Managing ministry highlight/special features/promotional elements in worship services

[kbontrager]

I am the primary worship leader and worship service planner in my church. We are a church of about 800 people, and growing.... the culture of the congregation is that those who grew up in church, grew up in very small, mostly rural congregations. So we frequently run into situations characterized as Medium-Sized Church Trying to be Small. One of these situations is internal communications. I am inundated with requests for 5 minutes (or 7, or 10...) in the service to promote one of our ministries, or outreach opportunities, or reports from ministries, etc. Each one of these things is good and honorable, but the fact is that in our current facility and with our current Sunday School structure, we are locked into 3 60-minute worship services, so a 10 minute segment is precious time. We don't currently have a communications director, and are lacking a cohesive internal communication strategy, so this question is only one part of a larger issue. But I wrestle with this every day and I'm starting to feel like a 'worship Nazi' (which is a reeeeeeeally interesting spin on a Seinfeld reference....).

So here are my questions: does your church include special features, or ministry highlights, or ministry 'reports' in your worship services? If so, what mechanism is in place to control content, frequency, length, etc? Is there such a thing as a written policy, perhaps a part of a larger communication/publicity strategy? And if I may request this, please refrain from advising me to advocate for longer services. Truly, that is not an option right now.

Thanks so much in advance for any help you can offer!

[El Ben]

Kbon, I know EXACTLY what you mean. We've fought tooth and nail here at Christian Renewal to claw our way out of the small church mindset, basically ending up in our senior pastor completely restructuring the way we do things, including giving his own job a major overhaul (which makes me respect him a lot more than I already do [which is a ton in itself]). One of the things we've done is find a layperson who is incredibly gifted a communication and turned him loose into his gifting as our Communications Coordinator. Basically, he can take twenty minutes of information about ministries of our church and various other announcements and turn them into five minutes that leaves you not only informed, but feeling all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

Jim's the man at that kind of stuff, and Pastor Dan, like me, can be a bit sanguine at times and end up talking about a weekend fishing trip when he should be talking about small groups. Basically, my recomendation is that you find a person gifted in this area from within your congregation, raise them up, and give it to them.

Not only does that get the monkey off of your back, but it gets some ownership on theirs, and to use one of Pastor Dan's illustrations: it puts relationship dollars in your pocket. Win-win-win situation in my book. Jim is more on-board than he's ever been, our services run an average of fifteen minutes shorter now, and people are a lot more informed and connected.

[Mike Darley]

I definitely agree with elben. It's best to have one person who is gifted in communication take the info, condense it, and give it to the congregation. It's also best to make sure all the announcements go through your leadership. I was at a church that would have the person over each ministry make the announcements. This took a ridiculous amount of time, and there's always the person who you know will take forever. For us it was our missions guy. Everytime he got up there it was an automatic 15-20 minute, which is quite a chunk out of a 90 minute service. Also, bulletins and newsletters work well. We also do a lot through mass e-mails, which reaches most of the people in our church, and it's not just all young people.

[russhutto]

I would suggest too that the regular "speaker" incorporate appropriate announcements into their talk if possible. In other words, "preach" the announcements. I know it sounds weird, but follow me for a bit. If you're doing a talk on being committed to discipleship and alot of your discipleship happens in small groups, then announce your small groups during the talk.

I'm not saying to stop the flow of the talk and do a commercial, but just a brief encouragement in that direction.

Also, we've moved all our announcements to the end of the gathering time and each has a slide. As the speaker (usually our lead pastor, but I've done it as well) makes the brief announcement the person on presentation software clicks through the slides in a timely manner. This forces the "announcer" to move through the announcements at a good pace, and just hit the high points. And in my experience it works best at the end of the service right before you let people go. It was always weird having a time of musical worship and then slamming on brakes to take up the offering (which we do mention at the end) and doing announcements.

Thing is, they need to be covered. And if for some reason you're NOT able to get a communications director, this method seems to work pretty good as well.

We've also, given the leaders of respective ministries the green light on putting info on the website, in the bulletin, and calling/mailing letters to the entire church list. Sure, an announement "from the pulpit" is effective, but I'll tell ya, nothing beats a personal letter/phone call.

(Obviously letters/phone calls could get quite difficult with a LARGE membership) but hey...we should fight for that personal contact if possible!

[Mike Darley]

We actually have our announcements at the beginning, then the guy doing them has the congregation greet one another, then I call them to worship. It works pretty well.

I was also thinking one way to handle things would be to get a clown like on Showtime at the Apollo to run them off if the announcements are getting too long. :D Just a thought.

[kbontrager]

Thanks for the advice and insight so far. Ok, Stevie, we might not do the clown thing, but I HAVE thought about the band just playing people off like at the Academy Awards. (something subtle like "we're gonna shout loud, loud, till the FINAL SOUND...")

Do any churches that you're connected to have a criteria as to what gets 'air time' during worship services?

[free_by_grace]

does your church include special features, or ministry highlights, or ministry 'reports' in your worship services? If so, what mechanism is in place to control content, frequency, length, etc? Is there such a thing as a written policy, perhaps a part of a larger communication/publicity strategy?

Our church has done our "Body Life" announcements after the opening song. We run a 1:20 service, so we have a little more time, but we allow the announcements to be a vital part of our services so that people get a strong sense of "come get involved".

The other things we do are post important announcements on the website and on screens before the service begins. I've seen a few churches that have used larger screen monitors in the lobby/foyer to post announcements/features as well.

[worshiptrench]

We do our offering post message each week so it sits as more of a response. Sometimes we do corporate worship after the message but before the offering, sometimes a prayer time then offering, sometimes special then offering. During the offering we do announcements in various ways.

We make sure to try sync the first announcement heavily to the series. Like our current How to Survive (almost) Any Relationship....the lead announcement was a thriving in relationships workshop we are doing in conjunction with the series.
Some weeks there are videos incorporated into the announcements and other times there are not. Occassionally all of them are done via video. We really mix it up though they occur there almost always. I gotta write a post called the theology of announcements as they should be practical ways to outwardly live out the sermon.

SO WHO CONTROLS THE FLOW AND WHO GETS TIME? We are a large church and get inundated with requests. Mike, our exec pastor, and I meet and look at the bulletin and "platform time" requests and we decide what to slot when. We do a maximum of 4 brief announcements/reports. Our first announcement is usually slotted weeks in advance. If it is a perfect fit, the lead teacher will build the opportunity into his message. We plan our church calendar way out so no one's emphasis needs surprises us. No one gets too upset because they know there are 1 zillion requests and Mike has the best balcony view of the overall church. Works like a charm.......most times.

We mix the underscore up too, sometimes the video itself, sometimes live guy/gal with live keyboard underscore (often revisiting a corporate song reworked on the fly on keys), sometimes a lil tech chill goodness such as The Album Leaf (very nice)

[fmckinnon]

Hey,
We are much like you, 3 1-hour services. We are weeding our announcements down to 5 minutes or less. We have a nice multimedia presentation of announcements that play on the screens before and after the service.

Nothing .. I mean NOTHING gets on the mic that hasn't already been submitted earlier in the week, unless it's an emergency.

We often use video segments to announce a special event - they are prerecorded, edited, edited some more, etc., so "timing" is no issue when it's just "press play'!

god bless,
Fred

[El Ben]

Mmmm...pre-approval. I've done announcements before and stared blankly at a sticky note given to me by some random congregation member in the middle of said announcements detailing three or four points to hit on. I got in a little trouble for folding it up and putting it in my pocket after glancing over it once.

"I wouldn't have given it to you if it weren't important."

I love my job. I love my people. I love my job. I love my people. I love my job. I love my people...

[MarkSooy]

I've often found that it helps to think through (and help others think through) the fact that the "announcements" are a vital part of how the congregation worships in life beyond the worship service. This often helps focus the presentation and connect it to the larger purposes of the church.

Sometimes the use of a template helps, for example sentences that individuals would replace particular words with their information. In a recent request to me about "highlighting 7 Sunday School classes" and allowing each teacher to introduce themselves and explain their class I was assured that it would only take "8-10 minutes." Ummmm.....

My response:
...allowing 7 people to "share a brief synopsis" will take longer than 10 minutes -- especially for those unprepared and not used to public speaking. I would suggest that they be given a specific format to fill in. For example:

"My name is Mortimer Snurd. I'm part of the class for Christian beginners. Our class is now studying the theological ramifications of the hypostatic formulation of the doctrine of Christ. We meet in room 432a, section B . We'd love to have you join us."

Obviously each person would fill in the appropriate info for their class. This will keep each presentation to 15 or 20 seconds, and with passing the microphone we could keep it to the 8 minute mark.

So, by replacing the bold text, we can control the timing and they get their time in the spotlight.

[El Ben]

Now, is that Mortimer Snerd reference referring to the mental capacity of those people who want to make announcements or were you just being a fogey? (Just kidding about the fogey thing. :) )

[MarkSooy]

Now, is that Mortimer Snerd reference referring to the mental capacity of those people who want to make announcements or were you just being a fogey? (Just kidding about the fogey thing. :) )

It's a fictional alter-personality with the same initials as ----- ME!

[worshiptrench]

"My name is Mortimer Snurd. I'm part of the class for Christian beginners. Our class is now studying the theological ramifications of the hypostatic formulation of the doctrine of Christ. We meet in room 432a, section B . We'd love to have you join us."

Good streamlining but bad content in my humble marketing background experience. In announcements you need to ask yourself, "What is the person's crave point that I am trying to reach to particpate in the thing announced?"

I would have sold this SS announcement much differently. Perhaps asking the question, "Do you ever have a question you want to ask but feel stupid raising your hand in the middle of the sermon?" (pic of guy in congregation where all are listening but he is sheepishly raising his hand) SS..the place where there are no stupid questions."

Or sell it on their crave for community. "Tired of knowing the back of the persons head/ or tired of knowing people only by their hairstyle?" (perhaps with a giant pic of the back of some ladies head with a beehive hairdo on the graphic screens) "SS, the place to meet people's faces."

Then have a flier, brief card or bulletin insert that shows what classes are studying what.

Those aren't my best work and the pain meds for my broken hand are kicking in, but do you see the difference in announcement content?

[russhutto]

I do, and I think those are great.

Instead of just stating the name, time, date, and location of an announcement, you create an interesting "buzz" by addressing people's curiosity and "crave points"...

Creative and probably more successful at generating participation, especially if followed up by an accessible (hands on) informational touchpoint, as you said, such as a card or hand-out that people can take with them.

We don't do bulletin inserts. In our environment we've come to find they are a waste of paper. Instead, we've built "tables" in our lobby area where people can go grab the info they're "craving"...

In fact, we don't do anything that isn't "church-wide" in our bulletin or end of service announcements. We run an announcement loop before both services and everything goes in that. We've just come to realize that each ministry department can basically generate the buzz they're looking for by starting word-of-mouth campaigns (along with flyers, cards, emails, etc.)

We've just broken down what normally takes place in a typical church announcement/bulletin scenario and given each MAJOR ministry department their own.

It IS an experiment, as always, and so far it's working.

[worshiptrench]

We are interestingly trying to decompartmentalize departments. Such as on our recent Home Makeover project where we redid 4 homes in Haltom City we stacked every department into the effort. Ex. Our worship teams lead the Thursday night pre-celebration service and we told each family's story at the service. As I had notified them about this service month's ago, this tied our worship folks in and caused an instant involvement in Thursday night which spilled over into an over 92% worship team involvement in the project. Every department looked at how we could decompartmentalize to stack initiatives across ministries.

We learned this from Carol Davis year's ago and it seems to be working. Thus the whole church gets mobilized (even our Celebrate Recovery teams worked on the initiative by working on the home and some guys in CR are making sure some of the boys in the homes have male mentors, which the CR guys didn't have growing up). If we would have made this a solely Glocal Impact (missions dept) push, it would have had a lessened result and participation. We even try to stack like this on our sermon series. I*'ll write more on stacking and decompartmentalizing on the trench soon. I like it because it keeps the Church together and not feudal.

You can see how this worked on the reports on www.mynorthwood.org and www.glocal.net

[russhutto]

But as far as the "topic" is going here, you don't announce youth Bible studies in your worship department? That's kind of what I'm getting at...

If we have events that are specifically geared towards youth or children those events are announced in those environments...

In your example, the "Home Makeover" project, it seems that that SHOULD be a churchwide initiative to begin with right?