*The following communication tips are largely taken from Andy Stanley and Lane Jones book, "Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication"
“Our approach to communicating should be shaped by our goal in communicating”[1]
Three types of speaking
Teach the Bible to people
If you’re goal is simply to explain what the bible means then this best describes the goal of your communication style. You simply verse by verse, exposit, from a single passage. This communication style works well when you are preaching through the entire bible over the course of a long period of time. This style does not require any creativity nor does it require any application. Because of it’s straight-forwardness, it is also the easiest form of communication.
“Did I cover the material?”
Teach people the Bible
In this method the priority is getting people to understand principles that are outlined in scripture as opposed to teaching the Bible to people in which the priority is to cover material. This method requires more planning as the goal is to get people to remember and learn how a passage of scripture relates to life. Creativity comes into play in finding pneumonic devices, alliterations, and analogies to drive home points found in scripture.
“Did my audience understand and will they remember the material?”
Communicating for Life Change
In both of the above methods, success is determined by how much information is successfully retained by the audience. However, knowledge does not lead to spiritual maturity nor does it lead to salvation. If this were true then all the skeptics, philosophers and bible scholars in the world would be mature followers of Christ. We can look to scripture to know that knowledge isn’t enough. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes of Jesus day were the most knowledgeable people on scripture, yet they considered Jesus to be a heretic and sentenced Him to death.
Holy Spirit
When delving into the topic of Life Change, we must recognize that depraved man in and of himself is incapable of understanding the truth of God’s Word. Moreover, in and of himself, man is incapable of true life transformation. (Psalm 14:1-3, Romans 3:9-18) Apart from the grace of Christ and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit it is impossible to come to faith in Christ turning away (repenting) from our desires and living our life for Christ. (John 14:26, John 3:5-6, Romans 12:2) I believe that it is important to recognize the power of the Holy Spirit as the integral piece necessary for spiritual birth and life transformation so that when we speak our confidence comes out of reverent humility before Almighty God. The pressure on us is off, in so much as affecting life change. Our responsibility in preparation ends in how we ourselves have listened to the Holy Spirit in our own preparation and responded to what the Spirit says to us.
Teach people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the Bible
This third approach differs from the first two in that success is measured by people acting on the knowledge they’ve been given. “(We) want people in the audience to know what to do with what they have heard. And (we) want them to walk away motivated to give it a try….Spiritual maturity is gauged by application not contemplation.”[2] (James 1:22, 2:20; John 13:35)
“With the first goal we discussed the teacher feels successful if he covers the material. A preacher or teacher who embraces the second goal feels successful if the audience is engaged. But if you decide to preach for life change you won’t be satisfied until the behavior of your audience is transformed; and you will be willing to do just about anything to see that transpire.”[3]
Breakdown on Speaking outline
Key Passage
This is the single passage that you focus your time studying. This passage either serves as the motivation for your talk or resolves an insight or conflict you might have thought about. If at all possible try to stick to one passage so that you don’t take the content out of context. However, if you must use other scripture, be sure that you’ve sufficiently studied the key passage so that the other scripture you use harmonizes and clarifies the key passage.
Motivating Scripture/idea
This is your Aha! It’s some new understanding of how scripture relates to your life or an experience you’ve had that puts a burden on you to speak.
What is my goal?
Your goal should shape what you prepare to talk about. This goal is the glue that holds all the various pieces of information together.
Streamlining
You want to focus what you say to a single point. The more focused your talk deeper that one point will penetrate your audience, hopefully leading to life change. There are lots of things we can say and some of it might be good, however if it doesn’t support or clarify our main point then it is excess material that should be trimmed.
Sticky Statement
To drive your main point home it is important to restate the point several times throughout your talk. If you can create a simple and short phrase it makes it easier to interject that Sticky Statement periodically through your talk. The key to developing a good sticky statement is to keep it short and memorable. This statement should direct your talk and keep you from wandering off on tangents. The statement can be taken from scripture.
EX:
· Proverbs 13:20 “He who walks with the wise grows wise.”
· 1 Corinthians 6:18 “Flee!”
The point can be a question:
· What are you running away from?
· What hope do we have to keep living life?
What is your Burden?
What is the one thing that you must communicate? What is the one thing that you can’t leave without making sure someone has heard and understood? Identifying what your burden is makes the differences between being a speaker transferring information and a friend communicating a message to another friend. This should be something that is always on the tip of your tongue. Your burden is the one thing that you want to communicate. This idea should weigh as heavy so that it’s like the last words you’d say to a loved one you’ll never see again. Everything else that you talk about should lead to and continually point back to your burden.
ME, WE, GOD, YOU, WE
This is outlining method based on the relationship the speaker has with the audience. It is meant to flow as if you are having a conversation.
· ME introduces both the speaker and the topic. This section should be used to explore and prep the main idea and create a common ground on which both speaker and audience can relate. It
· WE this is where you connect with the audience and establish that the topic introduced in the ME section is something everyone can relate to
· GOD This is where you bring God into your conversation and examine what scripture has to say about the topic at hand. (How does God address the tension or question)
· YOU this is a challenge to act on what you’ve learned from God’s Word. (Application)
· WE what could happen if everyone in your community/world embraced the idea (Inspiration/Encouragement to do the application)
ME
This is particularly important if the audience is not very familiar with you. It gives the speaker the opportunity to find out who the guy speaking is. If the audience doesn’t buy into you, they will never buy into the message. It is important to build a common ground with your audience by being a little transparent with yourself so they know that you’re genuine. You never want to assume that your audience will just accept what you say. It is very important to during this time find something that you can connect with that the rest of your audience connects with. Like any relationship you have, you must first build trust. A stranger is a lot less likely to receive anything you say than a friend.
WE
Once you’ve introduced the tension through your own life and established some common ground, it is necessary to show that the topic you’re addressing relates to everyone. During this section you want to try to apply the tension to as many areas as possible broadening the topic so that everyone in your audience can relate. Before moving on to the next section it is important to have built up the tension so much that your audience demands that you answer the question you pose. If you have not built the need or desire for the question to be answered then there is no need for your audience to continue listening. Creating this tension is conducive to the speaker audience dynamic as well as beneficial to transitioning from information to application. If the audience is begging to know the answer they’ve already transitioned into just listening to some guy talk to thinking about a solution or answer to the question you’ve posed themselves.
GOD
The transition into the GOD section should come with both relief and hope. This is where you bring your audience to a passage of scripture that resolves the tension or answers the question you posed in the previous section. There are two tendencies you must avoid when handling scripture.
1. Don’t skip through a few verses without engaging or explaining the text. This cheapens the power of God’s word and creates both biblical ignorance and illiteracy
2. Don’t go too deep. If you try to pull rabbits out of hats you discourage your audience from getting into the Word themselves. You do not want to reinforce the idea that they need someone else to understand the bible so that if there isn’t someone else around they shouldn’t even bother.
The goal of this section is to engage your audience with the text. You want them to be exposed to a passage of scripture that deals specifically with the tension they are dealing with so that it makes them eager to study the passage for themselves. Moreover, it sets up your audience to get in the habit of looking to God’s Word for wisdom, guidance, and instruction.
YOU
Once you’ve answered the question with the Truth of God’s Word, now the task becomes transferring knowledge into action. You want to answer the questions: “So what” and” Now what.”
Just as you had one point you wanted your audience to understand, now you want to have one thing that you want your audience to do. Just like in goal setting you do not want to start with some grandiose and vague challenge to the audience. You want to be specific and realistic. Setting a simple and realistic challenge that each individual can do helps set the stage for the next transition into inspiration. However, it maybe necessary to broaden the scope of your application to make it applicable to as many people as possible. In this case answering the following questions can help:
1. How does this apply to me?
2. How does this apply to my family relationships?
3. How does this apply to my relationships in the community of faith?
4. How does this apply to my relationships with those outside the faith?
5. How does this apply at work/school?
6. How does this apply to teenagers/college students?
7. How does this apply to Singles?
8. How does this apply to Young Married?
9. How does this apply to Parents?
10. How does this apply to old people?
Another dynamic to be sensitive to in addressing application is the believer/non-believer. If the topic you are covering relates a biblical principle, in most cases the application will be valid whether the person is a Christian or not. However there are some applications that will hold no application for a person that is not a Christian. In this case I would suggest making an invitation to give unbelievers the opportunity to join in on the application.
WE
You want to close out the talk with a touch of inspiration. You’ve addressed a problem, brought out an answer to resolve the problem, and set out some practical ways to apply what they’ve learned. Now you want to leave them with a little encouragement and motivation to follow through with a commitment to actually apply what they’ve learned. This can be done with a story or illustration that embodies the main idea that you want to communicate. In this section you want to reestablish a common ground that you and the audience stand on. More importantly, once you’ve established where all of you are, you can paint a picture of where all of you can be. You want to move from individual application to the purpose of corporate fellowship, which is to be a light in the darkness and bring glory unto Jesus.
Make the Message a part of you
If you want to move to a communication style that is conversational in nature then it is imperative that you internalize the message. Making the message a part of you frees you from relying on your notes and more fully engaging with your audience. Memorizing and internalizing our message adds to building trust with our audience. If we can say something without having to reference notes it makes it seem like we actually believe what we are talking about. By moving away from notes we also communicate this, “wow! If this guy took the time to memorize this, maybe this is something I should memorize too.” We show the audience how important we think the message is. If we constantly have to look at our notes then we unintentionally communicate, “Wow! Must not be too important, he didn’t even bother memorizing what he says is important.” You want to get to a place where you can tell your sermon instead of preach it. When you have internalized the message you should be able to communicate to another person the whole talk in 5 minutes. If you’re finding it difficult to do this, it probably means you’re trying to fit too much information into your sermon. The message you have to give should be a part of you so that it becomes your story. You don’t have to write something out and memorize it word for word, however, the major points of your message should be memorized so that it’s something you can communicate from experience and conviction.
Memorizing
If any of you have taken psychology classes on memory then you probably know about chunking. You want to separate the different aspects of your talk into chunks. By making big chunks you accomplish several things: 1)Make it easier to memorize by having fewer pieces to remember 2)Boil each chunk down to a basic idea 3) Examine each chunks effectiveness at supporting the one point your trying to make. The chunks I’m talking about are the ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE. It’s a lot easier to remember 5 pieces than several points along with several sub-points. When you organize this way it helps to focus your talk.
Journey vs. Lecture
All of you have sat in lectures where someone dumped massive amounts of information on you. While it’s great that they dumped all this material on you, the truth is that you probably won’t remember most of it. Of course, if you take notes and review them often then the likelihood of you remembering the material presented goes up. In our setting most people don’t take notes and if they do, they probably never review them. Moreover, how many of you have ever actually used most of what you’ve learned about in lecture? The purpose of your class lectures is to give you information so that you can take a written exam and regurgitate the information. In our setting, the test that all of us have to take is life. It isn’t written and simply knowing the information won’t do us any good. For most of us, the greatest learning we do is from experience. You can probably think of an experience you’ve had that changed the way you thought about the world or your life. That experience altered the way you thought and the way you lived. That is our goal, life change. Your talk shouldn’t be a detached rambling of information but a journey and experience. If you think about good movies, it’s fairly easy to remember the plot. There is the exposition/back drop which creates tension, the resolution of tension resulting in the climax, and the conclusion which wraps things up. Our talks need these same dynamics to engage our audience and help them remember the point of it all. If we don’t create a back drop then our audience will be lost when we start moving forward. If we don’t create tension then they won’t have a reason to keep paying attention. If we don’t resolve the tension then we leave our audience confused and disappointed. If we don’t wrap things up and tie what we’ve said to doable action then we’ve failed to do our job.
First Impressions and Lasting Memories
The odd thing about the human mind is that it has a tendency to remember what it encounters first and last the best. If you apply this to your lectures you probably remember the stuff the lecturer says at the beginning better than anything else they say. And you probably remember the very last things they say right before they dismiss you. The same is true in our talks. The first things we say are most important because it sets the tone for the rest of our talk. This is the time when they either connect with us deciding to stay tuned into the rest of the talk or zone out. The end is equally important because what you say last will be the freshest material in their minds and is most likely what they will remember most. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that you have the most amount of focus in the beginning and the end. If you have too much fluff material in the beginning or end you’ve wasted your time. The beginning and the end is also where you want to practice the most.
“Attention and retention is determined by presentation, not information.”
“How you say what you say is as important as what you say.”
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