by for an important announcement:
No one is listening to you!
That’s how it feels when you give the announcements at my church. It’s just you, the podium, and 400 blank expressions. I don’t know what it is, but no one listens to announcements, even when the person doing them is humorous and upbeat.
Sometimes there’s nothing you can do to catch a congregation’s attention, but we can still try, right?
It is hard, though, and I won’t deny that announcements are boring by nature and have been a thorn in the service order since the beginning. (I’m sure that even the apostle Paul had trouble with them.) But when you’re announcements drag on ad infinitum, you’re speaker tells bad jokes ad noseum, you might need to reevaluate what you’re doing . My church has had to do this.
Years ago, my church had what we called “opening exercises,” a half-hour time of announcements, prayer requests, and a funny anecdote or parable delivered to us from the e-mail inbox of one of our deacons. We did this every Sunday morning for years, and year, and years.
Eventually, we realized that opening exercises was stilted and slow. It was bogged down in the traditions of five decades of conservative protestant worship and couldn’t be saved. So, we dumped it and moved prayer and announcements in their own spot in the main worship service.
Fast forward twelve years…
Announcements are still boring!
What is a pastor to do?
The way I see it, there are four basic options:
1. The Kodak Move
Kodak announced they will not longer manufacture cameras. Kodak isn’t going to make cameras? If they can move on, so can we. Announcements may not benefit your congregation, especially if your people frequently make use of your church’s website, Facebook page, Twitter account, etc. to keep up-to-date on church activities and information. If your congregation is a bit more traditional (i.e. older and/or technologically disinclined), you might need to trudge on through with a modified form of announcements.
2. A Picture’s Worth
One of the best moves that our church ever made was to create group-specific, event-specific images to project onto our screen during announcements. They offer the same information that the speaker is delivering, so if one begins to tune out the speaker, the graphics might still catch your eye.
3. Video Killed the Announcement Star
Many churches have made the switch to video announcements. What’s nice about using video is that its controlled, timed, and completely self-contained—very few external variables to cause you problems. Beyond all of that, if you’re capable of pulling off weekly announcements, you are also probably well-placed to upload those videos to your website so that your congregation can refer back to them.
4. Go Crazy
Sometimes, you won’t know what to do until you just do it. Experiment. Do something different. My church is toying with the idea of a “Two-Minute Window,” a game show-esque segment that will feature a different person (sometimes live, sometimes via video) trying to get through a list of announcements within two minutes time. We’re even thinking of spicing the segment up with campy, 70’s music and a counter. Will it work? Who knows, but at least it’s something different.
How does your church handle announcements?
What role (if any) does technology play?
Are weekly announcements even worth saving?
[Image via Josh Hunter]
Eric J says
We moved to 3 items only and use powerpoint to help illustrate, i’ve offered to do videos if they increase my hours ;).
Phil Schneider says
We currently only do three items as well, and our executive pastor made a similar comment about our desire to do more video. I think his exact words were, “Arrrrrghghghgh!” It was hard to understand since he was chewing on the edge of his Macbook.
Eric J says
did it sound like this:
http://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/5/52/Pyro_activatecharge01.wav
Phil Schneider says
More like the sound Howard Dean made back in 2004.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDwODbl3muE
Chris says
LOL!!
James Cooper says
We have the big this week/next week/coming up info as slides running before the service (I make them on keynote, export as images and also then use the images on the church site home page – two birds with one stone: http://www.minehead-baptist.com).
Any other ‘big notices’ are done by the service leader at the start of the service (normally 2 min max) and everything is already covered in the weekly paper ‘news sheet’ (which I also produce).
Seems to work ok. Problems generally come if someone is asked to do a plug for an event or something and they’ve not planned anything and just go up the front and ramble for five mins!
Phil Schneider says
James, do you go to my church? That’s our exact strategy, and one of our biggest problems (the impromptu rambler).
Do your people still “hear” all of the info that you’re giving them? We still field a ton of phone calls asking questions that we’ve already answered in three different forms of media (spoken announcement, paper program, website/Facebook).
James Cooper says
Great minds think alike 😉
Nope, people still don’t hear everything! Even though events are on the wall every sunday, in the news sheet, given out in the services and on the website – people still complain they weren’t told about things!
You can lead a person to the notices but you can’t make them listen/read/take it in!!!
Phil Schneider says
Amen, brother.
Josh McClanahan says
James, just a suggestion (outside the context of the discussion) I have about your church’s site.
I think it could benefit from using the tel attribute for the telephone number, so that smartphone users could easily call if they are one your site.
ex. ( http://css-tricks.com/snippets/html/iphone-calling-and-texting-links/ )
Great post Phil!
Phil Schneider says
Thanks, Josh! And thanks for mentioning tel reference. I’ve been meaning to add that to my site as well.
Charles Specht says
Yep, whenever I do the announcements at church…every Sunday….I can hear the crickets chirping. Stone cold silence. Ugh.
Phil Schneider says
Between all of those crickets, have you ever heard someone clipping their nails? That’s the ultimate sound of disdain, to me.
RHoltslander says
I think it would be more worrying if they were consistently interesting. They are simple notices to let the people know about things. They are generally perfunctory, in the sense that they are a duty performed but with little, if any, expectation that anyone is even paying attention. In my experience you’ve got to tell people things many times (in an announcement, in person, in a notice in the bulletin, on a board in the foyer etc.) before they even take any notice. We have to remember that they are the equivalent of an advert. Something that most people have learned to tune out.
Phil Schneider says
I think we’re largely saying the same thing, minus my desire for some action.
For me, if they are perfunctory and if no one truly is going to listen, then let’s cut them and save ourselves the time and effort.
If we are going to keep them, then, let’s make them actually useful.
Keven Williams says
We had similar issues with announcements at Impact Church. The transition to video announcements has been a huge blessing. We coined our segment of monthly announcements “In The Know” and shoot them on green screen.
The post production is intensive, but the payoff is amazing and we’ve actually seen a spike in new volunteer sign ups. We are able to post them on our website as well via the Vimeo embed code.
Check out Feb’s announcements here:
http://vimeo.com/35973796
Phil Schneider says
That’s a pretty sweet video, Keven. Have you ever tried it weekly or has it always been done monthly?
Keven Williams says
Thanks Phil! Right now we are just running them monthly. Hopefully we can get to a point where we can produce them weekly.
Phil Schneider says
Fantastic! You’re clearly off to a great start.
scott says
So, has anyone had any negative experiences with video announcements? We tried it but honestly our church thought it was “silly”. We run two services, generally averaging about 500-600 people between the two…the biggest thing the church didn’t like was some random guy who nobody knew on the screen giving announcements (We subbed out the work). The quality of the videos themselves was great. The church just couldn’t get past “who is this guy?”
We are a ‘larger’ church but still small enough that most people know each other, so it is challenging…
Any other out-of-the-box suggestions on how to handle announcements?
Thanks
Phil Schneider says
Negative experiences? Scott, I’d recommend that you check out this post: https://churchm.ag/stop-recording-church-video-announcements/
As far as suggestions go, sorry. Your church is about twice the size of mine, and we don’t have the financial resources to have someone do our work for us, nor do we have time to do it ourselves. I totally get your issue though. Having a stand-in actor wouldn’t go well in our church either.
I think my only suggestion would be to try to film something with your own staff/lay people, but maybe start small? Film one announcement spot for one major event and see how it goes.
Does that help?
TrisTara Diaz says
Our video is of slide representing the information with a simple light voice over and/or some low volume music. It seems to be going over well. No more rambling!
Phil Schneider says
Hey, if it works in your context, that’s great!
Annette DiMarco says
Why? Why video announcements? It’s easier to tune out the perfunctory dialogue read from cue cards than the personality of those who give “live” off video announcements. Why? Because ones personality shines through when standing before the congregation and allowing the Holy Spirit to speak through you.
We’re sacrificing the Spirit connection for the sake of time. Not good.
Phil Schneider says
Actually, Annette, I think that personality can absolutely come through in a video, and I don’t know, but I don’t think that the Holy Spirit is forbidden from inspiring, influencing, etc. beforehand, in a video. For that matter, I don’t think I’ve EVER had a moment wherein the Holy Spirit has influenced announcements.
But you do you.
Nick Zeman says
Any time church announcements go into 10 minutes they feel more like a sermonette. I feel they should take no more than 5 minutes. I like churches where they maybe do announcements, singing, prayer, and the sermon. I hate when during singing at the church I used to go to, there would be 10 minute breaks, and then finally , “To prepare for worship we have a “special song.”” After all that rambling, I’m well past prepared for the messsge. The main objective is to lead in worship that will keep people engaged and their minds not drifting elsewhere.
Phil Schneider says
You lost me at “special song.” Ouch. Can’t stand that stuff. We use videos now, and I’m not sure if I like the placement of the announcements, but we try to keep that fresh, changing it every four or five months.