Top 5 Reasons to Use MORE Video in Your Church Services

By Barry Whitlow

Barry Whitlow is a church communication activist that is passionate about communication as it relates to the mission of the church. He believes media is the language of today and when combined with creativity and excellence is a powerful tool that can be used to touch the heart of a congregation, community, or the world.

1. Video is the #1 information delivery tool in the world today.

With over three billion videos viewed on YouTube every day and 80 million hours of videos being watched daily, the impact of video on the mission of the church is immense. Video is no longer just about entertaining; it’s a proven information delivery tool.

2. Video holds attention better. 

Video is visually interactive; this helps hold the attention of the viewer, resulting in greater retention and application of what is being communicated.

3. Video helps your church stay relevant.

What will people in your audience be thinking about this coming weekend?  Would you like to illustrate a point using a football video clip? Want to inspire people to invest their life in something that will outlive them by using a clip about Steve Jobs? Video helps you intersect with where your people already are emotionally, in order to speak life-changing truth into their lives.

4. Video content is plentiful and inexpensive. 

Engaging your audience with a video that relates to your topic has never been easier, and YouTube has proven time and time again that video content does not have to be Hollywood quality to communicate effectively and impact the human heart. Instead of thinking about which verbal illustration you can use, think about which video illustration would be appropriate.

5. Video shapes your demographic. 

Like worship song choices, the regular use of video over time helps to shape your audience and attract a younger demographic, especially young families in the 30-something and under demographic.

Tear Your Sermon in Half

By JohnMcClure

John McClure blogs about preaching and theology at Otherwise Thinking. You can read more about these "places" in McClure's book, The Four Codes of Preaching.


OK, maybe not exactly in half. But I’ve listened to lots of sermons over the years, and I’m worried about the way we begin sermons. I have to say that about three-fourths of these sermons would be dramatically improved if the preacher started about two pages (or about 3-5 minutes) into the sermon. I don’t know what it is, but most of us love the “wind-up,” not realizing that we are not baseball pitchers; sermon wind-ups are usually sermon “wind-downs.” Here are the most common “wind-ups/wind-downs.”

1. Re-hashing the biblical text.

The preacher in this mode drags the listener through a long, expanded, or “imaginative” re-hashing of the text. No. This is not an exposition or interpretation. I’m speaking about a non-interpretive re-hashing of the bits and pieces of the text. Sometimes this never ends and lasts the entire sermon. The preacher forgets to have anything to say to us—or what is commonly called a “message”—and seems to assume that we’ll “get it” if we hear the old, old story reiterated.

2. The sermon “set-up.”

In this mode, the preacher spends a few minutes exegetically framing the biblical text and providing what he or she considers useful background information—some interesting tidbits, mostly exegetical by-products.

3. Touring the cutting room floor.

In this approach, the preacher tells us how he or she arrived at this message—strolling us around the room and pointing out all of the fascinating options left behind on the cutting room floor.

4. Climbing to higher ground.

In this mode, the preacher tells the listener all of the ways she or he has heard this text preached in the past—leading us to the superior ground of their own interpretation.

5. The rapport story.

In this mode, the preacher decides to tell a personal story. This is not a story told about someone or something else, narrated through the lens of the preacher’s experience, but a story about the preacher’s experience (of self, other, family, sports, memory, life, etc.). This story might contain a catchy thematic hook designed to capture our interest. Often, the story goes on interminably. No matter what they are supposed to be illustrating, these "wind-up" stories seem to be saying something else, namely: “Welcome to my world—please like me and be my friend while I preach this sermon.” When this occurs over and over, genuine sermon content is sacrificed to a rather contrived rapport-building exercise.

6. The message grope.

In my experience, this is the most common “wind-up/wind-down.” When beginning to write the sermon the preacher didn’t really have a clue what to say. He or she just started writing or speaking, hoping a message would pop out. By the time a message finally arrived, several minutes had been wasted groping one’s way toward it, and most of the energy of the sermon had evaporated. For whatever reason, rather than removing this material, it is kept.
Anton Chekov’s famous advice to writers comes immediately to mind: “Tear out the first half of your story; you’ll only have to change a few things in the beginning of the second half and the story will be perfectly clear.” This is serious and solid advice for many preachers. Once we’ve written the sermon, or organized it and preached it through a few times extemporaneously, it is a good idea to ask ourselves whether, in fact, the sermon would be better if we started it further in—on page two or three. If we did this on a regular basis, I believe we’d avoid many of the “wind-ups/wind-downs” that currently sap the energy at the beginnings of our sermons.

12 Preaching Tips Learned from Haddon Robinson

By Dean Shriver

Dean obtained his M.Div. from Western Seminary and his D.Min. at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Dr. Shriver is founding pastor of Intermountain Baptist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah where he has ministered for 20 years. Dr. Shriver lives in South Jordan, Utah with his wife Nancy and their three children.



The assigned passage was 1 Samuel 17, the story of David and Goliath. I felt good about my three-point outline. It was perfectly alliterated with words like “courage,” “conquering,” and some other “C” word I felt certain would impress.  I was so confident I volunteered to go first—to expose my sermonic offering to Haddon Robinson’s scrutiny in front of our Doctor of Ministry class. The Scriptures proved true. Pride really does come before a fall.

“That looks like something you pulled out of Simple Sermons for Sunday Evenings,” Haddon chided. Astutely, I sensed that the good doctor did not consider this book to be a classic in the field.  He continued, “Nobody talks like that anymore—except in the pulpit!” Duane Litfin, Haddon’s co-teacher for the week, chimed in, “What Haddon’s saying is that he’s afraid you might actually go out and try to preach that thing!”
That was more than ten years ago. I never alliterated a sermon again. It was the first lesson I learned about preaching—and about life and ministry—from Dr. Haddon Robinson, the Harold John Ockenga Distinguished Professor of Preaching at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. It wasn’t the last. During the past decade I’ve been privileged to sit under Haddon’s teaching—first in his Doctor of Ministry program and later during annual preaching seminars (for alumni of the program). His instruction and his life have greatly impacted me.  God has used him to help me grow as a preacher, a pastor, and a follower of Jesus.  Here are a few of the lessons he’s taught me:

Don’t make preaching more complicated than it is.

As a preacher, there are only three ways I can approach a biblical text:  1)  I can explain it by answering the question, “What does it mean?”;  2)  I can prove it by answering the question, “Is it true?”;  3) I can apply it by answering the question, “What difference does it make?”

In some sermons I might answer only one of these “developmental questions.”  In other sermons I might address all three.  For instance, when I read a passage like Matthew 21:21-22 (“I tell you the truth, if you do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done...”), my heart cries out for answers to all three questions.  I might address them all in one sermon or I might preach a three-week series on “Praying with Faith.”
  
Every sermon should have one central “big idea.”

In Haddon’s words, “A sermon should be a bullet, not buckshot.”  He writes, “Ideally, each sermon is the explanation, interpretation, or application of a single dominant idea supported by other ideas, all drawn from one passage or several passages of Scripture.”  He continues, “Three or four ideas not related to a more inclusive idea do not make a message; they make three or four sermonettes all preached at one time.”

It’s impossible to preach an effective sermon if we don’t specifically know what we’re preaching about.  As another preaching professor was fond of reminding me, “Fog in the pulpit, fog in the pew.” In Biblical Preaching, Haddon quotes J.H. Jowett, “I have the conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching…until we can express its theme in a short pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal.”  Each week I need to do the hard work of determining the central truth of my sermon text.  Until I do, my sermon will not be relevant, nor can it be practically applied to the lives of my hearers.
          
Expository preaching—properly understood and practiced—is our calling.

Before I go further, please don’t miss the phrase, “expository preaching—properly understood and practiced.”  Much of what goes by the name “expository preaching” amounts to little more than a running commentary on the ancient biblical text (“Last Sunday we got through chapter 7, verse 12.  Today we begin with verse 13…”).  Information without relevance.  Knowledge without application.  No central idea.  If this is expository preaching at all, it is bastardized expository preaching!  As taught and modeled by Haddon Robinson, expository preaching is as crisp and relevant as the Bible itself.  An expository sermon can take many forms—inductive, deductive, narrative, and yes, even topical.  So what makes an expository sermon expository?  An expository preacher never brings his sermon idea to the text.  He draws his sermon idea from the text.  In other words, an expository preacher never imposes a topic on the text.  He lets the text speak for itself and shapes his sermon accordingly.

During my second-year D/Min seminar, I attended services at a well-known, rapidly growing church.  The next morning at breakfast, Haddon mentioned how some preachers will essentially outline their sermons and then go fishing for Bible verses that support their outlines.  He mentioned how some went so far as to search various translations until they found the wording that best supported each of their individual outline points.  I pulled out the sermon outline from the previous day.  Sure enough, the Bible verses quoted on the outline came from at least four different modern translations and paraphrases.  Each was specifically selected to “fit” the preacher’s outline.

Whenever the biblical text becomes a servant to our ideas (or to our outlines) we miss our calling as preachers.  In his book, Biblical Preaching, Haddon writes, “Whether or not we can be called expositors starts with our purpose and with our honest answer to the question:  ‘Do you, as a preacher, endeavor to bend your thought to the Scriptures, or do you use the Scriptures to support your thought?’”

If you have doubts about the power and relevance of real expository preaching, I encourage you to purchase (or download) several of Haddon Robinson’s sermons.  Listen to them.  I promise you won’t be bored!  And neither will the members of your congregation when you answer God’s call to properly practice expository preaching. 
                      
Without a definite purpose, no sermon is worth preaching.

Before I preach any sermon, I should be able to answer the question, “Why am I preaching it?”  In other words, what do I want to see happen in the lives of my hearers?  Haddon writes, “We do an assortment of things when we face our congregation.  We explain, illustrate, exhort, exegete, and gesture, to list a few.  But we are to be pitied if we fail to understand that this particular sermon should change lives in some specific way.”

How, then, should we go about determining the purpose of this week’s sermon?  Haddon’s answer is that we should seek the purpose behind the passage we are preaching.  “As part of your exegesis, you should ask, ‘Why did the author write this?  What effect did he expect it to have on his readers?’”

When fleshing out the purpose of a sermon Haddon suggests the following in Biblical Preaching: “State in a rough way what you are asking the congregation to do as a result of what you have preached.  Be as specific as possible.  If someone came to you next week and said, ‘I have been thinking about what you preached last Sunday, but I don’t know how what you said applies to my life,’ would you have an answer?  Picture the truth you have preached being acted on in some specific situations.”

Work hard on your sermon’s introduction, transitions, and conclusion. 

Effective introductions capture attention, surface a need that the sermon will address, and introduce the body of the sermon.  Good transitions review the major points of a sermon and show how the major and minor points of the sermon relate to each other.  They introduce each new section or “move” in a sermon.  Haddon writes, “…they enable your congregation to think your thoughts with you.  Concerning conclusions he adds, “The purpose of your conclusion is to conclude—not merely stop.…Your congregation should see your idea entire and complete, and they should know and feel what God’s truth demands of them.”  Each of these elements of a sermon is critical and requires special attention.

What Makes a Sermon a Good Sermon?

By Duane Kelderman

Professor of Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary

Forum Spring, 2002

For the past couple of years I’ve been asking adult education classes I’ve been conducting on sermon-listening, What makes a sermon a good sermon? I explain that I’m not looking for “the right answer.” Rather, I want to know how thoughtful listeners honestly evaluate the sermons they hear week in and week out. The answers I’ve been hearing are very helpful. They fall into roughly three clusters.

The first cluster of answers defines a good sermon in terms of communicational excellence: “A good sermon is a sermon I can follow. The main point of the sermon is clear. The sermon is well-organized. The preacher doesn’t speak over my head. The preacher doesn’t repeat the same point over and over. The preacher uses images, stories and ways of speaking that keep me listening and move me.” Indeed, today’s listeners are constantly exposed to the internet, television, and movies that sizzle communicationally. Some preachers used to say, “My job is just to preach the Word. It’s the people’s job to listen.” Few preachers talk that way today because preachers know they must prepare sermons that are not only biblically based but also carefully designed to win a hearing. Communicational excellence is an absolute requirement of effective preaching today.

A second way people define a good sermon is in terms of its biblical faithfulness: “A good sermon is rooted in the Bible. It teaches me something from a text of the Bible. A good sermon is not the opinion of the preacher, it’s a Word from God that has authority because it’s from the Word of God.” Preachers and churches run into trouble when they forget that preaching is first and foremost a proclamation of Scripture. Pity the preacher whose congregation is satisfied with just hearing a communicationally excellent speech. Congregations must also clearly expect their pastor’s sermons to set forth the Scriptures. And pastors dare not speak, except to proclaim a Word far greater than their own words.

The third way people define a good sermon is in terms of its transformational power: “A good sermon changes me. It challenges me to a deeper obedience. It stretches me. A good sermon brings me closer to God. It deepens my faith. It makes us a better church. A good sermon makes me a better, more loving person. A good sermon makes me a better kingdom citizen.” Indeed, preaching that doesn’t call for and lead to transformation is only a noisy gong and a clanging symbol. A good sermon is not the same as an enjoyable sermon.  This transformative purpose of preaching reminds me of one of Fred Craddock’s lines: “There are two kinds of preaching that are difficult to hear: poor preaching and good preaching.” Good sermons call us to the cross and invite us into a new life in Christ. Spiritual transformation of course is not just the work of preachers and worshipers. It is the work of God. Preaching doesn’t change people. God changes people

through preaching. Preachers and worshipers must approach the sermon filled with awe, humility, and expectancy that the Holy Spirit will do a great work through this sermon. This involves intense prayer and spiritual preparation on the part of preacher and worshiper without which transformational power is sure to

elude everyone.

I find these three criteria for evaluating sermons helpful. And the challenge today is to apply not just one or two but all three criteria as we preach or listen to sermons. Preachers can’t get by with saying, “I think I’ll shoot for two out of three of these marks of a good sermon.” Two out of three does not a good sermon make. In the same way, only when worshipers understand that a good sermon involves all three of these marks are they in a position to evaluate whether the sermon they have heard is a good one. This is another way of saying that worshipers cannot simply sit back and dare their preacher to wow them with a great sermon. Worshipers must lean forward and be active participants in the proclamation of God’s Word, urgently seeking out what word God has for them on this particular Sunday. I have never heard of a church that didn’t rank good preaching as the most desirable qualification of its pastor. Only as preachers and congregations do everything they can to make the preaching event meaningful and life changing will we be able to speak of “good sermons” in their church.

Congregant Feedback Can Improve Pastors’ Sermons

By Bob Wells

With a structured program of feedback from parishioners, peers and outside experts, pastors can become transformative preachers, delivering sermons that more effectively challenge listeners to make real changes in their lives, according to preliminary results from an SPE-affiliated sermon study.

Directed by Lori Carrell, a communication professor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, the study isn’t about homiletics, exegesis, or particular preaching styles or traditions. Instead, drawing on listeners’ expectation that sermons be grounded in scripture, it is looking at preaching as a form of communication connecting pastors and listeners. The study builds on earlier research by Carrell, The Great American Sermon Survey, which found that the overwhelming majority of churchgoers—78 percent—never give their pastors any feedback about their sermons. 

“In the discipline of communication, it’s just not helpful when you don’t know what the people you are communicating with are thinking or how they are reacting,” Carrell said. “When we begin to bring in listener response as a critical component, we can have a communication perspective that crosses homiletical traditions. It allows us to say to pastors, ‘Whatever your tradition, whatever your preaching style, here’s how your people are responding. Now argue with that.’”

The study, conducted in cooperation with the Center for Excellence in Congregational Leadership (CECL), an SPE project at Green Lake Conference Center in Wisconsin, is examining sermons by more than 70 SPE pastors and their congregation members.

Before the pastors received feedback, the study found, most of their sermons reinforced listeners’ beliefs rather than inspiring them to put their beliefs into action. Listeners also reported that Power Point slides were distracting rather than a helpful communication tool.

After the pastors received feedback and changed their sermon preparation practices, almost all listeners—95 percent—reported they would think about the sermon and expected spiritual growth.

Underlying all of the results is the confirmation that preaching matters deeply to listeners — something pastors might not realize. Indeed, for pastors, much about church life today suggests the opposite. With virtually no feedback from parishioners and schedules filled with meetings, hospital visits and pastoral counseling sessions, pastors can easily lose sight of the important role their sermons can play. 

“To many pastors, it doesn’t look like the church honors the centrality of preaching,” Carrell said. “It’s a system that can keep pastors from knowing that preaching matters.” 

In the CECL program, pastors visit Green Lake for a series of five, week-long training retreats over two-and-a-half years. Each session is focused on strengthening a particular aspect of the pastors’ lives and ministry. The first four sessions address such topics as spiritual and physical health; balancing the demands of ministry and family life; working with lay leaders; and creating and implementing a vision for church and ministry.

The fifth and final session is devoted entirely to sermon communication and serves as the laboratory for Carrell’s study. Before visiting Green Lake for the final session, each pastor videotapes a sermon in his or her home church. That same Sunday, immediately after the sermon, those in attendance complete a survey to measure their response, both as they listened to the sermon and any actions they might take as a result.

Carrell analyzes each sermon and the congregation’s response to prepare a report for each pastor, identifying his or her “unique excellence” and evaluating the sermon’s content, organization and delivery. So far, 73 pastors and more than 10,000 listeners have participated in the study.

The pastors spend their final week at Green Lake receiving a personal consultation that includes their congregation’s survey results and Carrell’s analysis. The pastors meet in their peer groups, watch their sermon videos together and offer one another feedback. 

“Though they were watching their video sermons with other pastors, people who were now their close friends, it was still a jolt for some pastors,” Carrell said. “It was like, ‘Wow. I didn’t realize I was putting people through this.’”

Ben Mott, co-director of the Center for Congregational Leadership, says that while the process can be painful, pastors reconnect with what first called them to ministry and rediscover that preaching is at the core of pastoral leadership. 

The Rev. Melinda Oberhelman, pastor of First Baptist Church, Idaho Falls, Idaho, said she was filled with apprehension before her CECL preaching retreat in May.

“I went into it thinking, ‘This is going to be awful,’” she said. “These people are preachers and they’re going to be listening to my sermon and it’s already been looked at by Dr. Carrell. I was thinking, ‘I’ll probably never preach again and probably shouldn’t.’”

But instead, she said, the week was a “great experience.”

“It was very encouraging and very helpful,” Oberhelman said. “I found myself thinking, ‘All right! I am doing it. I can make it better.’”

After individual counseling and coaching sessions, the pastors end the week by creating an action plan, outlining how they will use what they have learned to build upon their existing strengths and deliver more transformative sermons—sermons that ask parishioners to make specific changes. Later, the pastors videotaped another sermon at their home church and the congregation was surveyed again. 

The change in transformative content was notable. While only 39 percent of the pastors included a call for change in their pre-test sermon, 85 percent did so after participating in the feedback training program. Carrell’s analysis and the listener surveys confirmed an overall increase in the sermons’ “transformative quality.”

Carrell said the top 5 percent of sermons—those considered most transformative by both listeners and expert reviewers—had four common traits:

• They asked for change;
• They were organized to make it easy for people to listen;
• Whatever the preaching style, they were well delivered in ways that authentically communicated relationship and emotion; and
• They integrated listeners’ perspectives.

“If pastors want change to happen, they have to ask for it,” Carrell said. “That seems like a big ‘duh,’ but it’s one of the most important points from this study. In the first sermon, few pastors asked for change. Their sermons were informative, not transformative.”

For the pastors who made the greatest improvements, the key was changing how they spent their time preparing their sermons. Most, for example, set a clear spiritual growth goal for the sermon. While they prepared, most increased their own spiritual activities activities, such as meditation, journaling or personal devotions. Many began talking with others, including lay listening groups, to discuss sermon ideas and content.

Importantly, Carrell said, the pastors also began practicing their sermons out loud. While orally rehearsing a sermon might improve delivery, the real payoff comes in improved organization and clarity, critical to listeners, Carrell said.

“Preaching is a radical act,” she said. “We need to expect from it revolutionary reverberations.”

Carrell’s study is funded by the CECL program, through its Lilly grant, and the University of Wisconsin System. An article about the study has been accepted by the academic journal, Communication Education, and is scheduled for publication early next year. 

5 Ways to Shorten Your Sermon

By Peter Mead



When you’re preaching, the clock is ticking. In one setting, you may have 20 minutes; in another, you may have 45. The reality is, though, that messages expand to fill the time available fairly easily. So it is important to think carefully about what to include. Perhaps more importantly, what to exclude. Where can time be trimmed?

Introduction 

Sometimes, a message needs a longer introduction than hard and fast rules allow. The problem doesn’t come from a long introduction, though, but from an introduction that feels long. If you need to go long, give a sense of relevance and a hint of Bible so that the fussy won’t get worked up. (Sometimes, just reading the first verse of a passage switches off the introduction monitors in the congregation!) However, often the introduction can be trimmed to avoid making the message play catch up.

Illustration 

The problem with good illustrations is that you know them well, and listeners will resonate. When they do, you sense it, and before you know it, the illustration has grown. Beware of expanding illustrations.

Historical and Literary Context 

Some preachers never include either, and their preaching suffers significantly. However, choose to include what is pertinent and helpful. Don’t give an extended background to the entire Roman occupation when you need to press on with the message. Enough to make sense of the passage is usually enough.

Conclusion 

The end of a message can often be far punchier if it is tightened up. See if time can be saved by nailing a specific conclusion, rather than waffling to halt.

Post Sermon

It is easy to add five minutes to the end of a meeting by having a full song and a longer prayer than necessary. Why not let the sermon soak and leave people pensive rather than switching off with a closing volley of church ammo?
If you rein in the message at every place possible, you’ll probably finish on time. If, by some miracle, you finish five minutes early, absolutely nobody will mind at all! All of this, of course, has to be balanced with achieving your aims. The goal of preaching is not the early finish; it's the transformed life.

Energizing Your Sermons with Multisensory Preaching

By Rick Blackwood

Rick Blackwood (DMin. Grace Theological Seminary; EdD. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as the senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Church in Miami, Florida, a large and growing multicultural congregation. Christ Fellowship has been listed as one of the Top 100 Fastest-Growing Churches in the country, although Miami is considered one of the most unchurched cities in the nation. His book, The Power of Multisensory Preaching and Teaching, is a Preaching magazine Book of the Year winner.



Just like you, I love to teach God’s Word. In addition, I love to communicate it in a form that is engaging, crystal clear, and unforgettable. But the pressure to deliver messages that are compelling is stressful, and after a while this stress can zap the joy out of our calling. We can act outwardly like we are exempt from that pressure, but the reality is that the human casualties of ministry highlight the pressures.

Multisensory preaching can breathe new life into your calling. It can bring a sense of thrill and expectation to your teaching. Stated another way: Multisensory communication can help make your teaching fascinating for your audience and fun for you.

By way of explanation, multisensory teaching interfaces with multiple senses. Unlike conventional preaching, which stimulates only the sense of hearing, multisensory communication stimulates multiple senses—that is, the senses of hearing, sight, touch, and sometimes even smell and taste. In short, it brings more of the whole person into the learning process and results in greater audience focus, longer attention, greater message clarity, long-term retention, and an increase in the likelihood of application. It also makes the teaching process more fun for you!

Relax: This is Not Going to be Complicated

My goal is to make you a better communicator without making your life more cluttered and complicated. The last thing you need is something that demands more work and more of your time. For that reason, you should know that becoming a multisensory teacher will not complicate your life. Multisensory communication is uncomplicated or I would not be able to execute it, either. I preach once on Saturday evening, three times on Sunday, and then again on Sunday afternoon at another Christ Fellowship campus just south of Miami. That load will increase to two additional campuses by next year. If multisensory teaching were complicated, I’d have to abandon it. It is not.

Get Pumped: This is Going to be Fun

Let me give you an image of what we are doing at Christ Fellowship this weekend. We are teaching through the gospel of Matthew in our weekend services, and tonight we launch a new series called: “WAR: Defeating Temptation.” The series will be a four-part exposition of Matthew 4:1-11, which chronicles the temptations of Christ by Satan and Satan’s goal to drag us down into sin, destroy our lives, and destroy our testimony.
Our single-minded goal throughout this series is to get people to realize they are at war. To etch that reality into their minds, the church campus has been transformed into a war zone. Christ Fellowship has the appearance of a theater of military operations.

Tonight, greeters and ushers will be dressed in military fatigues. Peppered throughout the campus are objects and images of warfare. The stage has been transformed to resemble a war zone. There are military tents and military weapons, and even a military MASH unit has been set up on the stage. The MASH unit will be used later to talk about restoring our wounded brothers and sisters who fall into sin. To further drive home the truth, Eric Geiger and I will be teaching in military garb. The effect will be instant. People will be drawn into the sermon as soon as they walk onto the campus. The whole campus screams WAR!

Picture it: Tonight, I am excited, our multisensory team is pumped, and our people have a sense of expectation when they see such explicit communication. Simply put, I am having the time of my life! So can you.

Preparing for Sense-Sational Change

The key to preparing yourself to produce multisensory sermons is to transition at a pace that suits you. Don’t attempt to make radical changes without giving yourself some time to learn the ropes. Here are some simple guidelines to help you successfully navigate the transition.

1. Start simple.
This is a major rule for beginning a new style of teaching. Don’t start with complicated multisensory elements. Begin your transition with a few object lessons as well as some simple interactive tools. Doing it this way can pay huge dividends in terms of gaining attention, establishing clarity, and creating long-term memory.

I began the move to multisensory communication by introducing my messages with simple teaching aids in my hand. For example, I would walk to the platform with props such as:

• A child by the hand
• An “FBI agent” escort
• A tire iron
• A golf club
• A laptop
• Boxing gloves
• A bobsled
• A fire hose
• Bottled water
• A pumpkin
• A shovel
• A basketball
• A fishing rod
• A bicycle
• Salt
• A magnet
• A trumpet
• My daughter

These were simple beginnings for me, but they allowed me to get used to the new method.

2. Keep it manageable.
One of the keys of multisensory teaching is smooth management of the props and interactive tools you are using. Trying out a new teaching method can make you feel self-conscious. Just keeping up with your emotions at such a time is enough, much less trying to manage something complicated. If you are struggling to manage multisensory teaching tools, it will be distracting to you and distracting to your audience.

Shortly after I started using simple multisensory aids, I attempted some fairly complicated stuff, and I was not ready. As a result, the teaching was difficult to manage. It seemed clumsy, awkward, and unnatural. No one said anything to me, but I knew it was awkward. My congregation is forgiving, and I think they knew I was trying hard.

You should start simply and keep it manageable. Increase the complexity as you adjust, as your congregation adjusts, and as your human resources (your team) grow.

3. Embrace your multisensory strengths.
Just as you have verbal communication strengths, you will also have multisensory strengths. My personal strength is the use of props and interactive tools. When I have props in my hand and tools that engage the participation of the audience, I feel as if I have an assistant teacher with me. Sometimes, I almost feel as if I am cheating, because it makes the teaching so easy to execute. Props and interactive tools help me grab attention, create intellectual clarity, and instill long-term memory. I feel comfortable with them.

I struggle, however, with the use of drama. I have been able to implement visual art with great success, but I have struggled to use dramatic arts. I recognize that drama is one of the most powerful forms of communicating a point. If you have never watched Andy Stanley use drama in his sermons, you have missed a treat. He is a master. Drama can grab your attention, impact your emotions, and make a theological point like few other forms of communication can.

Having said that, I personally struggle to make it work. For one thing, you have to have great actors, and Stanley does. Our culture is used to watching A-rated actors on television. If we use B-rated actors ill-equipped for such a presentation, it can come across as cheesy. I have not given up on drama, but I realize my limitations. Don’t force it if you don’t feel ready for it.

4. Keep learning and developing.
One factor I love about teaching the Bible is that it is a lifetime learning experience. To keep our communication style fresh and captivating, we must have two non-negotiable traits:

• A teachable spirit
• A willingness to learn from others who are different from us

Many pastors and teachers develop one style of communication at the outset of their ministry and then never tweak it. As a result, they become predictable to their audience, and after a while they tend to sound like a broken record. Be honest: How predictable do you think your teaching is? Is it fresh each week, or can the audience put their mind on autopilot?

Prepare Your Church Audience

Who can forget the Challenger spacecraft disaster? The catastrophic explosion and subsequent loss of life and vehicle was the result of two basic mistakes:

• A rush to launch
• A failure to recognize climate conditions

How many pastors create church disasters simply because they rush to make changes without considering the climate of the church? Again, if you are in a new church start, you will not have to deal with the issue of transitioning your church to a new style of Bible teaching. If, however, you are in an established church, read the following two thoughts carefully. They can help you successfully navigate the change.

1. Transition, transition, transition.
The culture of your church should determine how you proceed with multisensory teaching. Most of us have plenty enough to deal with without starting a conflict over our preaching and teaching style. To make these style changes without starting a war, begin with simple multisensory components, not overpowering ones.

Begin your transition with simple object lessons. It will give you time to learn the ropes, and it will give your congregation time to adjust to the change.

2. Determine to keep it Biblical.
By keeping your sermon laced with Biblical authority, you will keep your sheep at ease. Spiritual sheep seem willing to adjust to methodological change as long as the message hasn’t changed.

Our teaching needs to be captivating and relevant, but when it lacks solid Biblical content, it weakens the flock and can make them restless. Furthermore, from time to time I suggest that you reference God’s multisensory teaching methods as well as those of Jesus and the prophets (ex: Hosea, Jeremiah, the setup of the tabernacle, the situational teachings of Jesus, the practice of baptism, and the Lord’s Supper observance). This will lend Biblical authority to the change.

Consider Forming Teams

Sermon content must always flow from the heart of the ones God has called to teach. Nevertheless, a “teaching team” can serve as a great advantage for the pastors and teachers who teach week after week. Instead of one brain attempting to come up with all the ideas, you now have multiple brains.

At Christ Fellowship, our teaching team gathers once a month for a time of brainstorming about upcoming series and sermons. Our team is made up of four gifted men called to be pastors and teachers. The combining of our creative minds generates remarkable ideas.

As teachers, it is our calling to generate sermon content; transforming the sermon into a multisensory teaching experience can require other talents. A “design team” can help take your content and transform it, particularly when your church has members with skills like graphic design, carpentry, art, sculpture, and other craftsmanship gifts. In fact, there are probably people in your church who are just waiting to use the creative, artistic, and constructive talents God has given to them. In some churches, such talents go untapped and even unwanted. What a shame! Put out the word that you want to assemble such a team: “Calling all artists, builders, graphic designers, fabric designers, interior designers, sculptors, and other dreamers!” Meet with those who respond and tell them your vision to create sermons that are Biblical, captivating, clear, and unforgettable. When you turn them loose, you’ll be amazed at their creative ability.

Conclusion

The truth is simple: I have a great passion to teach God’s Word in the most compelling, most understandable, and most unforgettable way. To do so, I must be willing to learn from a variety of teaching styles. Unfortunately, we all tend to be closed-minded to anything that doesn’t fit the camp we hang out with. Last week, I met with a group of contemporary pastors who gathered to discuss teaching techniques. During the course of the conversation, they were condemning of in-depth teaching that emphasizes the text and theology. They mocked such teaching as being stuck in the past. But they were shocked when I suggested that they may be the ones stuck in the past. I warned them that the church growth landscape that characterized the past decade may be changing and changing quickly. Content and intellect now matter!
To sum up, I have enjoyed learning from both sides. I may read from one person who can make me a better Bible teacher, and I may learn from another who may make me a better communicator. Just don’t let people force you into one dimension.

This article was excerpted from The Power of Multisensory Preaching and Teaching (Zondervan).