February 16, 2015

Spring Forward: Combat the Dread of Daylight Savings Time Sunday

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I’m always excited about Daylight Savings Time. More sunlight in the evenings. That feeling that warmer air and green plants are just around the corner. What’s not to love?

Oh yeah. We all lose an hour of sleep on a Sunday morning. This year, that Sunday is March 8.

It seems silly that one hour causes masses of people to miss church, but alas, every year it does. Your early service volunteers will be groggy. People will “forget” to set their clocks forward on Saturday night. (I still find people make this excuse, despite the fact that everyone I know uses their cell phone as an alarm, and those babies set themselves forward.)

A really creative church will use all of this to their advantage. Here are some ideas:

    1. Start church late and cut it short. 
      Say your service usually starts at 10 a.m. and lasts until 11:00 a.m. On DST Sunday, start it at 11 a.m. and go until 11:30. No one has ever complained about a short church service, so don’t even begin to worry about that. I know of a church that did this, and offered breakfast from 10-10:30. They saw an attendance increase on DST Sunday. People came early to eat with their life groups, or invited a friend who normally didn’t come to church for the free breakfast. Another perk: People who usually drift in late will suddenly find themselves early. Oddly enough, promoting it for only a few weeks before, the congregation actually built momentum towards a day that is usually among the lowest attendance of the year. If you have multiple services, this concept is obviously difficult to implement, so here’s another…
    2. Do Something Out of the Ordinary.
      Use this Sunday to giveaway t-shirts or stickers or car magnets — something people will want and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Or make coffee in your coffee shop free for the day. Try out a new message format. You get the idea.
    3. Plan a Creative, Engaging Salvation Message, and Encourage Your Congregation to Bring the Unchurched That Day.
      For people who don’t usually get up on Sunday morning, the time of the church service won’t make any difference: They’re losing sleep and it’s probably more than one hour. But knowing they need to give a friend a ride or meet them early for breakfast just might inspire your church members to double check their alarms.
    4. Do Something Special for Your Volunteers.
      They’re faithful all year-round. An early morning service is a great time to remind them how they make the mission possible and thank them for all they do.

The key to all of these ideas is communication on the front end. And ultimately, the point isn’t to ensure no one skips church, but rather, to leverage a shared cultural experience into momentum for your gathering.

What other ways have you found to combat the dread of Daylight Savings Time?

Tiffany Deluccia -

Tiffany is our Director of Sales & Marketing. She graduated from Clemson University, and before joining The Unstuck Group, worked in public relations with major national retail brands, nonprofits and churches on content creation, strategic planning, communication consulting, social media and media relations.

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