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…that one about the cockroach and Capitalizing on the Segue

 

Adam's Cockroach Story

This weekend during announcements, Adam told the story about how he rescued his wife from the world's largest cockroach…

Posted by Life Church on Tuesday, March 28, 2017

 

Sometimes I start with a story and tie that into an announcement.  This one resonated really well with our church (and on Facebook). Even though it turned out to be a great story, the hero of the announcement was a segue.

Capitalize on the Segue

For our announcements, the segue is the most important part. If I can’t tie the story into the announcement, even if it’s a funny or meaningful story, I don’t use it. I’ve practiced timing and wording on multiple stories that I’ve never used.  I’m not really there to be entertaining (in which case, a story would be enough) but I’m there to use our announcements to inspire a response – a story isn’t enough.

In this case, I had been working on this story but had no idea what to tie it into.  The other announcements that day were for our new members class, baptism sign up and our life groups. I was going to skip the story and save it for another week. I didn’t have a meaningful segue.  I was just going to present our announcements.

Our communication plan for the service had my pastor talking about our book and its availability next week, but in our communications run down (about 20 minutes before service), he realized there was something else he needed to communicate and asked me to mention that the book was sold out – gone.

That’s when the lightbulb went on for me and I knew I had my segue.

In this case, I breezed through the segue as if it was a continuation of the story.  The segue doesn’t have to be a highlight, or somewhere to stop and explain in a significant way.  People made the connection between where I was coming and where I was going.

I would love to hear about how you’ve created a segue in your announcements in the comments below.  Maybe it’s not from a funny story, but just between one announcement and another. How have you tied to the two together so it sounds like a continuing thought, rather than a list of what’s coming up?