Announcements

The church's outward voice — public posts that appear on your church's public website and in every member's portal.

What are announcements?

Announcements are the church speaking to anyone who'll listen. Visitors landing on your public site see them; members see them in their Community feed. Use them for service-time changes, VBS registration, "we're hiring," Christmas Eve plans — anything you'd put on the church bulletin board AND post on Facebook.

Announcements are distinct from broadcasts (internal coordination, optionally team-scoped — sound team, deacons, etc.). The split is intentional: outward voice vs internal logistics have different audiences, different cost-of-error, and different content shapes.

Reactions only — never replies. Conversations belong in pastoral inbox (member ↔ pastor) or in group discussions, not in announcements. See Community → "Where can members reply, react, or post?" for the locked reply-boundary rule.

How do I write an announcement?

Open Community → Announcements in the admin sidebar. The page is split into the composer on the left and your past announcements on the right.

Fill in:

• Title — a short headline (required, ≤160 characters).
• Message — the announcement body (required, ≤8000 characters).
• Hero image — optional. Upload an image directly, or paste an image URL.
• Auto-hide on — optional timestamp. When set, the announcement vanishes from public + member views after that moment (keeps your bulletin tidy without manual cleanup).

Select Publish and the announcement is live immediately — on your church's public website AND in every member's Announcements feed. Or choose Schedule and a future date/time, and it publishes automatically then (it shows as Scheduled in your list until it goes out).

How do I edit or remove an announcement?

Each past announcement in the right-hand list carries a status chip (Live · Scheduled · Expired · Removed) plus Edit and Remove actions. Edit reopens the composer in a sheet so you can change any field (editing doesn't re-notify members). Remove soft-deletes — the record is kept, the post just disappears from both the public site and member feeds.

How do members react?

Signed-in members can react to any live announcement with one of three emoji: 🙏 / ❤️ / 🎉. Counts show on each card. Reactions are visible to other members of your church but not to anonymous visitors browsing the public page (privacy — anon visitors see the content, not who reacted).

Where do announcements appear?

Three places:

1. Your church's public website at /c/<your-slug>/announcements — anonymous-readable. Newest first; shows hero image, title, body, date.
2. The member Community feed at /c/<your-slug>/community/announcements — same content, with reactions enabled.
3. The mobile member app, in the member's announcements feed.

A new announcement notifies members in-app and by push. It is deliberately email-silent — announcements are pull-first, so they never fill inboxes — and each member can mute the Announcements category from their notification preferences.

What if a post should only go to internal members, not visitors?

Use a broadcast instead. The admin sidebar's Community → Broadcasts is the same kind of compose surface but scoped either to the whole church (internal) or to a specific serving team (Sound, Kids, Worship…). Broadcasts never appear on the public site.