00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Do you ever feel 00:00:01:23 - 00:00:02:08 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry like 00:00:02:19 - 00:00:07:00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry knows what's going on at your church? Like 00:00:07:00 - 00:00:14:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry you feel like nobody is ever really listened to you when you're giving the announcements? 00:00:14:04 - 00:00:16:20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Well, in this episode I want to talk about is the 00:00:16:20 - 00:00:28:03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry problem with most church and youth ministry announcements. So if you're a youth pastor person in church communication to pastor, this will help increase 00:00:28:03 - 00:00:31:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry and uptake your engagement around announcements. 00:00:31:02 - 00:00:42:11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I want to talk about the ultimate goal with all church announcements. And finally, stick around because I'm going to share with you three reasons that your church announcements may not be 00:00:42:11 - 00:00:47:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry going as well as you think. Plus, one solution for each of those 00:00:47:11 - 00:00:47:22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry reasons, 00:00:47:22 - 00:00:50:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry including a concept called 00:00:50:04 - 00:00:55:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry inadvertent blindness. We're going to dive into that. And I have a free 00:00:55:04 - 00:01:00:10 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry resource that I think can absolutely change the game for you. 00:01:00:14 - 00:01:00:19 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I 00:01:00:19 - 00:01:01:06 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry think part 00:01:01:06 - 00:01:13:08 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry of our problem here in 2025, in churches in North America, or let's just be honest around the world, is that we need to stop acting as churches. Look, we're in the 1990s 00:01:13:08 - 00:01:17:21 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry and stop making boring announcements. 00:01:17:21 - 00:01:35:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Give me a like, if you've heard the stat that we as humans have a shorter attention span now than goldfish, if that's the case, then we definitely have to figure something out, because you have some great things going on at your church, and if people don't know about it, they can't get to them. 00:01:35:04 - 00:02:03:00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Let's talk about it. Welcome, my friends, to the hybrid minstrel show. So what is our problem? Our ultimate problem with bad church announcements is that nobody is showing up or that, like, nobody even knows about what we have going on. I actually, I did a video, a while back called Youth Pastor or Event Coordinator. It's going to be linked right up here at the top of the screen if you're watching here on YouTube. 00:02:03:00 - 00:02:05:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But one of the things I've learned in my 14 00:02:05:07 - 00:02:25:08 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry years of youth ministry experience is that attendance and, just people simply showing up. That's a really important factor to planning a good event. You can have an awesome event, but if you don't have people there, it's going to be a problem. And part of people getting there is knowing that the event is happening and understanding, knowing, hearing. 00:02:25:12 - 00:02:57:13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you know, like realizing that you're giving a church announcement that requires action out of them. And the video I explore this kind of tension, right? That many of us in ministry, church ministry, like, regardless of if you're in youth ministry or not, we feel about our jobs and it's this it's right. Is are we meant to be doing what we're doing to ultimately make disciples, or are we doing what we're doing to plan killer events? 00:02:57:21 - 00:03:23:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And sometimes, if you're anything like me, let's just be honest. It feels like we are our job. Like it has morphed much more into an event planner and I don't know about you, but that's not exactly why I got into youth ministry. Right? But the problem, right, that's the problem with our church announcements, is because we have an event and we want people to get to it. 00:03:23:16 - 00:03:50:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Poor attendance is the problem with bad church announcements. Okay. And so if attendance is our issue, if that's the baked in assumptions, that's the baked in desire. And when we say, nobody knows what's going on, it's because nobody is attending our events. That is the no. But that's who that is coming from. So let's take a step back then. 00:03:50:05 - 00:03:59:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Even more right than just the event, then just the good or not so good church announcement and ask ourselves, like, what is our 00:03:59:05 - 00:04:12:22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry goal around this event? What is our goal by giving this announcement? All right, so our goal just like the problem or the opposite, the problem, our goal is to get more people 00:04:12:22 - 00:04:14:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry aware of and more people 00:04:14:05 - 00:04:20:22 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry to know about the thing, the event, the Bible study, the workshop, like whatever it is. 00:04:20:22 - 00:04:21:15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Right. 00:04:21:15 - 00:04:28:13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Is that the goal? No, it's not our goal. At least not ultimately, 00:04:28:17 - 00:04:29:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry at 00:04:29:01 - 00:04:29:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry least not 00:04:29:09 - 00:04:53:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry the meta goal. Right? Attendance is not necessary is really the goal in and of itself. But like I said, when we feel like event coordinators, it can feel like the goal, the goal in church ministry, the goal with all of your events, ultimately, the reason you're even having such and such event 00:04:53:19 - 00:04:54:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry is 00:04:54:05 - 00:04:56:19 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry life transformation. 00:04:56:21 - 00:05:28:17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Give me a subscribe if you agree with that statement. Life transformation is the ultimate goal, not attendance. It certainly helps having people there at your event because if they're not there, how can their lives be transformed? So I'll give you that. But we have to stop making a Tennessee Ultimate goal. I have to start realizing that we're really trying to be in the business about life transformation, which is done and led down the path through disciple making. 00:05:28:17 - 00:06:08:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so you have to remember that prior to the digital era, attendance was the means to accomplish that life transformation. But we live now in the digital era, and so we can reach people and we can, disseminate a message through much more efficient and effective means. Now, with cell phones and technology and podcasts and YouTube videos and social media and fill in whatever blank you want to write, you got to realize that it's getting people in the room was originally that goal towards life transformation, but that's not exactly the era that we're living in. 00:06:08:08 - 00:06:19:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So what is the goal? If the goal is life transformation, how can we accomplish that? And also, how can we accomplish that in the new digital 00:06:19:05 - 00:06:19:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry era? Right. 00:06:19:16 - 00:06:20:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Churches 00:06:20:01 - 00:06:34:14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry like I referenced it in the intro, churches are operating like it's the 1990s. And here's what I mean by that. In the 1990s, if you want to do watch Seinfeld, you had to catch it live on NBC the night that it aired and debuted. 00:06:34:20 - 00:06:49:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And if you didn't, then you better hope that you have a good DVR, which I don't even know if those are existed in the 90s. And then if you didn't have that, then tough luck. Mean you're going to have to catch that sucker on syndication when it comes out in the summer. 00:06:50:05 - 00:06:59:14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Compare that to the drop of Stranger Things season two, where my wife and I, pretty children watched the entire season on 00:06:59:14 - 00:07:00:23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry a Saturday, right? 00:07:01:04 - 00:07:06:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Like it's just a completely different mindset and framework. We live in a 00:07:06:07 - 00:07:26:00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Netflix culture, not a cable TV culture, and so people when you have information, they're operating under the guise of it being Netflix, but we're treating it like cable TV, like we said, this thing I'm going to share with you the key to life. Feel like cool, tell me where to find it. 00:07:26:00 - 00:07:34:06 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you're like, Sunday at 10:00, so only time to find it. That that's a huge cultural disconnect. 00:07:34:06 - 00:07:43:10 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So I have a few ideas of three different problems and a solution for each of the problem. Let's dive in. 00:07:43:10 - 00:07:57:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So one of the reasons that I think our church announcements can tend to be failing is this. This first concept here, I think, is just that we live in a culture with an oversaturation of noise. 00:07:57:01 - 00:08:20:17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry You know, there's so much noise around us. There's so much and so many things that are just simply vying for our attention. And so we as a church, we two are vying for people's attention, piling on, on, Karen, you have a podcast called Inadvertent Blindness. And what he said, he said, really? We really only see what we're looking for. 00:08:21:03 - 00:08:21:13 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And 00:08:21:13 - 00:08:41:01 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry so the fact is, if people aren't looking for your church thing, again, that Netflix versus cable TV, if they're not looking for it, like, oh, I heard there was a retreat. So I'm going on the website to find the answer to it. Right? As opposed to us who we're like, we're dishing it out. We're like, well, we announced it on Sunday. 00:08:41:05 - 00:09:01:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry They weren't looking for it on Sunday. Right? It's that oversaturation of noise, inadvertent blindness. Right. So if you think about some of the noises in the world, I shared this a couple videos back. I'll share it again here. It's going to be linked on screen. If you're watching on YouTube to have you take a look. If you're in a podcast catcher, you can scroll down and click the link to our YouTube video. 00:09:01:04 - 00:09:26:14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Love to have you over there. Give us a like you show it. But, show up over there. But this video here talks about how we spend our time, especially spending our time online and the online amount of time like that. We as as people, sociology, have spent time on phones and on devices has skyrocketed compared to some of the time prior to the invention of tech. 00:09:26:14 - 00:09:47:15 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Which, let's just be honest, it's not necessarily a surprise, but it is like it is a like factor that we have to deal with, right? In today's day and age. In 2025, people that don't know what's going on, it's probably because there's so much to pay attention to. So 00:09:47:15 - 00:09:56:21 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry my proposal, right, my solution is get my free hybrid strategy guide. 00:09:56:21 - 00:10:26:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry It's linked down below in the show notes. And the reason why that's important is because that will help you shift in some areas from a cable TV culture, where the only time that people can hear you hear the message of Jesus, hear your announcements, whatever the case may be to more of a Netflix culture and it just it encourages you to show up where people are spending their time, which is on social media. 00:10:26:14 - 00:10:46:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Right. Give me a segue. Right. If you've ever heard or thought this before, like, hey, we need to get the word out, let's blitz our social channels. And if all you're ever doing is blitzing your social channels with getting the word out, then you're just turning your social channels into an announcement bulletin board. And that's not what those were made for. 00:10:46:04 - 00:11:07:05 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so you're going to have a less effective reach on those social channels because you're not using them what they were made for. Instead, send an announcement out via like a push notification, a text message, or even like update it on the calendar, right? And like and like what we do is like we encourage our parents, our students to just like, subscribe to our Google Calendar. 00:11:07:05 - 00:11:15:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so something changes. It changes on our end. It'll change on their end if they're subscribed to it in their where in their calendar, 00:11:15:02 - 00:11:27:12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry which is what, like an event. That's where an event is meant to be inside a calendar, but not just on your church calendar, on your church website that you want people to go to so that they know about your event. 00:11:27:18 - 00:11:29:10 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry You want it to somehow get to their 00:11:29:10 - 00:11:56:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry personal calendar. That's how people live their lives through their calendars. So use the things that are meant to be used for the purposes that they're made for. And you use social media for the purposes that it's made. For my hybrid strategy, God will help you knock social media out of the park and become more hybrid with some of your messages and other, channels and usages on social media. 00:11:56:12 - 00:12:20:12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry So the second reason that I believe that some of our church announcements are falling flat is because we as churches are living in a cable TV mentality versus a Netflix or an on demand mentality. Or like, you understand, we've been talking about that in this video. The person who, I think has helped navigate that best for churches is, Brady Scheer up at Pro Church Tools. 00:12:20:14 - 00:12:42:18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And, he has a website builder called nucleus. And now, whether you use his website builder or not, and if you don't really have experience building websites, then I 100% recommend nucleus because it's a church, website builder for churches and by church like people. And so you don't have to have a ton of like, website skills to make it happen. 00:12:42:18 - 00:13:02:11 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Like a noob like me can build a website using nucleus. But more than that, like what I want you to understand is that his concept behind it being nucleus is that every church announcement is done on the website. And so as opposed to like you getting up on the stage and 00:13:02:11 - 00:13:02:23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry saying, 00:13:02:23 - 00:13:03:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry if you 00:13:03:07 - 00:13:07:03 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry want like information about bunco night talk to do your aunt Sally. 00:13:07:08 - 00:13:25:20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And if you want information about the youth retreat, talk to youth pastor Ryan. And if you want to give, you can give via, our website. You can do text to give. You can scan this QR code for Venmo. We have Apple Pay, we have Google Pay. And, if you want to know about the prayer meeting, email Chuck. 00:13:26:02 - 00:13:35:18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Chuck at our church.com and the kids ministry has a big camp out thing coming up. Swing by and grab a flier in the lobby 00:13:35:18 - 00:13:36:04 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry like 00:13:36:04 - 00:13:36:14 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry there 00:13:36:14 - 00:13:50:00 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry were five different call to actions in that, right? There's Sally, there's the youth pastor. There's any different amalgamation of giving opportunities. There's emailing, and then there's a flier. And he said, 00:13:50:00 - 00:13:55:17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry make your nucleus, make your church website, your one stop shop. 00:13:55:19 - 00:14:12:17 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I created a video. I'll link it down below. A couple weeks back. And the video is literally titled, I created this video so that you don't have to hire me. And in it, I talk about my three step strategy guide, which you'll get some of that in my hybrid ministry, strategy guide if you download that from earlier. 00:14:12:17 - 00:14:41:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry But in the video, the three step strategy is step number one update and keep your website up to date. Your website should be a reliable one stop shop for everybody, and one of the ways to make your announcements better is to have the support of your website behind it. And so like for example, Brady uses this example all the time, like a trailer for a movie. 00:14:41:11 - 00:15:08:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry When you go to the theater, you're not like sitting there watching a trailer to a movie that you can't wait to see. And it ends with them being like, now on November 27th, it's going to be showing at 11, 1131, 115, 230. And that's going to be in theaters six theaters, seven is going to have at 315. Like, no, that's boring, but that's what we do as churches, right? 00:15:08:16 - 00:15:31:18 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry Bunco night. Here's all the details in the fellowship hall. Bring a dip to share. It's going to be on November 27th. It's going to be at 730. If you don't have any dice, make sure you contact your aunt Sally and she'll bring you an extra pair of dice. That's boring. And so we're trying to take information and make that be the thing that captures people, people's attention. 00:15:31:18 - 00:15:52:07 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And you know as well as I, especially for Chinese social media for that that's not what social is used for. Best, you're not going to get them hooked them with the information. And so what do we do to capture their attention? So a movie trailer is just like, you know, it like makes you like fall in love with the idea of this movie wicked. 00:15:52:09 - 00:16:12:12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And then when it comes out, what do you do? You go discover when it's playing. You go to the website, you figure out how to get the tickets, you wanted to do it first, and then that promoted you to action in church. We give all the information and hope that that's going to promote people to action, and it has the opposite effect. 00:16:12:12 - 00:16:38:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And so if you back up your church announcements with a good website, that's always up to date, you can get on stage and make your announcements good closer to like a movie trailer. Esq knowing that your website is going to answer the questions that people are looking for. So my solution to this cable TV versus on demand world is I have a resource. 00:16:38:16 - 00:17:01:23 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I have a service called communications for you. It's where I will run your church communications. I will make your website. I'll keep it up to date. I can even help promote and manage some of your socials, and so you can explore more of what that looks like in the link down below. But I'm sure as I'm explaining, like you, you have a good website and all these things, you're like, that sounds great, I don't have time. 00:17:02:01 - 00:17:04:20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry I can make your announcements better by keeping 00:17:04:20 - 00:17:30:16 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry your website behind you. Good, clean and up to date. And then reason number three is very simply, your announcements are just boring. Like they're just boring. And what I have for you is an announcement strategy that I want to encourage you to start steeling for better, more crisp and clearer church announcements. 00:17:30:16 - 00:17:31:02 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And 00:17:31:02 - 00:17:34:12 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry that is going to be linked on the video in the very 00:17:34:12 - 00:17:47:20 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry next, video, in this, playlist and in this series. And so that's going to be right here on screen. If you see that, go ahead and tap on in so that you can get better and less boring church announcements. We'll see you over there in that video. 00:17:47:20 - 00:17:52:09 Nick Clason | Hybrid Ministry And don't forget my friends as always to stay hybrid.