Eight Reasons People Aren’t Listening to Announcements by Rich Birch
This weekend, all across the country, leaders are going to get up in front of their churches and talk about upcoming events and opportunities to connect with the community. They want to move people to action, but in reality a large portion of those in the room will simply tune out for that part of the service and then tune back in when something more interesting comes along. You know it’s true … because you’ve done it!
We blame the people for not engaging in the mission. Sort of like a shepherd blaming the sheep for not going to the right pasture. We need to understand why people stop listening and then shift our behavior to help them connect with those we seek to serve. Here are eight reasons people aren’t listening to announcements.
There’s nothing in it for them. We want them to attend our event. We need volunteers for the upcoming thing. We have a need that we are hoping they will fill. We focus too much on what's in it for us, but people are intrinsically motivated to pay attention to things that will positively impact them. Frame your announcements in a way that shows how what you are talking about is going to make a difference to them.
Too much insider language. Why do church leaders love cute names for programs and use acronyms? These are surefire ways to alienate your audience because they need a dictionary to understand what all the different “special names” are for the events and programs at your church. Work hard to ensure that you use plain language that everyone can understand.
You need to sell, not market. Marketing is about making sure that people understand the features and benefits of your product or service. Sales is about working with people individually to overcome their objections and get them to sign on the dotted line. Who is the person who is going to talk to people directly about engaging in the effort?
No heart. Do you feel like yawning while you are doing the announcements? Imagine what the people are thinking! If you do not connect your message with their hearts every once in a while, they will stop listening. People want to know why you are passionate about the subject. Move beyond dates, times, and locations to the big “why” behind what you are talking about that moves you emotionally.
Too much noise. Every time you add another announcement, it reduces the likelihood of the announcements breaking through. Two announcements are 30 percent as effective as one. Three are 90 percent less effective than one. How are you ensuring that you are doing the minimal number of announcements possible to ensure maximum impact?
Bad News Bill. Is it always the same person from the finance team that gets up once a month to tell the church how much they are behind on offerings? People will learn to tune out that message quickly. If you are always the bearer of bad news, people will stop listening. Avoid using the public stage as the place to disseminate bad news.
Wrong audience. If you are announcing the upcoming hiker club trip to the wilderness on Tuesday afternoon that maybe two percent of the congregation could possibly attend, you are telling 98 percent of the people to ignore you. If your announcement does not impact 50 percent or more of the people in the room, why are you talking about it?
Too much treadmill. When was the last time you celebrated something fun that happened at your church? If you are always taking time to promote what’s coming up next, you are missing an opportunity to engage (and reward) people who have been involved in something already at the church. Celebrate people and what they are doing. They will listen more.
Rich Birch serves as operations pastor at Liquid Church in New Jersey. This material is adapted from a recent post that appeared on his blog “unSeminary” and used by permission.
Telling an Alternative Story by Patrick Scriven
People have been discussing the decline of the church for quite a few years now. We’ve gotten used to the dire warnings and predictions of the end. It is part of our collective story. But despite the fact that fewer people attend church regularly, or feel the need to attend at all, many congregations keep plodding forward without much change. “Those young people will come back eventually; we did! Besides, the problem really isn’t us. It’s the world that changed.”
This denial is in part because gloom and doom predictions don’t generally motivate positive changes in behavior. Fear is one of the worst motivators there is, especially when the object of one’s fear is a vaguely, or poorly, defined set of future predictions. Every missed indicator becomes another reason to discount the entirety of said theory and an excuse to return to (or stay with) one’s past form of behavior.
This tendency is also evidenced in how quickly we can forget that there is a problem when we see a small resurgence in Sunday morning worship attendance. Somehow, suddenly, our individual faith community is now impervious to those larger cultural issues and internal discipleship issues. We alone will persevere against the Goliath of mainline malaise. People will refuse to accept a reality when the story in which it is packaged is too bleak, dire, or simply boring. We can’t scare folks into doing the right thing.
But we can tell our story in a way that demands a future without neglecting the present. Austrian philosopher and Catholic priest Ivan Illich said it this way: “Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society, rather you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step… If you want to change a society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”
While the church is committed to changing the world, let me suggest that we need to start by changing our story. A future with hope is one we can build together intentionally, while the future of fear is one from which we can only run haphazardly. The difference is the story we decide to tell.
So you want those millennials to start attending your church? Great! A funeral in progress may not be the strongest story we can tell. So let’s stop telling the tale about the death of the church and start writing the story about the future of the church. Our rewrite cannot ignore current realities, but it must refuse to be limited by them.
Patrick Scriven serves as Director of Communications and Young People’s Ministry for the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church. He blogs regularly at After.Church.
Connect
We don’t accept an organizational redesign because a leader tells us it is necessary. We choose to accept it if, and only if, we see how this new design enables us to contribute more to what we’ve defined as meaningful.[Margaret J. Wheatley]
The Right Question
Leaders do not need answers. Leaders must have the right questions.
A question asked in many congregations fairly regularly is, “What percentage of the church’s budget is for staff?” It certainly never hurts to know this number and how it compares with truly comparable churches. However, Steve Price, co-pastor of Harvest United Methodist Church in Lakewood Ranch, Florida, finds that a “one size fits all” approach to such percentages is not always helpful. He proposes that a better question might be:
What kind of correlation do we see between our investment in staff and the impact the church is having on members, the community, and the world?
Want more Right Questions? Check out “Right Questions for Church Leaders, Volumes 1–3.”
Editors: Lovett H. Weems, Jr., and Ann A. Michel. Production: Carol Follett
Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary.
4500 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, DC 20016 United States
lewiscenter@wesleyseminary.edu
Lewis Center for Church Leadership
Lewis Center for Church Leadership
Wesley Theological Seminary
4500 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20016 United States
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