Do you use an announcements loop before your service(s)?

[Esoteric]

We have slides, and our announcements take about 2 minutes to get through. Our "bulletin" is only one page front and back so no room for anything but the most important announcements. We don't have committees so that takes care of that! *lol*

Mike

[Terry73178]

We have a monthly calender, the bulletins, and the screen. We are stopping the verbal announcements. The Bulletin and Calender are both posted in the foyer also. That is three different places to get your information. We run the Announcements during prayer before service, during the offering and after service. I cheat I have an announcement background I use to make general announcements and then only make special slides for items that will stay for several services or weeks.

[Copper]

We do it all - rolling announcement presentation, slide reinforcing spoken announcement, printed bi-weekly bulletin with several things highlighted as well as inserts into the bulletin just in case we have overdone it quite yet. I think you can de-sensitize people to the media blitz and things whiz right by them.

As for the rolling announcements though, I really like them but I admit they take up a lot of my time to create and I get frustrated when someone else doesn't do it to my standards (I belong to anal anonymous).

[JacqueDee]

We have a large congregation with a lot of ministries who all want/need a verbal announcement. We cant fit them all in.

We have a bulletin with about 15 spots.
We do 6 verbals
And have 10-12 Video Bulletin Board Graphics (rotating announcements)

We play the Video Bulletin Board (VBB) before and after services, I dont know how much it is really viewed but at least its something.

[tedanderson]

We have a large congregation with a lot of ministries who all want/need a verbal announcement. We cant fit them all in.

This kind of deviates from the topic at hand but to comment on what you said, one way that we manage the large number of requests for verbal/video announcements is to limit each group to only 2 "plugs" a month unless it is a special event that involves most of the church.

[LynnBarron]

We run a loop of about 30 slides 15 minutes before the service. To hold interest, I list Birthdays and Anniversaries for the month, and use pictures of the congregation whenever possible. That helps get their interest and it has quieted them down considerably. Pictures from recent Youth Group outings make great fillers. When it's Christmas tree decorating time I use last year's tree picture. For the Church Picnic I use a pic from the previous year. Since we don't use a newsletter, I also put "Congratulations" on the screen during announcements for weddings (with a bride/groom pic) and anything from the past week's newspaper where our kids have made the wrestling team, etc. Keeps me busy, but I have made this a hobby and people watch the announcement loop intently.

[TechPastor]

Our announcement loop consists of no more that 5 slides (9-12sec each) and no more than minimum details. We use them to pique their interest to get more information from the information center or their bulletin.
We play the loop on our digital sign system (more than 5 slides here), before & after service and while the offering is being collected.
We try to coordinate our slide graphic design w/ the website, digital signs, newsletters, and bulletins but that doesn't happen if they don't get the information to me on time.

[jwollner]

We use the same flash announcement loop as folks come in that we use on the web site - keeps it consistent and easy to manage

[jsharris83]

We do a slideshow through songshow plus. It is normally about 10-15 slides long. We have made generic slides that we can edit and change from week to week so updating them normally only takes about 30 minutes. we run before and after sunday morning and before sunday night service. We highlight those announcements at the end of every service. Every onece and awhile we will do a video announcement. Those seem to work the best for our church.

[Magus]

We have a string of approximately 17 slides that leads up to the service. These seldom change. They present what the church is about, our values, Wednesday services and things like that. These are timed to last precisely 15 minutes and I start the slide show 15 minutes before each service.

Then we have what I call a "post service loop" that begins at the end of each service and contains announcements of upcoming events. This is duplicated three times. So if I add a slide, I copy it and paste two more times.

Because we run everything via one long PowerPoint and PowerPoint doesn't allow looping back to a specific slide, I simply wait for the presentation to end on the last slide, then I'll click the first Post Service Loop slide to restart things if I need to.

Cheers... Rick