Bill and all,

I recognize that we need to "drop the announcements."  What I need is advice about approaching this from a variety of angles.  Because people are in the position of believing there is a communication problem, a unilateral move to drop the announcements won't be received well at all.  I am not yet in the position here to urge such unilateral moves (even though I am greatly desiring to do that).  So, what I need is help with a multi-pronged, multi-phased effort which will move us in that direction.  Anxiety here is high - for good reasons - and we're moving into the next phase of mission alignment, which is turning up the heat.  Given that environment - how can I change the culture of "more communication"?  Thanks.

Debra

Debra, the issue isnt announcements.The issues are three fold

1.A lack of vision on the part of the leaders.  You must bang away at this.

2, and a desire to control on the part of some and you must challenge this on the key issues.  Announcements are not a key issue.

3. Failure to understand the role of the church.  Most of them think it is about them.  you need to change that in your preaching.

Now, set a course in your preaching and meetings whereby you give them what they need to self understand why the issue isnt communication and announcements but mission. Get them to the point they ask, if we do this long list of announcements who is it going to bring to Christ or is it going to run them off.

For now beginning shortening the number of announcements. Use a triage method - the more it is directed to visitors and/'or the entire church the more likely I am do it.

Over time weed them out from the beginning.  Begin putting them at the end if at all possible.

Though we are not yet completely free of announcements here yet, we have managed to move toward that day by doing two things, in order.  First, we made the information in the announcements obvious and available everywhere:  Sunday school classes, bulletin boards, projection screens, website and more.  Second--and we are currently doing this--we have said publicly that we will highlight only one announcement each week (talk about it orally) and that it will have to do with ministry in and to our community.  Our next step will be to tell people that no announcements will be made at all unless it involves correcting an error in published materials.

In communications theory, we are moving from a sender-responsible system to a receiver-responsible system.
 

Response

From my experience, the big important ideas have trouble being communicated because lack of spiritual growth or maturity of the people to whom we are commuicating.  I find that the people to whom we have trouble communicating the important stuff usually have an excellent communication  system which has no problem communicating the small and negative stuff.  Such people have trouble with the important stuff because they have a "filter" which can only be removed by the power of God and Spiritual Growth.   I never been in a church that did not have a good communications system.  The issue is capturing the system for God.  All the announcement, etc. will not do this.