Part 10 (2/2)

a Voice your frustration or skepticism about the text. If it frustrates you, it is frustrating someone in your audience. If it sounds unreasonable or impractical to you, you are not alone. Whenever you can say what your audience is thinking, your audience will consider you believable and approachable.

”That's just hard to believe, isn't it?”

”If G.o.d would allow me to erase a verse, this might be it.”

”Obviously Jesus has never met your boss.”

”If I was one of the disciples I might have walked at that point.”

”This is where we want to raise our hand and tell our sad story. After all, if G.o.d knew what you had been through, you would get a pa.s.s.”

a Help the audience antic.i.p.ate the main point of the text.

”Okay, get ready, here it is a ”

”Then He drops the bomb.”

”At this point Jesus' audience is wondering, *What the heck is He talking about.' Then He tells 'em a ”

a Deliberately read the text wrong, inserting a word that means the opposite and then pause to let it sink in.

”As it is written, it is more blessed to receive than to give.”

”Husbands, love your wives in the same manner that they love you.”

”For by consistency you are saved.”

a Have the audience read certain words out loud for emphasis.

”And the truth shall make you a what? What's the word? Say it with me.'”

”If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will a What's the word? Forgive. He will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

”You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you a What's the next word? Love. Can you believe it? Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you?”

a Summarize the text with a well-crafted statement. Remember, you have promised to address the tension, felt need, question, issue, whatever it is you established up front. Make sure your time in the text actually does that. A pre-prepared and memorized summary statement will insure that you don't accidentally leave the text without making it clear why you were in the text to begin with. That happens frequently in sermons. We think we've made it clear because we've been discussing the text for ten minutes. But covering the text is no guarantee that we've clearly communicated the point of the text.

”Paul's point is that since Christ forgave us, we are to forgive one another.”

”Joseph simply did what anyone in His circ.u.mstances would do who was confident that G.o.d was with him.”

”When Peter acted on his faith, he recognized who Christ was.”

a Use visuals every chance you get. Visuals are engaging. Even bad ones. If you are preaching on the great commission, get a map. If you are preaching on David and Goliath, get a slingshot.

If you are explaining Jesus' insights on the relations.h.i.+p between our hearts and our money, bring some cash. Make a big heart.

One time I was teaching through the verses pertaining to our individual roles in the body of Christ. I got several big gla.s.s containers, filled them with yellow water and put one rubber body part in each. Then I covered each one with a cloth. (By the way, when you have stuff on stage covered with a sheet, you are already ahead of the guy down the street before you even start preaching.) Anyway, it looked like something out of a horror movie. When I pulled the covers off people thought they were real. I explained that that's how G.o.d viewed Christians who refused to act as part of the body. Detached body parts are gross.

Everybody was engaged. Nauseated, but engaged.

a Resist the urge to share everything you have learned in your research. I always have a half page or more of interesting stuff that I love too much to trash but know better than to try and cram into the sermon. If it doesn't facilitate the journey, cut it. If it doesn't help your audience resolve the tension, save it. After all, you've still got YOU and WE to cover. And the last thing you want to do is rush through your conclusion. A hard landing leaves the pa.s.sengers feeling a bit uneasy. The same is true of a rushed conclusion to a message.

Bottom line: Engage the audience with the text. Don't just read it and move on. Don't get lost in the minutia. We want people to love G.o.d's Word. Engage them with it.

4. Add something unexpected to the trip.

The unexpected is always engaging. Always. If you have ever had someone pa.s.s out during a service or had a bird fly into your meeting room you know what I'm talking about. When something unusual happens, everybody is interested. So why not leverage this maxim to your advantage? Plan something unusual.

Not too long ago, Jeff Henderson, the campus pastor at our Buckhead Campus leveraged this principle in a remarkably creative way. Buckhead Church is our video campus. Ordinarily, there is no live speaker, the audience watches a video. There are occasions when we need to have a live communicator. The first Sunday of the year is one of those occasions.

Jeff volunteered to kick the year off with a message ent.i.tled, ”Life Interrupted.” Since interruption was the theme, he decided to stage one. The service started as it usually does. After the offering, the screen dropped and I appeared and began preaching. About five minutes into the service, Jeff and his crew faked a power outage. Everything went dark, including the screens. At that point, Jeff walked up and delivered an amazing message on what to do when life is interrupted. Everybody was engaged. It was incredible. In fact, it was so well done, about half the audience really believed the power went out and Jeff just happened to have a message prepared.

Granted, that was pretty extreme. But there are plenty of things you can do short of a power outage to challenge the predictability of your speaking environment. Visuals accomplish the same thing. So do interviews, banter with an audience member, bringing people up on the stage, letting someone draw or paint while you speak. One morning I sat down at the piano and played a short song I wrote that emphasized the point of the message. It was terrible. But everybody was engaged.

I would imagine that you have missed dozens of opportunities to apply this principle simply because you didn't think about it. You were happy to have an outline. Whose got energy left to plan something unexpected? Here's a suggestion. Get somebody else to think about it. Pull a team together at the beginning of your next series, give 'em your big idea and then a.s.sign them the task of helping you spice things up. My prediction is that they will come up with a bunch of really bad ideas, one of which can be tweaked into a good one. Over time they will gain a sense of what you are comfortable with, and what just won't work for you. Bottom line, look for opportunities to introduce the unexpected. No one will be expecting it.

5. Take the most direct route.

In short, be direct. Your audience needs to know where you are going early in the journey. No doubt you have experienced the frustration of being ten or twelve minutes into a presentation and thinking to yourself, ”Where is this going?” Now stop and think about that for a moment.

If you were to have the audacity to actually stand up and shout out to the communicator, ”Hey buddy, where are you going with all of this?” Two things would take place. Well, maybe three, if you include being thrown out. The first thing that would happen is the communicator would be surprised that you don't know. Because in his or her mind it is perfectly clear where the message is heading. The second thing that would happen is that the speaker would probably tell you precisely where it was heading, to which you may respond, ”Well then why didn't you just tell us that to begin with?”

So where am I going with this? Err on the side of being too direct when it comes to orienting your audience to the question you are going to answer, the tension you want to resolve, or the mystery you want to help them solve. Get there quicker than you think you need to. And be more specific than you think you need to. And repeat it more times than you think you need to. They want to know what you are going to talk about. They want to know where you are going as soon as you begin talking. The longer you hold them off, the greater risk you run of having them disengage.

I was a journalism major in college. That may come as a shock. I hope not. I had a professor named Dr. Davis. He was great. One of his favorite things to do was call students to the front, read the opening paragraph of their story, and ask, ”What are you trying to say here?” On most occasions, the student under fire would rattle off a very cohesive and direct summary of the opening paragraph. Then Dr. Davis would hand the paper back and say, ”Then say it.”

Like you, I've sat through too many messages where I wanted to stand up and say, ”What are you trying to say?” I'm sure they knew. But I didn't know. And they weren't helping me. They were dancing all around their idea but wouldn't just come out and state it. Very frustrating. Worse than that, they had no clue as to the frustration they were creating in their audience. As a general rule, it is better to tell your audience what you are going to talk about before you begin talking about it. Otherwise, they have no context, no frame of reference, for the information you are giving them.

If you run across a topic or narrative that merits a more indirect approach, then do your audience a favor and let them know that you know that the message doesn't appear to be going anywhere. A simple, ”Hang with me, this is going somewhere” will allow all the super linear people to relax. Sneaking up on a topic through the back door is a wonderful communication technique. But there is an art to keeping an audience engaged while you lead them through the dark. If you have credibility with an audience they will trust that your seemingly random information is all going to come together in the end. But for the average communicator, direct is better.

LISTEN AND LEARN.

Some communicators are more naturally engaging than others. But we can all improve. You can become more engaging. Next time you hear someone who you just can't get enough of, ask yourself why. Why are they so easy to listen to? What are they doing or not doing that makes the time fly and the information so accessible? And next time you find yourself counting ceiling tiles and flipping through your Bible waiting for the speaker to stop speaking, ask yourself the same question. Make a list of everything they are doing wrong. Ask yourself what they could have done to make their message work. Rewrite their talk the way you would have delivered it. Then go up afterwards and hand it to them. They will appreciate it. Probably take you to dinner.

Remember, listening is not like reading. If you are reading and lose your place or lose track of the story line, you can back up and read it again. But if you get lost in a verbal presentation, chances are you are lost till the end. So do what it takes to keep your audience with you. Your message is important. Besides, you spent hours putting it together. Don't leave people standing at the station, load 'em up before you leave. And don't lose 'em in your transitions, slow down. And please don't let 'em bail out in the middle of the text. Navigate them through the Scriptures. Take a few risks. Try some new things. Engage your audience.

a Engage your audience.

a Engage your audience.

a Engage your audience.

<script>