Church services: on annoucements

Bob Kauflin put a great post up last week on announcements. It's mandatory reading for all service planners.

I would add that there are different seasons for annoucements. Sometimes, when a service topic is more horizontal, you can make more annoucements. For example, if our pastor was preaching on "The Church as Community", it would be entirely appropriate to have a longer annoucement time. Perhaps it could even be a point in his sermon (although few things are worse than the worship guy giving the pastor some sermon advice).

Other times, when the topic is more vertical, annoucements can be held to a minimum. When our pastor preached through Isaiah 40 - 66, I got rid of all the annoucements in our service for the entire 6 week series. Yes, the student ministries was upset, but (godly men that they are) they got over it - and made an email blast to the kids instead.

Lastly, I think there are times when large portions of the service need to be dedicated toward annoucements. They happen about once a year at Harvest and we call them "Family Chats", and the basic concept is that the church is a family, and good families thrive on good communication. So, if there's something churchwide that needs to be rolled out, we'll talk about it. For a long time. And not feel bad about it.

There's few things better for (warning: new word coming) "un-addicting" musical worshippers than a lengthy godward annoucement time.