If you've ever heard someone say, "I didn't even know that event was happening!" your church announcements could probably improve.

In this post, I'll share three simple but powerful rules to make your church's announcements more effective at driving response and involvement from your congregation.

So, let’s get right to it!

Rule #1: The 50% Rule

The 50% Rule states: 

If an announcement doesn't apply to at least 50% of your congregation, it doesn't warrant a church-wide promotion.

This rule automatically whittles down the number of weekly announcements you share. Which is half of the battle here. We can't have our church announcements segments dragging on for 15+ minutes in service. 10 minutes really should be the max.

And I'll emphasize here: the shorter, the better.

Trust me when I say that if all you do is install this rule at your church, you will see dramatic improvement. Even just trimming the fat will translate to greater effectiveness.

And that's what we're after here, right?

The whole point of church announcements is to get people involved in the life of the church, taking more next steps towards Jesus.

If we actively do things to hinder that, even if it makes things easier for us…it’s simply not worth it.

The 50% Rule applies to all your communication channels - whether in-service announcements, emails, social media, text messages, etc.

To determine if something qualifies, look at potential relevance, not expected attendance.

For example, let's say you've got a kids program announcement. When you combine the kids + their parents, + the volunteers, you may be past 50% relevance. So you're safe to promote it widely.

Trimming announcements to those that matter most will increase your impact and response.

Another example of this might be a kind of all-church volunteer effort. 50% of the church likely won't attend, but the announcement applies to everyone. An example of this would be packing eggs for an Easter event.

I’ve produced tons of video announcements for churches. Thousands. And let me tell you, nothing is more painful than promoting something that barely matters to the congregation.

It just conditions people to tune you out! The 50% Rule is exceptional at eliminating those time-wasting announcements.

This brings us to our next rule...

Rule #2: Inspiration Over Information

If our first rule is dedicated to what we're announcing, this is about how.

Many of you probably don’t know this about me. Still, the first product my company ever offered, and this was more than eleven years ago, was producing video announcements for churches.

Churches would send their scripts over email, and then I'd get on camera and present them, edit them, and send them over.

So, no joke, I've presented more than 30,000 church announcements over the last decade.

If I learned anything from those experiences, it is this:

This is what drives attention & response: inspiration over information.

To make this rule more beneficial for you, I've turned it into a formula. A formula that will work in any church, in any context.

Because it uses the most powerful form of human communication as its foundation: storytelling.

Storytelling is the only type of communication that forces our brains to focus and pay attention.

I'll never forget when I saw this happen right in front of me. My brother and I had returned home to our church growing up. We're sitting in the back row, the pastor is preaching, and my brother is on his phone, not paying attention.

Then, the pastor tells a story in the middle of his sermon. And on cue, my brother puts the phone down, perks up, and pays attention. As if by magic.

The story was more compelling than whatever was on his phone. So, are you ready for the formula?

Here it is:

The Church Announcements Formula = One Story + One Next Step.

Crazy simple.

For example, instead of listing off all the information about your church's next baptism, I would tell a story about my own baptism experience and then point people to one next step if they're interested in exploring baptism for themselves.

To truly see this work, you need to master the second step: One Next Step.

The key word here: one.

It makes all the difference. Because churches tend to give multiple action points for the same next step. Example:

• In one announcement, they'll ask people to talk to the pastor after the service

• In another, they'll say to call the church office

• For another, it's checking the bulletin

• Or downloading the app

• Or emailing a ministry leader

And it goes on…

Sadly, most churches sabotage their announcements with chaotic communications. Each announcement has its own next step. But people won't remember that.

What you need is a single destination for every next step.

Because every next step goes through the same place in your church.

My preference for this is your website. That way, our church can take next steps 24/7 throughout the week. Not just on Sundays. Websites work on every device. They don't need to be downloaded, so I prefer them over apps.

Plus, virtually every church already has a website. So we're good there.

To help with this, we made a free website plugin called The Launcher by Nucleus.

It works on any church website. And it's free. Forever. For every church.

What it does is it puts your church's most important next steps on every page. So here's what I say at the end of every announcement:

"Head to lifeabundant.info or visit the lifeabundant.info kiosk in the lobby."

The kiosk in the lobby is essential. Because what about the people in your church who are less familiar with technology? Maybe they’re a bit older, and you don’t want them to feel left out.

We set The Launcher up on a tablet in the lobby with a volunteer standing there.

People who want to take their next step can easily do so by talking with someone in the lobby who is there for them and helps walk them through the process on the iPad.

We still have every next step going through the same place: the website.

This is also useful for showing people how easy it is to take a next step on the church website, making it that much more likely they'll do it themselves next time.

Again, The Launcher is free. Just go to nucleus.church/free to get it for yourself.

We've got install guides for every website platform.

Now, to this point, we've talked about what we're announcing.

We've talked about how we're announcing it.

Everything fits nicely and perfectly inside our neat ministry framework. There's just one problem - ministry is rarely neat. It's messy!

And so the third rule accounts for this.

Rule #3: The Sprint & Smuggle

This is our contingency plan for the outliers. Because sometimes, you just need to bend the rules.

What about the ministries that don’t fit in The 50% Rule? How do we give them the attention they deserve?

First up, Sprint Promotions. Sprint Promotions are church-wide promo campaigns – run 2-4 times per year – each lasting 1-2 weeks.

By definition, Sprint Promotions cannot last forever. They’re all-out promotional sprints that last for a short period. During Sprint Promotions, you can ignore The 50% Rule.

But here’s what you need to know about a Sprint Promotion…it will come at a cost:

• Your social engagement will dip for a bit.

• Your email open rates will decline.

• Your attention during announcements will wane.

• And by the time the campaign nears its end, people will tire of it.

But…

As long as Sprint Promotions are run infrequently (2-4 times per year at a maximum), that attention will always bounce back.

The problem? Most churches are running Sprint Promotions non-stop! So it’s no wonder our Comms Teams and congregations are worn out.

To use Sprint Promotions most effectively, save them for your most significant yearly church happenings (Christmas, Easter, Fall Festival, etc.).

And ensure proper gaps between each one so we can all recover.

Then we have The Smuggle.

This is the workaround. The exception to the rule. Smuggle Promotions are going to be your best friend. Because now, you can promote anything you want – whenever you want. But you’ll avoid the negative consequences that come from being overly promotional.

The best way to illustrate The Smuggle is to show you how I did it in this blog. In this blog, I smuggled in a promotion for our church website platform, Nucleus.

This was a smuggle because it didn't detract from the overall momentum of the blog. And it wasn’t the purpose of the blog. It was just smuggled in as an extra.

You can do the same thing in your church.

One of the best ways I consistently see this done is by having the pastor smuggle in a promotion for something during a sermon. But you can also smuggle in a promo for something during another announcement.

It needs to be super quick and done during the story part of the announcement formula and not during the next step call-to-action.

Smuggles also work excellently outside of stage announcements. For example, here's a carousel post with a smuggle at the end:

It's a great post with a promo smuggled in at the end. 

And honestly, a good smuggle is all about your creativity. 

The key is understanding how it's meant to work. It's a smuggle.

How do you use The Smuggle? The promo is buried in something else, meant to be unnoticeable.

Conclusion

Okay, those are my 3 rules for church announcements:

• The 50% Rule

• The Church Announcements Formula

• Sprint & Smuggle

Implementing these will completely transform how your congregation engages with your announcements.

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