we use a variety of ways to do announcements, however, there are always those that say, "why wasn't there an announcement for this or that?"

we have a phone tree system allows us to call members and they get a recorded message for immediate and time sensative announcements.

we use our bulletin, the beacon, for listing announcements.

we give announcements from the pulpit during our welcome, and closing prayer.

we even have announcements projected with our media shout worship projection system.

we even use mail-outs for things that need signatures and so forth.

then there is the faithful word of mouth version of announcements, as well.

so with all those different ways of disseminating information i find it hard that there are those that say they miss hearing about something.

We use an online Flashnet service for most announcements, but some more "you need to know this NOW" kind of things our pulpit minister mentions either during Welcome and Fellowship or during the offering.

How does "online Flashnet" work?

I'm with Ken on this one. We have a few annoucements shared by the preacher during his welcome at the beggining of the service and sometimes at the start of his sermon. These announcements tend to be prayer needs, recent baptisms, baby dedications, and so on. One of our staff gets up at the end of the service and announces a limited number of things. I see the importance of the items mentioned by our preacher, but most of the announcements at the end of our services are "shame on you for not already knowing this" kind of stuff.

Ken,

Communication is SO important. Your comment made me think we should assemble a check list and find out how many of the various methods churches use to assist in sharing information. Redundancy can help.

At First Colony in Sugar Land, those who have provided the church with an email address receive a weekly email with news and notes of interest. This is in addition to the regualr announcements.

Kevin

Kevin, E-mail is a great and more popbular avenue lately. Hey Mitch, you brought up a scenario I wanted to address. As a worship planner (because we usually have limited time in our assemblies), I become sensitive if we make announcements at the beginning of the service AND at the beginning of the sermon AND at the end of the service. Many of which are repeated from the bulletin, the slides, the e-mail messages, the phone announcements etc. . . I guess I'm saying, with a larger congregation, it can easily take such a long time out of our worship time, which I jealously guard. (You can tell worship is important in my book! )

Again, this may be more of an issue with large congregations, but how do you determine which announcements to include and exclude? We constantly hear requests like this - "We want the 4th grade picnic to be announced" (which does not apply to the entire body.) Just some questions for thought.

1. Bulletin (at church) and online email annoucement READING should be encouraged.

2. Take some family time in the service. I think we're too caught up sometimes to use our 60-90 minutes as all about what we are doing to offer God something right then. That's because we aren't offering Him enough Monday-Saturday, if we're obsessed with filling and getting in SO MUCH on Sunday morning.

This means- Stop. Breath. Open up the floor (if a smaller church) for prayer requests. Share about some things happening this week, behind the scences, financially, activities, what ministries are taking place outside the church building that people don't know about that familes or individuals are participating in and doing (this means start emphasizing non-programmed ministry as well!!!) And then when you've spent 5-6 minutes. Pray. Stop. Breath. Hug-Share-Cry-Touch-Listen for the next few minutes and don't rush what God can do when we let each other minister to each other through encouragement and words of encouragement for a minute or two.

3. Be real. We're people who need to know things. We are small and have taken it for granted that we aren't as formal as many churches. We meet in a shopping center, but sometimes we get too caught up in the "worship service" and forget about what's happening in our lives through ministry, pain, suffering, activities, death, aging, vocations, etc. Maybe if we hung out at the temple daily we'd know, but we don't. We don't know each other well enough.

Unless an announcement is urgent, we don't give announcements in our contemporary service. We flash announcements on our screens before and after service. There are also printed bulletins and email notifications. We have found that no matter how many times or how many ways we have tried to get announcements out, some people just don't seem to get them. That's just life, I suppose. Things like baptisms and prayer requests do get mentioned in prayer.

Like Keith said, we try to use our hour of worship for worship. I would say that if you feel like announcements have to be made, do them at the beginning of the service so they do not break any flow of worship. If you have an hour worship that begins at 10:00, start the announcements at 9:58.

Tim