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Below is one thing you can do to get people in the auditorium at the start (not 3 minutes after) the service begins.

While we can’t control when people arrive at church, we can help those who are present on time, or before, to come into your gathering area at the beginning of your service.

No, I am not against people hanging out and talking, but if most of your people are in the lobby at the start of the service, the start of the service will feel flat every week. And if it feels flat every week, people will train themselves to wait a few minutes before coming in. A perpetual cycle that never ends!

But it can.

If you want people to come into your service on time (or before), they need a consistent trigger that tells them service is about to start.

My recommendation? Create a two-minute countdown video with music that plays the same music every week. Whether or not you have any screens in the lobby, the countdown music itself is a queue for people to begin to make their way in.

At New City, our two-minute countdown consists of a countdown clock overlayed on pictures of previous baptisms, events, and gatherings at our church that rotate until the timer hits zero, at which point we begin our service.

Two minutes before our service, our pre-service worship music played via Spotify into our speakers changes to the upbeat, instrumental music from our video.

While we change the rotating pictures from time to time, we have never changed the music in the video. It has literally been the same instrumental jingle for over 5 years.

Our people know it’s time to come in when they hear that music. The best part is it really does make a difference.

Note: you need to have speakers in your lobby, for this to work. If you are portable or don’t have speakers installed in your ceilings, you will want to set up a speaker in the lobby so people can hear the music change.

If they don’t hear the queue, they won’t know service is about to begin. And then you're left hoping (and sometimes begging) people will start coming in at the start of the service.

Create some sort of countdown timer a couple of minutes before the service begins. I recommend two minutes, as anything longer than that may train your people to think they still have more time before the service is going to start, and thus ignore the trigger.

Last week on the Practical Church podcast I shared 7 ways to be less distracting while preaching. Not yet subscribed? Do so below so you can get the episodes sent right to you.

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What do I keep blaming on Covid that is no longer Covid’s fault?

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