Rethinking Your Sunday Program

I am responsible for our weekly program. Over the years it has had different looks with more and less text, more and less graphics. I am pretty happy with our current program given the purpose that it currently serves.

Here is a breakdown of our program and how we use it.

Static Information

• We make it appoint to be aware of first time, second time, third time guests. No matter how many times a guest has visited with us, they will find “starting point” information in our program.
• Our welcome page lets guests know about our church. We direct guests to our Guest Center which is located in our lobby with a giant green sign that matches the graphic in the program.
• We also include general information about the church such as budget updates, address, office hours, contact info, etc.
• Most weeks we have what we have called “worship response stations” in our auditorium. When present we dedicate an entire page to explaining these stations. This gives visitors an explanation of why people are up and moving and gives them permission to participate.

Dynamic Information

• Dynamic information changes from week to week. We use many illustrations and photographs, having moved away from large amounts of text. The program is used to raise awareness, not explain anything in it’s entirety.
• Large scale graphic indicate the primary directive for that Sunday. It serves as the primary vision casting/call to those who engage with the program.
• Sometimes you may need extra pace to explain something. We have one spot reserved to items requiring brief explanation. In this issue it’s the Summer Celebration schedule.
• “Quick Announcements” are simple images that convey illustrative messages and a keyword to use on our website.
• Each program weekly has an invitation to pick up a calendar, it is a pseudo announcement for all of those items which are on the calendar.
• When we don’t have enough items from our communication strategy to fill our program, we incorporate big picture items. In this issue, we replaced our worship response stations with a giant ad for Facebook. We believe that giving space to a Facebook ad will generate knowledge about another outlet we use regularly furthering our reach capabilities.

Future Plans

In the future I hope to strip back our Sunday Program to a single sheet of paper, possibly 5×7, and to include only those items which are relevant to our Sunday mornings. To become even more focused and communicate only the most relevant information and trim the fat. This will be a hard transition and will require a lot of thinking and planning but it is something we are dedicated to according to our communication strategy.