After receiving one of my church audit reports the pastor called and asked why I said they shouldn’t begin with announcements. I said to him, “Do you watch TV?” He replied, “Sure.” I said, “Do any of the programs open with all 15 minutes of commercials?” “No,” was his reply. “But what’s that got to with announcements?”
Folks, think about it – announcements in church are nothing more than commercials. You are trying to get someone to come to something or do something. There is no difference. And I can promise you that the average person watching TV wouldn’t stick around two seconds if the program began with a commercial. Same is true with announcements. Put them at the beginning and anyone under the age of 40 is surfing “channels” and probably won’t return. So instead, open your worship with your best piece of music that says “Wow! Something great is going to happen this hour.”
Question: Where do announcements currently fall in the order of your church service? How might thinking about announcements as commercials change that order? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.
I don’t even like announcements in the service. They don’t really fit anywhere pleasantly, so one thing we’ve started doing is taking a couple of hours a week to shoot announcement videos. 3 minute max containing 3 different announcement videos that are fun, not expertly but well edited, and engaging. We run them twice through BEFORE the service, doubling as our countdown video. Everyone loves them, and people are showing up earlier to make sure to catch them. We shoot them on my iPhone, and I do simple editing in iMovie.