Announcements, Shamouncements!

[dennarr]

Question: How does your church handle announcements during services: video, upfront person, bulletin only, don't do 'em? send me your ideas!

[kcmaestro]

After much debate and effort, our church is now focusing on condensing announcements into 90 seconds (or less) via video, shown at or near the beginning of each service and posted to the homepage of the church website. This process is totally volunteer driven, with staff direction/equipping/training.

You can see current week's at our homepage:

Pleasant Valley Baptist Church (http://www.pleasantvalley.org)



Question: How does your church handle announcements during services: video, upfront person, bulletin only, don't do 'em? send me your ideas!

[ShanMan]

Dennis, we've honestly struggled with this over the years, but here's our current way:

We have a four-person rotating announcer team. The announcers were recruited from the general congregation. We looked for people who are outgoing, articulate, and can convey hospitality from the stage to both insiders and outsiders. We also picked announcers that represent different age groups in our church.

Most of the announcements don't get talk time during the service...the extended list is in the bulletin, the website, the weekly newsletter email. Only announcements of broad general interest get talk time or space in the pre-service rolling slideshow.

[russhutto]

We do ours at the very end. Only churchwide announcements make the cut. And we try and limit that to about 3 per week.

[milepost13]

Ditto Russ.

Nate

[LoriBiddle]

We limit to three also and only if they apply to the entire congregation.

[gcreedii]

We do a bulletin and video of announcements and then people call and ask the pastor because the don't pay attention or read. Looking to change up what we do, but have not found a solution as of yet.

[dennarr]

After much debate and effort, our church is now focusing on condensing announcements into 90 seconds (or less) via video, shown at or near the beginning of each service and posted to the homepage of the church website. This process is totally volunteer driven, with staff direction/equipping/training.

You can see current week's at our homepage:

Pleasant Valley Baptist Church (http://www.pleasantvalley.org)
Thanks all for the feedback - a lot to consider.

kcmaestro: Just curious how much time it takes to produdce the 90-second spot? Do you run a week (two ahead)? A friend's church does a 5-min spot and some run 10-mins - I like 90!

[Brad Mac]

Annoucements are collected before Sunday. Typed up in the during bible study time shared quickly at the beginning (we call them worship through community) and then emailed to the church email list by Monday morning. We also add anything that was forgotten or came up during the day

[Brad Mac]

Oh yeah we also provide a link to them on our web page

[worshiptrench]

I am FOR announcements in a worship service! There, I said what very few WL’s would. Some people have suggested we not do them as it isn’t worship. I 100% disagree.

Announcements should be an opportunity for the congregation to carry out what they have heard in a message, the who, what, when, why, how and where of Isaiah’s “Here Am I, Send Me.” Stop thinking of them as announcements and begin thinking of them as “obedience opportunities.” One way to reinforce this is to place most announcements at the end of the service after the message so they better match the Isaiah 6 pattern of response. Hit them with the Word and then give a related obedience opportunity by matching announced opportunities to the sermon as real steps of obedience worshipers can take. For example, if the message was on stewardship, announce the launch of Crown Teams or systematic online giving as the first announcement afterwards. A message communal connection? Announce the launch of new small groups and challenge people to connect. A message on living outside of your comfort zones? A trip to Vietnam to expand your boundaries.

So stop making announcements in your worship services and begin making “obedience opportunities” and you’ll find out you adore announcements, too.

[worshiptrench]

Here is a video example before we had a green screen studio....
worship trench Blog Archive Video Annoucements: Using B-Roll for Better Response (Example) (http://www.worshiptrench.com/?p=971)

And here is the sweetness of the green-screens (and after we started limiting length and number more severely)
worship trench Blog Archive Using Video Announcements (http://www.worshiptrench.com/?p=1165)