The Church Social

Thanks to the very talented Lisa Barry for providing the impetus for this tip. She had posted these questions on DJForum:

What do your listeners want you to talk about? How do you know for sure?
Afterward, she sent me HER prep for that day, and this was my reply:

There are two—and only two—lanes to travel. They’re…

[1] what’s on the listener’s mind today (what actually matters to her, not just things she has a passing interest in), or

[2] what she might need to know, but may not have heard yet. RELEVANCE is what wins, and draws the most listeners toward you.

Be a good neighbor and a good companion first. Then, if I come to know that you’re a Christian, we’re even better friends. But ‘good neighbor’ comes first. You just played a four-minute song about Jesus. It’s not a mystery that you’re a Christian.

I just trust and believe in the “visit-driven” show approach, like a church social, rather than a church service. When I was a kid in Louisiana, once in a while our church would have a social after our services. Our parents and we kids would visit, eat a box lunch, and just talk. Sometimes the conversation was about the sermon that day, but it was mostly about people’s kids and what was going on around us.

There were always more people in church the day of the social.