Church Announcements

Planning a church worship service takes a lot of work. 

Every week in the rush to Sunday morning, announcements often fall off the planning radar. The result can be church announcements that are dull and dry, a jarring interruption to the flow of the service ...or just plain awkward. 

But the reality is that announcements are an important part of a worship service. They’re a key contact point with visitors and even a missed opportunity for discipleship. 

Let's take a look at how you can up your game.

Why Should You Care About Announcements?

You can tell a lot about a church by what they do with the rest of their week. For a visitor, announcements tip your hand, revealing what you truly care about as a church. 

Announcements can also be a fantastic discipleship moment. They remind your core group of the values you've collectively committed to keeping at the center of who you are as a congregation. 

In other words, announcements shouldn’t be an afterthought. They should play a pivotal role in setting the tone for a church service. 

In addition, they, are perfect to include in your church welcome speech. Which talk about at length in that post.

Often churches will include a short tithe message during this portion of the experiences.

They should assist in casting a vision for the church, and can / should help point the way forward.

16 Tips For Making Your Announcements the Best They Can Be

Announcements are a critical part of any church service. But that doesn’t make any and every set of announcements automatically useful.

You need to go about creating your announcements in a thoughtful manner. Here are several tips to help you do so.

Announcements will fall through the cracks unless you've got someone who can give them the tender love and care they deserve.

Instead of having a distracted church pastor or worship leader phone in the announcements as an afterthought, find a point person who can really focus on keeping announcements fresh and zesty. Channeling announcements through one person can also minimize a random grab bag feel and tie things more clearly to the core vision of the church.

You'll want to find someone who is a gifted public speaker. They should also think creatively about how to continually reinvent announcements to keep them interesting. 

It's also important to make sure that the point person for announcements is in clear communication with ministry leaders so that they can confidently speak on each topic.

The more announcements you share in a church service, the less likely people are going to care about any of them. It’s tough, but it’s true.

Resist the urge for your announcements to become a complete grocery list of every bit of ministry news. Instead, think of them as more of a special showcase for the most essential things you want to highlight.

Be intentional about what makes it into your spoken announcements. If you can do that, people will intuitively notice that you're passionate about what was important enough to mention.

Always plan out your announcements with guests in mind. Ask yourself, “Do our announcements help church guests feel welcome in our space, or do they create an ‘insider’ moment, where only those who belong in our clique understand what's going on?”

Write your announcements assuming zero prior knowledge, as a way to show love to those on the borders of your community. Frame your announcements in a way that acknowledges that different people are in different places in their faith journey.

For visitors, in particular, give people a clear map of where the church service is going, so they know what to expect.

Oh, and check your tone, too. Make sure that announcements respect people for who they are instead of simply what they can do. Be thankful that people are present, especially visitors. Then let that show through the announcements.

In addition to making sure your announcements are visitor-friendly, make sure to include at least one clear connection point for visitors. This will help them feel more welcome. It can also give them an easy, straightforward way to engage with your organization.

Whether it's a contact card, digital church bulletins, or an app, be sure to tell visitors how to connect. Also, be clear about how you will contact them to follow up.

It’s tempting to talk off-the-cuff about what's going on in the church. But everyone will appreciate your announcements more if you take time beforehand to organize your thoughts in writing.

Writing down your announcement helps you itemize all of the important details and eliminate any fluff that would bog it down.

Start by answering the most pressing questions: Who? what? when? where? But don't forget to answer the all-important Why? (See tip #6 below for more on that one.)

After you've answered all the pressing questions, have the discipline to only include the most important answers in the announcement.

Once you've written out your thoughts, you don't have to use your written notes at all. In fact, unless your announcement has key details that you need to write down to remember, it will be more engaging without notes.

It’s the process of writing out your thoughts that will make your talk that much stronger and more focused, even if you do deliver them without notes. Your audience will stay engaged guests will have a more clear understanding.

Try to rewrite every announcement — no matter how informational it may be — into a story.

Stories give the church a spot in their hearts where they will remember the announcement. They also fire up the imagination for the church to envision new possibilities and ways they might enter the story themselves.

Most importantly, stories help us answer the Why? question. The church community needs a reason to care about an announcement, and stories are the way to make your church announcements matter.

Stand up in front of the church with a microphone and they might remember half of what you say. Give them a picture and it'll stick.

When planning a service, find the perfect image and put it in a slide for each announcement. For maximum impact, try putting your images side-by-side ahead of time and make sure that each one has its own contrasting color scheme, mood, and vibe.

You don't have to worry about your church announcement slide containing all of the relevant information. Keep your slides punchy by stripping the text down to what's absolutely essential. Trust your other means of communication to safely house everything else people need to know.

Don’t worry about finding images, either. We've got what you need for the perfect announcement pictures in our enormous library of over 5000 sermons media and marketing assets & over 15,000 free graphics.

Also, the best part about our sermon graphics and media solution is that all of the series come with PNG, PSD, and Canva File types. This makes it super easy for you to update things on your own if you'd like.

If you've got the resources to pull it off, church video announcements can grab people's attention in powerful ways. Even without high-end gear and crew, you can still leverage lo-fi productions by playing up the DIY vibe to be funny or more authentic.

But just because you can do a video doesn't mean you should. Always ask yourself, What would a video version of this announcement do that a live version can't?

Videos can be helpful if you need to show images of a different location or interview someone who can't be there in person. But if you don't have a good enough reason to do a video announcement, it might make more sense to stick with a real person in front of real guests.

Think of your spoken Church announcements as teaser trailers that are fully explained elsewhere –– on social media, by email, on your church website, or through your church app. Draw congregants in. Make them curious to find out more. Give them clear pathways to discovery.

If you are doing a great job keeping your congregation informed through other communication channels, your spoken church announcements don't have to do it all. In fact, they shouldn't.

People have a hard time remembering most of what they hear, anyway. Write your spoken church announcements with clear references to the rest of your communications web. 

This is another great reason to make sure your church app is doing all it can to keep your church informed.

Have social media pages prepped and ready to go before any church announcements. That way, people have somewhere to go for more information and will have something to share digitally with their friends.

Don't underestimate the power of an old-fashioned email, either. A significant portion of your church may still rely on regular emails to stay up-to-date on what's going on in your church.

What about bulletins? That's a sticky question. It's probably time to rethink the way we do church bulletins and adapt church announcements to a paperless world. Even so, you can use them to spread the word when it comes to fleshing out your church announcements in other settings.

Church announcements can be a discipleship opportunity. They can help people grow from passive consumers of religious goods to active players in the Kingdom of God.

With that said, the first step in this process may have to be tearing down the wall between the religious performers "up front" and the church "watching" the show.

Consider writing church announcements on behalf of the congregation, instead of just talking at the congregation.

Every week, at church, try making the information more interactive by gathering feedback ahead of time and sharing it during the service. You could even invite a current participant in a ministry up for a short conversation.

You can break down the wall between observer and participant even more by having two people regularly do the information portion of your church service together. Instead of talking at people, the dialogue format gives people a chance to listen in and even imagine themselves as part of the conversation. Simply put, you're going to keep their attention better.

This can also keep your time from settling into a business-as-usual rut by injecting a welcome dose of humor.

But remember, chemistry is key here. You want people to feel invited into a conversation, and not to feel awkward watching other people chat.

Do you have a ministry leader who is doing fantastic work but is not a gifted public speaker? Pair them up with someone who can liven up the announcement and draw the key information out of your ministry leader in an interview format.

Be realistic about how effective your spoken announcements are. When it comes to both informing people and successfully inviting participation, word-of-mouth wins, every time. 

A personal ask carries way more weight than a vague request from the stage.

Have your staff and key volunteers be ready to share a one-sentence version of the announcement with people they bump into before or after the church service. Pass along an announcement to your small group leaders as a suggested topic for discussion in their small groups.

Let your announcement be the upfront version of what's already happening on the ground. And then, when you are thinking about ending your time with a call to action, choose the next steps that will organically lead to more word-of-mouth interactions about the announcement.

Don't be afraid to model what this looks like to others. Sharing a one-sentence version of the announcement with people you talk to gives them something short to hang on to and share with others.

To keep your announcements from being an afterthought tacked onto the service, think about how they can be more seamlessly interwoven into the worship service. 

The key here is to think of a worship service as a story. (After all, worship does tell a story, the story of God's work in the world.) Ask yourself: “Where in the story of God would this announcement make sense?” 

If it fits with your sermon, connect the dots between the Bible and the life of your church by giving the announcement as one of your sermon points. 

Is the information about mission? Give a mini-announcement during the sending or benediction, with a clear action next step that people can do right before they are sent out into the world. You get the idea.

Of course, you may want the opposite. Instead of fitting your information into the flow of worship, you may want them to intentionally disrupt the worship service so that people will sit up and pay attention.

Let's be honest: A lot of people don't hear elements at the beginning of worship because they're still shuffling in or settling down. A lot of people don't hear announcements at the end of a Sunday morning service either because they're already eyeing the door or reaching for their phones. 

Consider moving your announcements around on purpose. This can throw people off of autopilot during worship and help you get their attention. 

If you do this, though, be intentional about this shift. Moving announcements around too often could lose them in the noise. It may be best to move an announcement as a one-shot special event.

Announcements can be a fantastic discipleship opportunity in a worship service. They can help connect the dots in people's minds between what you believe and how you live together as the body of Christ. 

This information can open up space for the Spirit to work in people's hearts. They can help people to see God's work in all things. Just because an announcement is something that you have to do doesn't mean that it can't be something that God can use to help people grow in their faith and encourage their next step.

Most announcements should include some kind of next step. This will actually help people remember the announcement better.

If your announcement does include a call to action, keep it simple and instantly doable. If there are multiple steps or pathways, just pick one initial one to start with. Who should they talk to? Or where should they sign up?

Keeping your on-ramps simple and straightforward will give your announcements more forward energy. They’ll keep people excited about opportunities and engaged with your ministry over time.

And there you have it. Some of the best ways that I’ve found to enhance your church’s announcement activities. From using pictures to staying simple and everything in between, make sure that you’re taking your announcements seriously. If you do, you’ll probably find that your congregation does, too.

In our experience, churches often know what to do next, they just don't know how to do it. With that said, we'd love to help by offering free graphics, worship backgrounds opinions, & much more! Enjoy!