Communicating For a Change: Chapters 1-5

List one significant insight from each of these chapters. Make sure to note: Chapter 1...Chapter 2etc (all five must be noted to receive credit).
Chapter one: Work on your ministry, not just in it. Chapter two: Chapter three: Determine your goal. The point is not to just teach the Bible. The point is to teach people how to live according to the Word. Chapter four: Pick a point. Pick one point to be your message that is a short and simple statement that summarizes the entire message. You have to narrow the focus of your message to one point and use everything else in your message to illustrate, support and help make it memorable. Chapter five: Create a map. Outlines are like an encyclopedia that has lots of good information but overall is boring. A map leads people on a journey that engages them in a story. Build your map using a relational outline that builds around the relationships between you, your audience and God. MEWE-GOD-YOU-WE Chapter six: Internalize the message. Before you can stand up and deliver a message, you must own it by being able to communicate your message without notes. The best way to remember it is to have one point. How can you expect others to internalize your message when you havent? Speaking from memory isnt difficult when you are telling a story. It becomes difficult when you try to weave various points together instead of telling a story. Dont use an outlineuse a map! Chapter seven: Engage the Audience. When we communicate to an audience, we are taking those people on a journey. It is essential that we take them WITH us. When we write our sermon, we are mapping out a journey. Engaging your listeners and making sure they are following with you is the first WE section on your map. You engage them by CONNECTING with them around a real need in their lives. You must make them aware of a need in their past, present or future that makes them want to listen to you and follow you to the answer to that need. By constantly looking for ways to connect with your audience, you turn the ME into WE on the map. Your job is to look at the truth of Scripture from every point of view; the believer and the unbeliever, men and women, young and old. Once youve

done that you can ask and answer questions that your audience is asking. (pg. 62) Chapter eight: Find Your Voice. Be who you are while acknowledging that the audience is there and connecting with them. The goal is to communicate as well as the best of communicators, not to communicate like the best of communicators. Listen to a variety of voices until you eventually find your own. Listen to yourself preach and be your own coach while making notes of how you can improve. Your style can be a smoke screen for a whole load of bad communication habits but be who you are. Chapter nine: Find some traction and when you get stuck you have to get started again. Stuck is not the same thing as getting lost. When you are stuck, you know where you want to go but you dont seem to be able to get there. Two tools to get unstuck as a communicator are prayer and to utilize a checklist. You need to be on your face allowing God to check your alignment! You also need a list of questions that help evaluate if you are on the right path. When you get stuck remember you are unpacking a Biblical principle that you have carved out of Scripture. You are also giving your audience a reason to apply it to their daily lives. Chapter ten: Once you determine your goal, take a single point of Scripture and present it in a clear, engaging, memorable way that can be applied and remembered by your audience. Never lose sight of the fact that its God who really does the talking. Communication will not change overnight because its a process. Chapter eleven: Determine your goal: What are you trying to accomplish? What is the win? Your approach to communicating should be shaped by your goal. Three ways to teach that fuel the majority of communicators in our Churches: 1. Teach the Bible to people. Your goal is to explain what the Bible means. 2. Teach people the Bible. Your goal is information transfer and to make sure your audience understands and remembers. 3. Teach people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the Bible. Your goal is CHANGE. Like Paul, we should seek to address the specific issues confronting the people in our audience. We must answer two questions: So what? And Now what? Your audience wont do much with what youve taught until you teach them what to do.

Chapter twelve: Pick a point. Communicate a single idea, a specific thing to be accomplished. Plan with the end in mind. A point is an application, an insight, or a principle. What is the one thing I want my audience to know? What do I want them to do about it? Build everything around the main point. Dug until you find the main point and then build everything around it. Once you discover a text or passage that addresses your idea, let the Bible speak. Let the text speak for itself whether or not it agrees with your idea. When it doesnt agree, dig into the text and allow yourself to learn something. Take time to reorient your message around the one thing, otherwise it will get lost amongst the other things. THE ONE THING ISNT JUST INFORMATION. ITS NOT JUST A CAREFULLY CRAFTED PHRASE. IT IS LITERALLY A BURDEN. IT IS A BURDEN THAT WEIGHS SO HEAVILY ON THE HEART OF THE COMMUNICATOR THAT HE OR SHE MUST DELIVER IT. A BURDEN BRINGS PASSION TO PREACHING. IT TRANSFORMS LIFELESS THEOLOGY INTO COMPELLING TRUTH. (pg 113-114) Chapter thirteen: Create a map. What is the best route to your point? ME- a dilemma the speaker has faced or is facing. WE- a common ground with the audience around a similar dilemma. GOD- Transition to the text to discover what God says about it. YOU- Challenge your audience to act on what they heard. WE- What could happen in your community, Church or world if we all did? Two extremes can happen in the text. We either skip along the surface without engaging the text or we get bogged down too deep. Chapter fourteen: Internalize the message. Whats your story? Before we stand to deliver a message, we must own it. You should be able to communicate the message as an authentic conversation. The message must in some way become a personal story. Stories are easy to remember and repeat and so are good sermons because they are like a good book or a good movie. They engage you at the beginning by creating some kind of tension. They resolve that tension. Then there is a climax. And then there is a conclusion that ties up all the loose ends. Chapter fifteen: Engage your audience.

First pose a question your audience wants answered or create a tension they need resolved or point a mystery they have been unable to solve. Three questions to ask about your intro: 1. What is the question that Im answering? What can I do to get my audience to want to know the answer to that question? 2. What is the tension this message will resolve? What can I do to make my audience feel that tension? 3. What mystery does this message solve? What can I do to make my audience want a solution? Write out your transitions and help people stay with you. Turn to one passage and focus on just one passage. Dont read long sections without comment and lead people through the text. Highlight and explain odd parts but keep moving. Chapter sixteen: Find your voice. Authenticity covers a multitude of communication errors. Know who you are. Accept who you are. Be who you are. Clarity trumps style. Know your point and make it! Constantly ask yourself: What works? What works for me? Chapter seventeen: Start all over. Whats the next step? First thing to do when you get stuck is to pray. Stay in that quiet place until God quiets your heart. Pray before, during and after. Pray and remind God that this was not your ideait was His idea. Confess that every opportunity you have to open the Word in front of people is from Him and that anything helpful you have ever said also came from Him. If lacking clarity, go back to the basics: What do they need to know? INFORMATION Why do they need to know it? MOTIVATION What do they need to do? APPLICATION Why do they need to do it? INSPIRATION How can I help them remember? REITERATION The #1 predictor of the growth of any Church is the preaching ability of the preacher.

Doctrine That Dances: Chapters 1-2

Post one significant insight from each chapter AND respond to two other class members posts.