It's Wednesday afternoon. Sunday's announcements are due, and three of them are somewhere other than my inbox.

One came as a text on Saturday night. One is an email with a flyer attached and no date anywhere in it. One is a folded note that I can read about eighty percent of. And somebody caught me in the hall after service to ask whether I'd gotten her thing, which I had not, because she had not sent it.

Every one of those people is doing their best. Every one of them cares about their ministry and I do too. Yet, I still can't publish a word of it without making three phone calls. This is the reality of church work. So how do you get everybody on the same page, without being rude?

Let me start by admitting something, because it changes the whole answer.

Sitting down to document this for my own church's administrative staff, I wrote out our submission deadlines from memory. And I got them wrong! I said Saturday. Our bulletin has said Wednesday for years. Sometimes, it is printed. We read it during announcements on Sunday mornings. I still didn't know it.

That is the actual problem, and it isn't that people won't follow a process. It's that the process lives in too many places and none of them is anybody's memory, including the memory of those that help run the office.

One form, one place, clear deadline with its reason attached

That's the whole fix. Not software. Not a new system anybody has to learn. One form that everything comes in on, one place to find it, a deadline that explains itself and the online option that is as easily accessible as the print. 

Require only what you can't publish without

The temptation with a new form is to ask for everything you've ever wished you had. Resist this urge. Every extra field is a reason for somebody to put the form down and send you a text instead. Our aim is to reduce friction in this area.

Our form requires six things:

• What's happening, in a sentence or two, the way you'd say it out loud
• When, meaning day and date, because "Saturday the 12th" when the 12th is a Sunday accounts for about half of all announcement corrections
• Where, including which meeting space, if applicable
• Who to contact, with a phone number/ email
• What you want people to do: just come, sign up ahead, bring something, give, volunteer
• Where it should run: the weekly email, Sunday announcements, the bulletin, website, social media?

Everything else on our form is optional. Cost, a sign-up link, a theme and scripture, whether they have a flyer or need one made. Nice to have, but never make that a blocker to submit.

One field turns out to matter more than I expected "has the Pastor approved this?", because inevitably things slip thru the cracks and in the worst cases, an announcement runs and then has to be walked back. These are the "small foxes that ruin the vine", as the old folks used to say. You never want the Pastor or relevant leadership surprised on a Sunday morning nor do you want it to cause embarrassment or frustration for the person who is submitting, due to something that is entirely avoidable.

Prioritize equally online & on paper

An online form is the obvious streamlined answer, but it's only half of an answer. Keep printed copies in the office, with the same fields in the same order, so that a paper submission and a digital one arrive equivalent and nobody in the office is translating between two shapes.

I encourage you to see this, not as a courtesy; but as the way we support the whole body in this season. The member who doesn't use a computer shouldn't get second-class help with her church announcements.

The hallway exception

Dear reader, I'll be transparent about the part that gets me the most, it's holding the line. Every article on this and great administrator that I know say the same thing; stop accepting hallway requests. Make them use the form. Hold the line!

I'm not doing that.

The dear sister who has handed me a folded note after service for fifteen years is not a workflow problem. She is the reason there is a church to send announcements about. Correcting her in a hallway, in front of people, over a piece of paper that she brought because she cares? That's a bad trade no matter how much time it saves me.

The form carries the deadline, and I say the rest out loud:

If you catch me in the hallway, I'll still take it. I'll just fill the form out for you while we talk.

Nobody gets turned away, the structure still works and I turn our conversation into a teaching moment. Those two things were never actually in conflict. It only looks that way if we've decided our volunteers are the obstacle vs. the process being the obstacle.

How to introduce it without it feeling like a new rule

A form that shows up unannounced reads as a complaint about how people have been doing things. And in case you've not noticed,  our ethos is not to prioritize process over people. A few things that help:

• Talk to whoever currently receives announcements before you publish anything. You may be the senior pastor, the executive minister, the business manager, a member of the tech team, or the office secretary; and as such you may have workflows that includes another person. The receptionist perhaps? If they've been the inbox for two years, a form that quietly reroutes their mail is a surprise they don't deserve. Let this be a conversation first and a form second.
• Announce it as help, not as policy. "Here's the fastest way to make sure your event gets announced right" beats "all announcements must now be submitted via…"
• Put the link in the same place every week. Have it in the weekly email every single time, plus somewhere easy to find on the website. Have the link to the online form on the paper form for those who grab a paper copy on their way out but find it easier to submit online. One place to point people to is the main point.
• Fill it out for people for the first few months. Cheerfully. The form gets adopted by being a useful guide, not by being required. As people see it as a help more than a hindrance, adoption grows with less pushback.

Why September is when this often breaks

If your office feels like it's drowning right now, that's not a coincidence and it isn't a personal failing. Everything restarts in the same few weeks. Faith formation and Bible study classes come back from summer break, choir rehearsals ramp up for Holidays and special programs, standing ministry meetings resume, Fall programs, festivals and revivals abound. Every ministry leader wakes up needing something from the office, and there's usually one person in the middle of all of it. If you are that person, we feel your pain. The intake problem is survivable in June. In September it's the whole job.

Take my form

You're welcome to it. I designed a one page announcement form that prints clean on a black-and-white copier, with an editable Word version so you can put your own church's name and logo on it.

Download Our Church Announcement Form Template

And if you've solved this a different way, I'd like to hear it. I'm always on the hunt for process optimiziation.