It’s here again.
The Sunday where everyone loses an hour of sleep (well, almost everyone - lucky Arizonians). Losing an hour of sleep can cause some difficulties getting to church on time or staying awake during a church service.
In light of this (pun intended), our team here at Vanderbloemen put our heads together to come up with some fun ideas for churches to help keep their sleepy congregants awake this Sunday morning.
1. Send out an email on Saturday evening reminding your church body of the time change.
2. Provide your greeters with free espresso shots or energy drinks (Added bonus: they’ll have no problem keeping up conversation with the visitors).
3. Brew your coffee a little stronger or provide some fun creamer flavors.
4. Provide breakfast or refreshments if you don’t already.
5. Play some upbeat music in your foyer as people arrive.
6. Have a small gift on every seat for each person.
7. Change up the typical order of your service.
8. Include interactive elements in the service – responsive readings, asking questions during the sermon, call and response praise songs, etc.
9. Pictures of puppies and babies are notorious for keeping people’s attention during any kind of presentation...We’re just saying.
10. Play energetic praise songs during your worship.
11. Add a new element to your greeting time: Tell everyone to turn to the person next to them and tell them a joke. Or turn to their left and give the person a 10 second shoulder karate-chop.
12. Play congregational favorites in your worship set.
13. Switch up how you do your time of corporate prayer. If this isn’t typical in your congregation, try having everyone pray out loud at once. Or use a written out prayer for everyone to read together. Perhaps folks could break into groups of 3 or 4 to pray together. Or encourage the sleepy folks to pray with their eyes open.
14. Incorporate standing, sitting, and/or kneeling in ways you haven’t before to keep everyone physically involved in the service.
15. If the children usually leave during the service for their own children’s ministry program, have them stay in the adult service this one time and teach an all-inclusive, family-oriented sermon.
16. Be intentional about teaching something new in your sermon. Use an unexpected sermon title. Or a sermon topic that requires a lot of self-evaluation or participation from the congregation.
17. Keep your sermon on the shorter end of your typical sermon-time.
18. Recognize your volunteers and staff at the end of your service with a gift or a big round of thankful applause – they got there earlier than everyone else!
At Vanderbloemen, one of our core values is “contagious fun.” We hope that these ideas can spark some of your own ideas for ways to engage those of your churchgoers who might be feeling slightly more sleepy than normal this Sunday.