An essential part of any church communication strategy is the announcements made from the platform on Sunday mornings. However, I don’t know of a church yet that has figured out what to do with them, how many announcements to make, what style, etc. Today I’ve invited my friend Gary Molander to tackle this question and I believe he offers some great insights for us to consider about church announcement time. Here’s what Gary has to say…
All posts tagged communication
Are Your Hands Dirty?
Are your hands dirty?
I’ve crossed over the six month mark of not being on staff at a church and am living a new life as a consultant. It’s been quite a transition. I’ve been doing a lot and learning tons… hence my lack of blogging.
It’s been quite a jolt to move from the everyday life of the church office where I felt like I was fighting different battles every day and moving a proverbial “mountain” forward, to now being in a situation where I’m flown in, Skyped in, and connected to churches around the country and being toted as an “expert.” To be honest: I don’t feel like an expert and the idea of being a consultant sometimes makes me nervous.
Here’s why:
It’s easy to make a lot of noise. Social media and blogging are wonderful platforms to share and connect, but they can also create a bit of a monster. It’s easy to accumulate fans and followers by making some noise… I think it’s entirely something different to actually be doing work that matters and having true influence.
I have been busy doing all sorts of projects… helping churches with capital campaigns, rebranding, consulting on communications, and many other things, but in the midst of that I realized that so much of the content I used to blog about here on my blog was fueled by the work I was doing every day in the church office. And if I’m really honest, while I’m still engaged in the same work at a new level, it’s hard for me to blog my thoughts or my rants when I’m not exactly in a context where I’m getting my hands dirty and implementing or putting my thoughts or ideas into practice.
I’ve learned that I’m far more wired to be an expert practitioner than a knowledgable expert. Talk is cheap. We can spent a lot of time critiquing and criticizing but it’s far more impactful to be a contributor. Doing means more than saying. Words put to action are what make a difference.
It’s not what you know or what you think that matters but what you actually do… the work. Your portfolio. I don’t care what you have to say or what you think. What have you done? But more than that, what are you doing now?
Our work is never done and learning is an ongoing journey. We always need to be students in the classroom of the world we live in. Things are changing so rapidly and so quickly that to stop learning, to stop growing, to stop doing new work is detrimental. You can’t base your future on work you’ve done in the past.
What you’ve done in the past lays the foundation for where you are today, but what you do today will determine where you go tomorrow… and the work you do tomorrow will impact the trajectory of your future.
In the celebrity culture we live in, and one even created in our Christian bubble, it’s easy to be an expert or an authority. With a little effort, some people skills, and a platform created by social media you can become somebody. But something I’m learning is that many of people who are doing some of the most remarkable work are unheard of and unknown simply because they are busy doing the work. They aren’t speaking at conferences, making a lot of noise, or have thousands of followers. They are busy with their hand at the plow focused on doing work that’s making an impact.
Now, I’m not saying that if you are called an expert or an authority and speaking at conferences that you’re not doing work that matters, but all of this is more of a humble reminder for all of us, including myself, that we’re never finished. We’ve never arrived. What you’ve done doesn’t matter as much as what you are doing now. What you are doing now sets the course for what you will do later.
I love my job. I love working with and helping other churches but part of me needed to engage back in “the work” at a very practical level. So, I’ve started to volunteer at my church. And if you would believe it, I’m doing their WEEKLY bulletin. There. I said it. It’s nothing major, just something simple and tangible. It’s keeping me engaged. And, believe me, I’m trying to figure a way to get them to go to a monthly bulletin. 
So the moral of the story: don’t get so busy looking out at the fields trying to predict the weather or critiquing the crop… get engaged.
Cultivate the soil and do the labor.
Work.
Keep working.
Keep growing.
Keep learning.
The work we do and the Churches we all serve matter too much not to keep on striving to do something new.
Get your hands dirty.
That’s what speaks to me.
A Communication Lesson from Oprah
One of my favorite TV shows as of late is Season 25: Oprah Behind the Scenes, a fascinating look into what it takes to make the final season of the The Oprah Winfrey Show possible.
Having been a part of creative teams that were responsible for creating weekend experiences at churches there’s a lot in the show that I could relate to: scheduling conflicts, late nights, last-minute changes, production glitches, and more. Granted, we weren’t giving away cars or trips to Australia or interviewing celebrities, but that same sense of pulling something amazing off remains the same. And, in classic Oprah fashion, there’s always little pearls of wisdom shared in each episode.
In this week’s episode the production team was producing a full episode that included a celebrity guest, a few testimonials from guests, and a quiz for the audience to take. [Sounds like a church service schedule to me!] The end goal was for people to discover what makes the happy and how to increase happiness in their lives. Bear with me, there’s a point to all this. As the show begins one of the guests went way over their time sharing, the schedule got pushed back, the production team had to cut the testimonials, and in the end the show went on an extra 20 minutes and they didn’t achieve their set goal.
In their post-show meeting, Oprah met with her team and shared some valuable advice that I believe has significance to what we communicate and the weekend experiences we create in churches. Here’s a link to the clip [click the image to watch it]:
In church services, too often we get bogged down with so many messages, announcements, stories, and programmatic elements that we can miss the key message we [and ultimately God!] want to communicate to our congregation. Every element of your service should reinforce the big idea you’re sharing, not distract from it.
In other communications… [bulletins, websites, emails and tweets] focus on clear, concise points and clearly articulate the action steps you want people take. Leave white space. Make the main point the only point.
In all you do whether in services or in communication pieces, are we giving people so much information that it’s distracting them hearing the main point?
When you begin to plan a service or start with a blank document ask yourself what one thing you want people to hear or walk away with?
Oprah put it best, “If all you’re doing is talking and there’s nothing to take away, what’s the point?”
So what point are you trying to make? What do you want people to know? What do you want them to do? What do you want them to feel? What’s the point? Everything else you do should reinforce the big idea.
Epically Amazing, Incredibly Overused Words
The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone? - Ecclesiastes 6:11
I’m convinced we tend to overuse certain words.
I’m guilty.
We all are… especially in the church space.
Words like ‘amazing’, ‘awesome’, ‘epic’ and others fill our daily vocabulary and most of the time we over promise and under-deliver.
Have you looked at the definition of these words lately?
- AMAZING – causing great surprise or sudden wonder. To astonish greatly. To affect with great wonder.
- AWESOME – inspiring awe.
- INCREDIBLE – beyond belief or understanding.
- EPIC – heroic; majestic; impressively great. Of unusually great size or extent.
Overused words diminish the power of what the really mean, cheapen communication and give people a general sense of distrust.
People are marketed to every single day and can sniff out when they are trying to be sold to… so stop trying to spin things to be more than they really are.
In the famous words of John Mayer… say what you need to say.
It’s that simple.
What are some of the words you overuse?
Mine: incredible, honestly, awesome.
