masterclass: î ñ ways to improve your sunday service...masterclass: î ñ ways to improve your...

© Grow a Healthy Church All Rights Reserved Page | 1

MasterClass: 25 Ways to Improve your Sunday Service

Hey, John Finkelde here inside the Members Hub with a MasterClass - 25 Ways to Improve your Sunday Service.

I’m sure you're like me, you want to see things get better in both your personal world, your leadership life and your ministry life. In every aspect of your development you want to see growth, you want to see change, you want to see that upward moving in all that you're doing. So I want to jump into a particular important aspect of our church life

The truth is that most people come to Christ in a Sunday service, in a weekend service. Most people make that decision to follow Jesus in a weekend service and also people make immense life changing decisions during, before and after a Sunday service.

Around the whole spectrum of gathering with the community of faith, regardless of the size of your church, people make phenomenal decisions in the house of God. I think it’s encumbered upon us as leaders and pastors to always be looking to see how we can improve our Sunday service.

I think in the area of improving anything it's vital to remember that it's not just about let’s go massively all out on these 25 ways and do it. Sometimes it's just a tweaking of one thing, sometimes it's pulling a lever stronger in one area that gives you overall improvement.

So as you go through the 25 ways, don't be overwhelmed by them. Download the notes, download the PowerPoint slides, have a look at those and see where you can work to see things improve.

Let's jump into number 1.

1. Work your sermon titles Now here's an interesting thing about sermon titles that I've noticed in the last few years. I've been blogging now for about 9 or 10 years and one of the things that's changed in blogging is that it's vital to have a really captivating, attractive title to your blog so that when you put it out in email, in social media people have their curiosity kind of just peaked and go I might check that article out.

You've done that. You’ve been on Facebook or Twitter or you've been somewhere on the web and you see a little headline and you think that sounds like something I'm interested in and you'll click through on it. There is of course click bait, things that are outlandish and


designed to get to you click and when you click through there's just ads everywhere and there's a rubbish article - I'm not talking about that!

I believe that because people are used to having their curiosity stirred, their imagination stirred, that pastors should work stronger on their sermon titles.

I'm going to put a link down here, you'll see it on the page and we'll put this link in there for you, that will take you through to a headline analyser. A blog headline analyser. I've introduced some pastors to this and said put your sermon title in there and see what the analysis says about the emotive aspects, the power words, uncommon words that are there. What is going to trigger someone?

Now you may think this is getting way to complicated John but I tell you what, people are used to titles capturing their attention and I think pastors could do some more work on their sermon titles. So I encourage you to check out that link and try a few sermon titles in it, play around with it. There's a list of words that you can throw in there and working a little bit more on that to make your sermon titles even more attractive than what they currently are.

2. Promote your sermon titles

Once you've got a great sermon title that you've used the blog headline analyser to get it stronger, promote it. Promote it with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Promote it with a graphic. Do a Facebook live about your coming sermon.

I think pastors these days should be utilising every means possible. Emailing your church, texting your church, letting people know this is what I'm going to be preaching on. Give them a little snippet. Stir that curiosity within people and learn the fact that people won't just come to church out of commitment. Some people will but some people will come because you've stirred something within them that says hey I need to be hearing that.

It's like book titles. Sometimes you've bought a book just because the title has captured you. It's the same sort of principle. Promote those sermon titles.

3. Pre service run through

Before every service, do a pre service run through. You, if you're the pastor do it with the worship leader. Having the kid’s leader in that chat is really good. The usher’s leader, someone who's doing communion, someone who’s doing the offering talk, someone who's doing the announcements. Just that small crew of people who are strongly involved in the service that Sunday. Gather them together for a pre service run through.

This will help everyone be on the same page and keep in the same flow together and iron out any sort of uncertainty about any aspect of the content of this morning’s service. It

https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer


allows plenty of communication which is vital I think when you're coming to improving your Sunday service.

If you don't do it already, give it a try. Check it out. You'll need to be there to be a little bit earlier to do it. It only needs to be 3-5 minutes. It might be 10 minutes, depending on how complex the service is. Sometimes it will be a bit longer or a bit shorter, but you'll find it very helpful to keep everyone on the same page.

4. Pre service prayer

I'm a huge fan of pre service prayer, of actually gathering as many of the volunteers together to have a actually have a prayer time. In our church for our 9.30am service we would do this at 9.15am for 10 minutes. We would gather everyone in the auditorium and most people don't come to church that early that it has a negative impact on people.

We'd have our worship team, our worship leaders, we'd have some workers from kid’s church - obviously someone needs to be out there to do sign ins and so on but we had at least some representative. Those involved in ushering and welcoming people, we had reps from those areas as well. Then also we invited the church. Come early and pray for this 10 minutes.

We finished 5 minutes before the start of the service but it just added that strength of unity, that strength of Lord we're seeking you, Lord we're chasing hard after you, Lord we want you in this service, we want the power of the Holy Spirit, we want your word to flow. You can have a great time of prayer.

Pastor, this is a marvellous time to train leaders in how to lead a short prayer meeting. You can have 2 or 3 leaders who are involved in leading that, you can rotate that leadership around. Don't you do it as the pastor, get other people to lead it. Of course you can do it at times but get other people to help you lead that 10 minutes of prayer.

I encourage you to make it closer to the start time of the church because then people who are coming to church who love praying will come a bit earlier to be in that prayer meeting. We find that in our church people will come earlier to be in that prayer meeting because they want to be part of what the Lord is doing in the service that Sunday. If you put it on to early, it's a long time before the start of the service, you won't attract those people into the prayer meetings. So I prefer it to be closer to the start of the service.


5. Pre service alignment

You're obviously doing that in your pre service run through but during that 10 minutes of pre service prayer, pastor take a minute to tell the folks where we're going today, what we're doing, what you're preaching on, what's our aim, what we're endeavouring to do. You might be having a service that has a shorter preach time and you want to have time around the table of the Lord in communion and to wait on the Lord, you might have a prayer moment where you ask people to come and receive prayer for a particular need in their life.

Whatever it is you're focused on, do a pre service alignment minute with all the people in the prayer meeting. Get them on the page with you, get them believing with you, get them standing with you.

I remember years ago I kind of felt like I was carrying the whole service and when we started to do pre service prayer and this pre service alignment, it was so helpful to have that sense of I'm not on my own. How good is it not to be on my own. I've got others joining shoulder to shoulder with me.

Now can I say to you pastor, if you only get 5 people out to this, you've got a small church and you're thinking what's the point of it, do it with the 5. Those 5, those 10, however small it is. Don't be put off by the smallness of the numbers, align yourself with others. Let them carry the load with you. You'll got into your service feeling a lot better.

6. Reserved parking Reserved parking I think is essential, even if you are in a setup, pack down situation, establish reserved parking. Reserved parking for seniors, for disabled, for parents with prams and for visitors.

If you have to make up special signs put them out there so people can see them and know ok I'm an older person, they're catering for me with a parking bays nearer to the door. Or I'm a visitor and they've got guest or visitor parking, fantastic!

Parents with prams really appreciate the fact that there’s parking for them that makes it easier for them to get out of the car and get the pram out of the car and all the things that go with being a young mum or young dad. I remember those days! You had to cart all these bags and everything into church. It's kind of a major deal getting toddlers and babies into church and it just can be a bit overwhelming so special parking for those particular areas and any other areas that you think would be important.


In our church, I didn't have a reserved bay for myself at church. I didn’t see the point because I was there before most people anyway so I could park anywhere I liked. It sends a message of we're going to give our reserved parking to the parents with prams, seniors, disabled and visitors. They’re our priorities in parking.

So reserved parking is an important way to boost your Sunday morning service.

7. Greeters Now I like greeters in the car park, greeters at the entrance - coming through the foyer entrance area. It depends where your carpark is and where your front door is. Sometimes if it's a fairly lengthy walk it's nice to have greeters on the walk. People who are out there, not just at the door or parking the car, but having people milling around outside greeting you as you come in.

Then on the door, it's great to have people on the door, that's a church tradition to have someone on the door.

And then also within the auditorium. If you have a large auditorium to actually have ushers and greeters and people who welcome people and help them get a seat.

Now I think the vital thing with greeters is to do some regular training with them. You can do it, I think on a Sunday morning because it doesn't take too long. But I think training for your carpark greeters. I would tell our carpark guys you're parking people, not cars. So let your focus and attention be on people. Give them a wave and smile, give them a welcome and be happy. Be a happy parker out there. Be a happy parker of people, not just of the cars.

Again in the entrance and the auditorium the big thing to train greeters in is move your friends on very quickly from your greeting place to make sure that you're focused on everyone coming through the door. Have a word to your greeters and train them. Give them a script that they can say to their friends, hey I'm on duty today greeting, I'll talk to you later, I can't talk right now, I really have to get on with my role here. Give them a script, role play it, workshop with them and show them how to move a friend on out of their space in a hospitable, kind way but also that sends the message of hey I'm not here to chat with my friends, I'm here to greet and welcome people.

One of the biggest complaints that you hear from visitors about greeters is they were busy chatting to a friend and they just ignored me as I walked into church. I think it's one of the bad signs of a lack of hospitality in a church so train those greeters.


8. Pre service connect

I think this has gotten more important in the last 10 years. More and more in Australia, people are living solo, they're living by themselves. The stats are quite large. It would be interesting to check out the demographics of your region and your area. You may actually find that you have a high percentage of people living by themselves. Higher than what you realise.

Especially if you're married, living with your spouse, living with your family it kind of gets out of your mind that a lot of people live by themselves. And that can get a little bit lonely. I think one of the great things to do in church is put on coffee, put on some sort of connection place half an hour before the service and encourage people to come early. And you’ll find lonely people will turn up. Put a couple of pastoral care workers in there just to chat with people, engage with people and do a pre service connect.

Now this actually helps your service because people are going to be there at the start of the service. You can close that down 3 or 4 minutes before the service and usher people into the auditorium.

It's actually a good strategy to get people to church early. We all have the problem with people coming to church late. Every church around the globe has that problem. So a pre service connect time - give it a snazzy title, let your church know and you watch, people will come to that to hang out just for a coffee.

Pastor, if you're wired that way you can get in there and do a bit of chat, a bit of pre service pastoral care, like you do after service. I think it's a really good thing to do.

9. Signs and wonders

Make sure you have clear signs to parking, toilets, the children’s area and your auditorium, your sanctuary, where the church meets so that you're not leaving people wondering. Have tremendous signs so that people aren't wondering!

Even though that's a terrible dad joke I think the principle is absolutely vital and important. One of my favourite proverbs and quotes from another leader is, "people say no to what confuses them". One of the things that confuses people is a lack of signage, or poorly lit signs, or poorly designed signs, signs that are too small, signs that don't quite indicate where to go for what you want.

It's really helpful if you actually ask someone who has never been to your church to come to your church, even during the week, and get them to look at your signage and say give us some feedback on the signs to parking, to toilets, to the children’s area, to the auditorium area. Get them to give you feedback on your signage and upgrade your signs. Have a fresh


look at your signs to make sure that people can easily and readily follow them. We are designed to read and follow signs.

10. Check for clutter

A great thing to do and to train a couple of leaders in this, a couple of ushers and stewards, people who look after the building, is get them to go through and look for clutter in the foyer and in the auditorium.

It's amazing what gathers in any place, whether it's a home or public place like a church. It's amazing just what gathers in corners and you'll find lost property, you'll find someone has left some equipment out that was meant to be put away and wasn't. I find in a lot of churches there used to be tissue boxes everywhere in the auditorium, it's like we're expecting a lot of weeping, a lot of crying today or blood noses or something!! I would see a lot of tissue boxes lying around and it's kind of strange when you think about it. Why would you have that lying around in a church? Why don't you find a cupboard to put them in? Put them away somewhere hidden.

What's the clutter in your church? Clean the clutter out every single week.

11. Remove all rubbish When someone has left some stuff and here we go, blame the youth group! Blame the youth leaders. This is a regular Sunday morning game, oh the youth were in here last night or Friday night and they've left a mess, they didn't clean up their pizza boxes, there's Coke cans lying around in the cafe area. Blame the youth!

I think sometimes seniors in churches just rock in on a Saturday morning, make a mess and go out chuckling knowing that the youth are going to be blamed!! I might do that as I get a bit older, make a bit of a mess in our church after Friday night youth and we can blame the youth together like a bunch of grump old people!!

Get rid of all rubbish. Rubbish outside in the carpark, rubbish in your entrance area. You might have had a really windy, blowy night on a Saturday night. Just look around and check that there’s no rubbish hanging around the area because a clean church sends a message that we care. We're interested in our facility, our building, we're interested in what it looks like. In some ways, we're house proud. So remove all your rubbish.

12. Colour scheme

How’s the colour scheme of your church? What does it look like? Is it 1980s, 1990s, 2000s? Is it current right up into 2018 when I'm recording this? What's the colour scheme look like?


Is it dated? Colour schemes tend to go out of fashion, out of vogue, I think about every 7-8 years. That would be my kind of guess at it. When you look at your house, if you don't paint your internal walls about every 10 years there just is a feeling of I think this is a bit old.

I remember when the whole internal painting in Australia, where we lived anyway, was pink and grey. It was kind of like a salmon, a soft pink and grey. It was all the go. So you would go into so many houses and people would have a grey wall, very soft pink tones elsewhere. It was like wow this is the trend, this is in fashion, this is in vogue, if you had that colour.

If you walked into a house today in my city and pink and grey was the go, you'd go oh my goodness, this place needs a colour consultant. Get in there, put up some current colours, a lot of houses now go for a very beige/white sort of look, which I remember used to be huge back about 50 years ago. If you hang around long enough the colour scheme will come back into fashion but I would not recommend that.

So check your colour scheme and also can I just give a little tip here, this does affect your Sunday service, believe it or not. To at least annually, have touch up paint work done. To keep some of those colours that have been painted, do some touch up work so the building looks as fresh as you possibly can get it.

If there’s nothing you can do because you’ve got feature brick, maybe you need to render it, maybe you need to plaster board it and change how it looks but the colour scheme of your church has an impact on how people feel about the Sunday service.

You might say well they should just be worried about Jesus and worship but here's the truth, God looks on the heart but he's the only who does. Everyone else, the rest of us look on the outside. Trust me, if you have your building in 1980s colours, it's going to put people off, it's going to feel like this church is not up to date. I wonder if their language is up to date, I wonder if their thinking is current, I wonder if I can relate to what they relate to. It sends a message, trust me. It may sound trivial, it may sound unimportant, but it is.

13. Contemporary furnishings A similar sort of vogue here, contemporary furnishings. When you walk into, especially your foyer entrance area, when you walk into your cafe/coffee area, how contemporary are the furnishings. When you walk into your auditorium, you might have pews from the 1940s. I would encourage you to invest in some new furniture.

Contemporary furnishings again send the message of relevance connected to the current climate of today. I've probably said enough about this, talking about colour and all those sort of things but you get the idea. Sometimes church foyers can end up being the depository for old pianos, old chairs, things that just look dated and don't match and it just doesn't have that sense of flow about it. We love when we walk into a house or a cafe or a


store that has a sense of there's a flow about this that everything kind of matches. Work on that, raise some money for it, and change it up.

14. Secure sign in for children

A secure sign in for children is absolutely mandatory today. Especially in my nation Australia, we've had royal commissions recently into child abuse in institutions including churches, so the level of compliance and legalities that churches must fulfil now has gone through the roof. Making sure that churches are a safe place for children.

Part of that is secure sign in for kids. I'm not focusing on all the back end compliance issues with children, there's a lot there we could go into, but it's the front entrance that concerns me. That when a parent drops a child off, they have a real sense that you're up to date with the requirements from the government, from the authorities. That there is the legal compliance there, there's also a pastoral care compliance that their child is going to be secure when you sign them in to that children’s church. It's a big issue today. A very important issue, something that every church must look over and must work on.

15. Have a countdown clock

Punctuality, starting the service on time to me is, while it's not rocket science, it is crucial to start your church service on time. On way to do this is have a countdown clock so everyone can see it. Hey the church is starting the service at this time, there it is, I know it's starting in 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 7 minutes etc.

This is really helpful for visitors. They know hey it's going to start on time or they're indicating they're starting on time by having a countdown clock. And also while the countdown clock is up there you can also put up little screens or messages of coming events or promoting your connect groups, promoting your vision, your values, your sermon title, your sermon series. You can throw that in with the countdown clock as well so it can become also a promotional tool that you use in the service but it will keep your worship team, your tech people, your pastor, everyone involved in the service on the clock and they'll go oh ok we need to make sure we're ready to rock n roll.

I've seen this work in churches where a music team will be watching the countdown clock and they'll go hey 30 seconds and they're up on the platform ready to rock n roll and as soon as the countdown clock finishes, the first song starts. I love that.

Punctuality to start a service on time, finish when you say you're going to finish, really sends a message of integrity. We do what we say we're going to do There's an underlying message around punctuality for churches that I think is an integrity message that is important.


16. Song lyrics on the screen

Of course we put song lyrics on the screen but because I am in so many different churches, here's one of my pet distractions and diversions and something that really ticks my wife Dianne off!

To make sure that your song lyrics are on the screen in a timely manner. A lot of churches that I go into, the second chorus has been sung before the words are on the screen. So what I think is a great idea is train your AV operators, your media operators that as soon as the last word on the screen is starting to be sung, switch to the next screen. In other words, get ahead.

This is vital for people who don't know the song. If you know the song you're already signing, you're going with the flow anyway. If you don't know the song, you're hanging on that last word thinking I don't know what's coming next, I wouldn't have a clue. Train your operators to get ahead of the people. Just as they start the last word, get ahead onto the next screen.

If you do use click tracks, and if you know what click tracks are, backing tracks, backing music, adding music into your worship, which I don't have any problems with. I know churches that use it and use it well. I was in a church recently where they had no musicians, they used backing tracks, click tracks, for the entire music and had about five singers up there, that's what they had to do. And it worked fine to be honest with you.

If you use click tracks you can actually design a system that aligns your screen with the song and will do that automatically for you. Personally, I think that's brilliant because it's not left up to the quickness and the agility of that AV operator, it just flows on with the song.

This comes down to training and vision casting of how important this is for the people.

17. Service transitions

Plan your segways between various elements of the service. Whether it's from the worship into the offering into the communion into announcements into the sermon. Think through your transitions.

Service transitions segways should be a smooth as possible. You don't want it to be always slick but you want it to be smooth so there's not awkward silences or so there's not oh what's happening next, are we doing communion? Oh no we're doing the offering.


Even when you're training people in leading meetings, MC’ing meetings if you like, chairing meetings, it's important to train them on the importance of smooth transitions of not allowing things to stop, a moments silence and then oh we're onto the next thing. But actually to overlap the segments, overlap the elements and create smooth segways.

Vital, I think, just to create that sense of flow. The first musician in the Bible, his name was Jubal, his name means stream, it means flow and I think in Sunday services where music and worship plays such an important part, flow is absolutely vital in a service.

18. Backing music

Related to this is backing music. Providing some worshipful background music during transitions. I don't like a lot of silence in services, it's just my history and tradition of church background but I like, there's a technical term for it, it's called noodling, where a musician plays and catches the mood of the moment. It might be low key or it might be upbeat and they capture it and they fill the atmosphere with that backing music. I love to hear backing music right up to the preaching through various elements of the service.

19. Meet and greet time

There's a huge amount of discussion about the meet and greet time. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people don't care. People have different responses to it. Thom Rainer’s blog a number of years ago, the CEO of Lifeways in America, his blog blew up when he went to discussing the meet and greet time. People piled on, it's a phenomenal interesting thing. Just googling Thom Rainer meet and greet, you'll find it. It’s amazing. The comment section is quite fascinating.

I think have a great discussion with your team about do we do a meet and greet during the service or do we not? I prefer it not to be in the service. I prefer it not to happen for a number of reasons. Primarily for the fact that people tend to talk to their friends and visitors generally get ignored. Visitors feel left out and introverts generally don't enjoy this particular part of a service. But discuss it with your team. Read Thom Rainer's blog, get into it. For me personally, I prefer to leave it out of a service.

20. Finish on time

We mentioned punctuality. Finish on time! If you announce that your service goes from 10am - 11.30am, finish at 11.30am. In fact I would say to you finish at 11.25am. Leave people wanting more. Don't finish late.


Now if you don't announce a finish time, that's ok but if you say pastor I'm wrapping up now we'll be done in 10 minutes, finish in 10 minutes. Again its integrity, again it's keeping your word.

You say what does it matter? The Holy Spirit might move in a powerful way and we just kind of throw away the finish time. Well if that happens, fantastic, but at least say hey folks I said we'd finish now at 11.30am, so we're going to close the meeting but we're going to continue with some worship time. If you want to stay and worship or if you want to come and have some prayer, feel free but if you need to go, and we'd like you to go and get your children, but if you need to go feel free to go.

So you release the meeting but at the same time you allow that sense of what God is doing to continue at the same time.

21. Welcome guests

Make sure during the service you welcome new people. People who are not only here for the first time but also people who are visiting for the second, third, fourth time.

So I like the phrase, and I heard this recently, not just saying first time visitor - welcome. But if you're new here, welcome, great to have you. That encompasses first, second, third and fourth time visitors. I like that phrase. If you’re new around here, hey great to have you here. Never embarrass or single out your visitors. You may want to offer them a small gift that they can put their hand up to get or you may have spotters who give that to them before or after the service.

Make sure you have a free coffee card that harvests their contact details but make space to welcome visitors. At the very least, if you do nothing else, at least welcome guests. If you're not sure what to do with your guests, check out the roadmap about how to grow your church through visitors. That roadmap gives you a step by step process to get your visitors back for a second visit and assimilated into the church.

22. Have a guest lounge

Related to this is have a guest lounge. Not all of your visitors will go there - that's ok! Keep it in your foyer or entrance, keep it in your cafe, and keep it connected to where people are. Don't take them out into a separate room. Your pastor can cruise through there, meet people, connect with people and it gives you a chance of making a connection that would otherwise be lost.

If it's a very informal area but you have one or two really friendly people there, don't worry if not every Sunday it gets used. Keep at it, allow people to connect in the guest lounge.


23. Thank your volunteers

Whether you’re a key leader or pastor, after the service go around and thank the ushers, the stewards. Thank the set up and pack down team. Thank the musicians and singers. Thank the kid’s leaders. Thank everybody.

Kind of put on, in that last time that you're there, as people are milling around, put on your thank you hat and go around just pat people on the back, appreciate them, thank them, thank them, thank them. Make that a habit. If you're a pastor or a department head or a key leader in the church, make that a Sunday habit. After church, appreciate the volunteers. Thank them for all that they do.

24. Review

Sit down somewhere and review your service. Now I know a pastor who does this immediately after the service. After everything has calmed down, pulls his team aside and they do a review then and there. He's got a lot of volunteers in that meeting of course, so he says let’s do it now. They'll bring out the things that worked well, the things that need improving and so on.

If you can't do that, or you'd prefer not to do it that close to the service, I don't think I would do it that close to the service but some people are good for that. I prefer during the week and if you can get a few people together who are involved in the service to review it, fantastic. If you have to rely on a what's ap group that gets a little bit tough because there's no tone in those messages.

I'd prefer a phone hook-up during the week. Some sort of zoom, skype meeting where, even just for 15 minutes, let's review it and if you can't get volunteers in to have a meeting, do a zoom meeting or a skype meeting where you can pile in together and just go hey let’s review last Sunday. What worked, what can we improve? It does not have to be a long meeting but reviewing your meeting will sharpen it up because you'll always have something you're looking to improve.

25. Preview In line with the review, preview. Do some prep beforehand. You might want to do it after the review meeting with the same people. Do some review, do some pre view. What have we got coming up this Sunday? What am I preaching? What are we going to do about wedding anniversaries? What are we doing about kids graduating from high school? What about the offering talk? Let's sharpen that up or what's the worship feel.


Do a preview for a meeting sometime well before the Sunday so you've got an idea of where you're heading into the Sunday.

There you go, 25 Ways to Improve your Sunday Service. I hope you've enjoyed this MasterClass. Jump into the other Masterclasses’. I know they'll help you grow a healthy church. God bless you.

masterclass: î ñ ways to improve your sunday service...masterclass: î ñ ways to improve your...

Documents