It amazing that a lot of adults haven’t mastered basic etiquette for using telephones at formal events. Just as it is with many personal or professional development gaps, age doesn’t really define mastery. Learning and development does, so I’m glad you are reading this.
Many years ago, I attended a church leadership programme where these two scenarios played out.
Scenario 1: Just when the hall was quiet and a speaker addressed the leaders, a woman sitting in front of me ‘battled’ a call with someone. Her voice pitch soon started to rise and impede the capacity of the people in her space to actively listen or concentrate.
She tried bending over while the call lasted, supposing that would suffice, but it didn’t. And, even when a gentleman by her signalled to her the need to do what’s proper (that is, stepping out), she stayed put.
Scenario 2: Long into the same meeting, a man on the front row, clinched his telephone handset and was noticed walking briskly towards one of the exit doors. And, like the a cyrene blair, he was accompanied by his loud phone ringtone, which sound only started fizzled the farther he went away from the hall to answer the call.
Those two scenarios were unnecessary and they betrayed the social manners of the ‘characters’. I really thought that was a lot to have in one day. Both scenarios should never/or seldom ever be the case. When you indulge those manners, you show that you don’t value other people spaces or respect yourself.
I decided to write this piece to provide you help, seeing that similar scenarios are still regular experiences at formal functions. This is not an exhaustive guide, but I hope it helps you.
While there are a myriad templates on phone etiquettes, I have benchmarked this piece on how worshippers at Church services can use phones more responsibly.
Phone Manners To Adopt In Church:
- Make it a practice to put your phone on vibrate/silent mode as you approach or arrive at the Church.
- If your phone vibrate mode would be just as loud and distracting, consider the silent/airplane/switch off modes.
- Keep your phone away from your glare, if it’s not being used to take notes and you are not expecting an ‘important call’.
- Should an ‘important call’ come in while you are in Church, slide the caller a short message service promising to return the call soon afterwards.
- If it’s an ’emergency call’, step out of the auditorium or building quietly to pick your call, without calling attention to yourself and constituting a distraction to others.
- Don’t pick up the call or have your phone to your ear while walking away from the hall. Wait to completely get outside.
- Desist from the poor manner of frequently going in and out of the service just to take calls that could have been returned when the proceedings were done. It shows so little about your God awareness.
- While using your phone for notes in church, avoid straying away into ‘irrelevances’.
- Avoid leaving distracting features or displays on your phone screen when sitting amongst other worshippers… stop keeping up with a movie series during service, scrolling through picture slides/gallery, following a social media site, engaging in important, but personal chats unrelated to that space. You distract others when you do so.
- Speak in a soft and low tone when answering your call outside the church building. Don’t call attention to the details of your call when taking a call within the premises. Keep some distance from the nearest person to you when talking on the phone.
- Videos/selfies in church: Before you do, please check to be sure you could do short video clips or selfies in a Church programme. Even in the freest Church environments, timing of this action could make it right or wrong.
- Finally, if the person around you would not want to be captured in your selfie, please respect their choice.
Embrace Decorum
-Good phone manners are acts of service to your brethren and worship/reverence to God.
-Help others avoid any form of distraction when in Church.
-Your telephone is only a device, control it, not the other way round.
-There’s a proper way to do everything; learn it, so you don’t put yourself out there as a social misfit.
-You owe your personal brand that much. Best of luck!
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Enjoy the rest of your week!
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