The One Thing Great Communicators do to get to the Heart
Great communicators understand in order to get to the heart they have to speak from the heart.
The Greeks- lovers of rhetoric- said that one of the essentials to transformative communication was the ability to speak with pathos. For the Greeks, pathos was not animation, but a kind of speaking that came from deep within…speaking which came from the heart.
In her novel, The Invention of Wings, award winning author Sue Monk Kidd, describes a scene where her character, Sarah Grimke, goes to church at a crossroads in her life. Sitting in the pew listening to the preacher, Sarah reflects, “I felt utterly spoken to, and in the most direct and supernatural way. How could he know what lay inside me? How did he know what I was only that moment able to see myself? These words ravished me. They seemed to break down some great artifice. I sat on the pew quietly shaken while Reverend Kollack looked at me now without focus or interest…He delivered me to the precipice where one’s only choice was between paralysis or abandon” (page 163). Sarah would leave this sermon forever changed.
What happened? Reverend Kollack spoke to her heart.
This all sounds well and good, and if you are like me, what communicator doesn’t want to get to the heart? So how exactly do we do this? Tim Keller, one of the most transformative communicators of his generation offers some help when he says we have no hope to get to the heart, “...unless you are consistently preaching from the heart. What you are calling people to experience you must be experiencing yourself. What the Holy Spirit is to do in the hearts of your listeners he will normally do first in and through you. You must be something like a clear glass through which people can see a broken but gospel-changed soul in such a way that they want it for themselves” (Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism, page 205).
Now I understand full well it’s beyond our capacity to get inside the hearts of our hearers. At the same time, we can unnecessarily get in the way of the greater work that needs to be done in the hearts of people who come to hear us. All we as communicators can do is to create pathways to the heart, and I have found the following essential in reaching the hearts of people:
Prepare yourself way more than your message. Is my heart regularly warmed and stirred by the truths I’m proclaiming? Am I praying regularly and richly, or are my prayers last minute, “Hail Mary’s,” where I ask God to bless my speaking, detached from the daily rhythm of communing with God?
Speak from the margins. Dr. Richard Swenson, in his book, Margin, defines margin as the space between our loads and our limits. The idea here is one of comprehensive rest- physically, emotionally and spiritually. If you’re a parent, you know impatience and harsh communication with your children is almost always connected to a margin-less life. On the other hand, the road to life altering, heart reaching communication happens when we do so from the margins of a well rested life.
Know your content. If you don’t know your material well, you will be more focused on remembering the message, than reaching the hearer. Knowing your content well allows you the space to actually feel what you are saying, while you are saying it, and this only serves to connect us to the hearts of our audience.
Believe your content. It’s one thing to know your material, it’s quite another to believe it, and trust me, your audience can discern whether or not you are actually all in on what you are trying to persuade them to do. While nothing runs people away more than inauthenticity, on the other hand, nothing draws people in like a speaker who actually believes what they’re saying.
Note: I realize I missed last week, and for that I’m not sorry:). I was on vacation with my wife.
What I’m reading:
The Weight of Glory (re-read), C.S. Lewis
Thanks for subscribing, and as always, help me get the word out by encouraging people to sign up for the weekly post here.
Next level communicators always internalize their content before they deliver their content.
Next level communicators always internalize their content before they deliver their content.
When I approach the preparation process for a message I always have in mind two big buckets. The first is the content bucket, and it occupies around sixty percent of my overall preparation time. Developing content has to do with what I’m reading, the passage I’m studying, exegetical work, the whole nine (we will dive deeper into this in future posts). The second bucket is focused on communication, and it takes up about forty percent of my prep time. While the first steps to assembling the talk center around what I am going to say, the second has to do with how I am going to say things, and one of the key steps in the communicating phase of my preparation is when I manuscript the talk. That’s right, every time I get up to speak I would have gone through the process of writing my message out word for word. However, and this is really important, I don’t memorize it word for word. In fact, a fun thing I have done over the years is giving some people my manuscript ahead of time and asking them to have it with them while I speak. Afterwards I will ask them what percentage of my message was actually on the page, and they always respond anywhere between fifty to seventy percent.
So what’s the purpose of my manuscript, you may ask, and why should you consider doing the same? Because manuscripts help us get the message into our hearts, and great communicators always internalize their content. Dr. Robert Smith, Jr., one of my all time favorite communicators, said that the ink of the manuscript must be turned into the blood of the sermon. Do you see what he is pushing for? Internalization. When you stand to speak you have to know your content like the back of your hand, and one of the great ways to get there is manuscripting.
I have found writing my messages out have given me these three irreplaceable benefits:
Clarity. I think the worst thing anyone could ever say to a communicator is not that they were wrong, but they were misunderstood. I really do believe I’d rather be wrong and clear, than right and nobody knows it. Clarity is the best friend of the communicator, and manuscripting the message and internalizing it helps me get there. As my friend HB Charles, Jr. says, “We need to write ourselves clear.”
Confidence. Less scared when prepared is a fact of life, and exponentially true for the communicator. Going through the process of writing out the message and getting it into my bones gives me great confidence when I stand to speak.
Freedom. The key to great communication is always knowing your next thought. When you know what’s coming up, you are even more free to veer off the page. It’s counterintuitive right? We are prone to think manuscripts confine us, when actually they unleash us.
Note: It should be said I am talking about manuscripts and not transcripts. The difference between the two is manuscripts are not necessarily taken with us (I never take mine), transcripts are.
What I’m reading:
The Familiar Stranger, Tyler Staton
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Next level communicators work with a checklist when putting any message together.
Next level communicators work with a checklist when putting any message together.
In October of 1935, on a field in Dayton, Ohio, a group of people gathered to watch one of the most skilled aviators take the Boeing Flying Air Fortress out for her maiden flight. About three hundred feet in the air tragedy struck, as the plane jerked downward and crashed killing the crew. An investigation ensued, and what Boeing discovered was that the crash was not due to mechanical error, but to pilot error. How could this be when its pilot was one of the most skilled and capable in the industry? Well, prior to the Boeing Flying Air Fortress, the controls were really simple. This plane introduced a level of complexity previously unseen. Boeing realized that when something becomes really complex they have to make it really simple. So for the first time in aviation history, Boeing came up with a pre-flight checklist for all the pilots, and it worked. The Boeing Flying Air Fortress would be used in WW2 and fly over 1.8 million miles without a single accident from pilot error. Checklists would be used in the medical field, and so many others to reduce the complex all the way down to the simple.
Any communicator will tell you that putting messages together and presenting them effectively can be a pretty overwhelming and complex process. That’s why checklists are the communicator's best friend, because they help us stay focused on what’s important, and drive us into simplicity.
Whenever I put content together for a message (and here I’m solely focused on what I will say, and not how I will say things- the how will come in other posts), I always refer to this checklist…in order:
Did my introduction grab the audience’s attention, and connect to either the first point of the presentation, or the overall point of the message?
Did I spend significant time, after my introduction, showing the relevance of my message by connecting to the felt need of the audience?
Did I explain my point with clarity?
Did my illustration help my audience see the point I was making, and did they get the point of my illustration before I gave the point of my illustration?
Did I ask questions, leaving room for the audience to apply the point in specific ways to their lives?
Did I explain, illustrate and apply the point for every point of my talk?
Did I overwhelm them with law and rescue them with grace?
Did I point them to Someone beyond themselves as their only hope for seeing the power of the message unleashed in their lives?
Did my outfit distract from the message?
Thanks for subscribing to my weekly newsletter. As always, feel free to pass along to others, and encourage them to sign up here.
What I’m Reading:
Knowing God, by J.I. Packer (reread).
Next level communicators don’t just speak to their audience, they listen to them as well.
It’s a Tuesday evening in 2001. The Pulitzer Prize winning trumpeter Whynton Marsalis is playing the Village Vanguard, holding his audience in the palm of his hand as they are captivated by his sheer genius. As Marsalis is working his magic, someone’s cell phone rings, distracting the crowd. Wynton pauses, arches his eyebrows, as the offender shuffles quickly out of the room to answer the call. The writer, David Hadju, scribbled on a sheet of paper, “Magic, Ruined.” And then it happened…Marsalis played the silly cell phone ring note for note. Then again, and again, improvising along the way. The audience leaned in, enjoying the moment. After several minutes of improvisation, Wynton Marsalis made his way back to the ballad he was playing before he was interrupted (Taken from, The Jazz of Preaching, Kirk Byron Jones). A potential disaster was repurposed into something beautiful, all because Wynton Marsalis listened to his audience.
Live communication doesn’t happen in a sterile, lifeless environment. We speakers contend with crying babies, boredom, applause, silence, talking, ringing cell phones and so much more. And many times, these moments are opportunities not for frustration, but for beauty, for real transformation, if we would only listen. A few examples come to mind:
Jesus was speaking once, when this happened: “As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!’ But he said, ‘Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’”- Luke 11:27-28.
I was preaching once in Oklahoma City, when about a third of the way through my prepared message, I felt strongly that God wanted me to stop and extend an opportunity for people to come to a relationship with Him. I couldn’t shake this feeling, so I stopped, gave the invitation, and scores of people became followers of Jesus.
As I have noted in a previous post, King’s famous, I Have a Dream speech, only happened because he listened to the gospel artist, Mahalia Jackson say to him, “Tell them about the dream, Martin,” and the rest really is history.
All these examples and more point to the timeless principle that speaking involves so much more than our content, it also involves the community- the people who we are speaking to. And oftentimes, the difference between a good presentation and a next level presentation is listening to your audience. Here’s some specific ways I have found audiences speaking to me:
I don’t get it. Sometimes our audiences communicate to us by their body language that they are not really tracking with a particular point we are making. Instead of rushing to the next point, this is our cue to maybe repeat, slow down and reach for an analogy or illustration to help make things clearer.
Stop. There have been many times when I have given a message where an eerie silence hovered over the audience. No, this wasn’t the silence of, “I don’t get it,” but the silence of deep resonation. Many times I have made the decision to stop at this point, unpack a little and then end my message, because anything else would be anticlimactic.
Accelerate. Then there are moments when the audience wants you to step on the gas. What I mean by this is they are cheering a particular point, and their excitement is my cue to take my excitement up another notch.
Take a turn. Sometimes, in the course of speaking, communicators will hear something that wasn’t in their notes that the audience grabs a hold of. This is our cue to take a turn and keep venturing down that road because it is connecting with the people.
In all of these instances and more, great communicators are willing to take the risk of listening and letting their audience guide them because they have so internalized their material so well, they always know how to get back. This is what gave Marsalis the freedom to riff on the cell phone ring- he knew how to get back. Want to be free enough to listen to your audience? Know your material like the back of your hand.
Next level communicators don’t just say things in a big way, they say big things.
This is what the ancient Greeks had in mind when they said great speakers didn’t just possess ethos and pathos, but also logos. While ethos has to do with the way a person lives and pathos is passion, logos is the idea of content. What the Greeks meant by this is you always left a great communicator feeling as if you had learned something. Presidential speech writer, Peggy Noonan, points this out in her book, On Speaking Well, when she says, “The most moving thing in a speech is always the logic. It’s never flowery words and flourishes, it’s not sentimental exhortations, it’s never the faux poetry we’re all subjected to these days. It’s the logic, the thinking behind your case.” Noonan goes on to underscore her point with the example of President Reagan: “He was so often moving and so often successful in his speeches that he came to set the standard. But Reagan as a speaker has been misunderstood. He was often moving, but he was moving not because of the way he said things, he was moving because of what he said.”
What we say as communicators is the most important part of our job. If you are an educator trying to persuade your audience to embrace or avoid artificial intelligence, then you better know your subject. If you are a preacher pointing people to a text and the gospel, then you have to know that text and the gospel message like the back of your hand. And if you are a politician running for office trying to convince people why economic reform is necessary, then you need to be clear on the current state of things, and why your ideas are worth people’s vote. Our content doesn’t just matter, it is the matter.
In my years of being around some of the best communicators, I have found they use these universal principles in developing their content:
Time. HB Charles Jr., says if we as communicators sweat in the study we can relax on the stage. Or as my college communications professor said, “Less scared when prepared.” There’s just no getting around it, we have to put in the time. Whenever I put a message together I spend about forty-percent of my time focused on how I will say things, and sixty- percent on what I will say (the content). I won’t give you an exact amount of time, or even a range of time, because we all have various capacities. But the principle remains- by the time you get up to speak you should be a master, because you have immersed yourself in the subject.
Thought. Content development requires deep thought, but in this digital age we are posed with a significant challenge along these lines. One communicator has pointed out that the internet is the friend of information and the enemy of thought. I agree. We have to be careful with choosing a subject and running to YouTube to see what the experts say, and then just regurgitating their thoughts. I’m not saying there’s not a place to listen to other experts, but you have to wrestle with the subject for yourself. To help me with this, I read widely on the subject I’m speaking on. All the time. What I mean by this is content development shouldn’t just be something you do the week of, but is a constant. When people ask me how long do I take to put a message together, I honestly tell them that’s an impossible question to answer. Every time I pick up a book to read, even on vacation, is message preparation.
Discernment. Here’s the paradox. On one hand we as communicators need to read widely in an effort to master our content. On the other hand, we don’t have enough time to download all of our thoughts to the audience. So we have to discern what is essential versus what is important, and choose the essential. I want you to think of yourself as a director of a movie. When a movie is shot, they always film more material than what is needed. The director and her team have to decide what stays and what is left out. People will tell you the difference between a good movie and a great movie is what they choose to leave on the editing room floor. While this is a skill developed over time, one of the things that helps me discern if the point(s) I have learned in my study makes it into the message or not is to ask the question, “If I left this out would it strengthen or dilute the message? Or would it even matter?” Unless it strengthens it, leave it out.
What I’m reading:
We Who Wrestle with God, Jordan B. Peterson
Look out for a free resource I’ve got coming your way. It’s an expression of my gratitude for you subscribing to this weekly newsletter. And as always, encourage people to sign up here.
Great communicators understand the transformative power of words.
Great communicators understand that while musicians play notes, we play words, and those words, played the right way, at the right time, hold a transformative power.
With MLK weekend coming up, I thought I’d share with you this true story about the power of words:
In February of 1960, Clarence Jones was living in a great home in Altadena, California, with a palm tree right in the middle of it. Clarence was far away from the orphanage he was forced into as a child, not because his parents didn’t want him, but as domestic servants to a wealthy family, their bosses would not allow them to take the time off they needed to raise their son. But in the kindness of God, Clarence not only made it out of the orphanage, but would go on to earn an ivy league degree, followed by a degree in law. Now, he thought, it was time for him to reap the fruit of his years of struggle. It was at this moment in his life that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knocked on his door, asking him for his legal assistance because he was in the trial of his life down in Montgomery, Alabama. Clarence Jones listened patiently, and then told Dr. King no. King made more appeals, but to no avail. For Clarence, he had worked too hard, and life was too good, to do pro bono work on a trial where King would likely be found guilty. As King turned to leave, he invited Clarence to come hear him preach that coming Sunday at the Baldwin Hills Baptist Church in Los Angeles. Clarence agreed.
Not long after taking his seat, Dr. King began his message by saying, “Brothers and sisters, the text of my sermon today concerns the role and responsibility of the Negro professional to the masses of our brothers and sisters who are struggling for Civil Rights in the South.” Clarence Jones began to have an ominous feeling he was in the crosshairs of Dr. King’s sermon. He was. Dr. King would talk about a young lawyer he had recently visited who was living in a fine home with a palm tree right in the center of it. I can see Clarence sinking in his seat. He talked about this young professionals upbringing, how he came from struggling parents who served as domestics, and even had to put their precious son in an orphanage. King called attention to his mother who scrubbed floors so her child could have a better life. And then these words, “I can’t help but wonder if this man’s mother could speak to him right now, might she share the immortal words of Langston Hughes: ‘Well son, I’ll tell you, life for me ain’t been no crystal stair, but all the time I’se been a-climbin’ on. So, boy, don’t turn your back. Don’t you set down on the steps (From, Life Ain’t No Crystal Stair, by Langston Hughes).
Writing of this moment years later, Clarence would remember, “I realized that I’d never heard anyone so thoroughly capable of transforming a listener. It was like the magic Frank Sinatra was renowned for having with his singing voice. That same quality was something that somehow Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. alone had in his speaking voice. His phrasing was immaculate…the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.”
When King was finished, Clarence Jones went up to him and said, “‘Dr. King, when do you want me in Montgomery?’ And from that point on, I was a Martin Luther King, Jr. disciple. From that moment until the assassination on April 4th, 1968, I served as Dr. King’s personal lawyer, political advisor, and draft speechwriter (Yep, Clarence would write the draft of King’s, “I Have a Dream Speech”.). It was the most important relationship I’ve ever had…My relationship with Martin King, like the color of my skin, is the defining aspect of my time here” (These quotes taken from, Last of the Lions: An African American Journey in Memoir, pages 70-73).
While we should always be careful about taking people’s personal stories and backgrounds and wielding it against them when we speak, let’s not miss the broader point- the transformative power of the right words at just the right time. What moved Clarence Jones from a life of selfish complacency to sacrifice, was one message. Words really can move people. Let’s keep working on our craft.
What I’m Reading:
The Last of the Lions, Clarence B. Jones
As we go into MLK weekend, here’s a resource I edited and contributed to with some of my all time favorite communicators.
The best communicators love what they are talking about more than they love talking about it.
In his creative short book on communication, Kirk Byron Jones observes, “With all due respect to my affection for preaching, it is the story as opposed to the act of preaching that keeps me preaching. If I ever get over the story, I think I will stop preaching, maybe” (The Jazz of Preaching). Think about it, history’s most compelling communicators moved people not so much by their words, but by the sheer love which fueled their words. Who could forget Sojourner Truth’s classic, “Ain’t I a Woman,” where her love for women’s rights and freedom urged her to rail against the abuses of misogyny and racism; or President Franklin Roosevelt’s love for America when he reminded his nation they had nothing to fear but fear itself? You couldn’t listen to Winston Churchill talk for more than five minutes without being struck by his deep affection for England. It’s not so much what these communicators are saying, as much as it is the love they have for what they are saying that drives us to action.
The Greeks understood this principle that the best communicators love what they are talking about more than they love talking about it. These ancient lovers of oratory said all great speakers possess a quality they called pathos. In a nutshell, pathos is passion, but remember these are the Greeks who are talking, so they cannot mean animation- you know the kind of energetic, sweat inducing presentation where the speaker is in a frenzy (though there certainly is more than enough room for that). I mean, how could the Greeks mean animation when they were the nation which gave us the Stoics? Instead, when they spoke of pathos, what they meant was speaking from one’s gut, and not just from one’s mind. When you listen to a compelling communicator there’s this sense they really feel and love their subject. And you can also tell when they don’t.
You want to grow as a communicator? Love what you are talking about more than talking about it. Keep throwing wood on the flames of your passion.
Here’s some helpful tips:
Take inventory of your pain, because many times it is our pain which will feed our passion which drives our communication. Frederick Douglass and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., knew the pain of being discriminated against, and they harnessed this energy in their communication. Used positively, wounds can turn into words which ultimately turn people for the good.
Spend time with people. Sometimes we struggle with pathos because we spend more time with content than the people we are communicating to. Yes, communicators deal with content on some level, but that content is useless unless it’s connected to people. Coming out from behind the computer and immersing yourself in the lives of others is essential for nurturing passion. If you are an educator, when you speak it should be obvious you love students. If you are a pastor who spends significant time with the people you serve, you should not only be able to see faces as you prepare your weekly messages, but your love for these people will leak through in your communication.
Guard your heart. There’s an ancient proverb which says, “Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23, NLT). As communicators we bring more than our minds to the presentation, we bring our hearts as well. Nothing kills pathos more than a distracted or divided heart. On the way to a presentation I don’t need to hear the air conditioning just went out, bats have been discovered in our attic (really did happen once, by the way) and my wife wants a fourth kid (never will happen by the way- her words). The hours before a talk are prime moments for me to get focused, and do the work of getting whatever junk out of my heart that needs to be removed.
Find something else to do. If you just can’t get to a place where you love what you are talking about; if you are only doing it for the money or notoriety, then find something else to do. People’s time is too precious for them to listen to a speaker whose not all in on what they are attempting to get you to do. I know that’s a bit abrupt, but…Happy new year!
What I’m reading:
Be on the lookout for a resource I am going to give free to you, as my way of saying thanks for subscribing to this weekly newsletter. And as always, help me get the word out by encouraging people to subscribe here.
Three Things Next Level Communicators Listen to While they Talk
Next level communicators leave room for improvisation. They understand a great talk holds the tension between science and art, structure and spontaneity. Because of this, the truly great speakers “play a little jazz” when they communicate.
When you played with Miles Davis, the famed trumpeter, he was known to give you little scraps of paper which outlined a minimal structure to follow. This was necessary because it provided a sense of direction and cohesiveness to his band. But the “minimal structure,” also encouraged great freedom for musicians to express their art through the distinctive feature of jazz- improvisation. Miles understood for jazz to be truly jazz an artist needed both direction and freedom. In fact, the more one was secure in the struction, the more free they were to drift away from the structure, because they always knew how to get back.
Like any musician, when you get up to speak as a communicator there are three key things happening all at once:
The communicator. There is you, the communicator. When you are presenting you are bringing all of your gifts, passions, experiences, lack of experiences, good days and bad days into the moment.
The content. Like a musician with his “scrap of paper,” you are also standing with some sort of content you have memorized, or brought with you. This content represents the direction you are trying to persuade your audience.
The context. At the same time, you are presenting your content in a very real context. What I mean by this is you are talking to a specific group of people, in a specific place, who all have specific needs and things going on in their lives at that very moment.
The content is the science of your talk. But the fluidity of your context necessitates the art dimension of your message. The best communicators are aware of all three of these things at once, and utilize the improvisational gift of jazz to tweak their content to fit the needs of their context in the moment. And the best communicators have mastered the skill of listening to themselves, their content and context all at once.
And why do great communicators do this? Because they understand that at its core, communication is all about connection. If you fail to hold all three in tension (you the communicator, the content and the context), you will not connect with your audience, guaranteeing your message will fall flat.
Here’s a couple of tips to help you “play jazz” better in your talks:
Leave a little dirt under your fingers. The great jazz composer and musician, Duke Ellington, was known to say this. What he meant was to make room for improvisation (ironic, coming from a composer). This is important because we cannot manufacture improvisation, we can only make room for it. So leave some space in your talks which allow for it to happen.
Internalize your content. The irony of jazz musicians is what emboldens them to drift off the page is they know their content so well they know how to get back. The best communicators always know their next thought, so in the moment of speaking when they sense an opportunity to drift off the page they’re not frightened, because they always know how to get back.
What works once does not mean it will work again. Some of you are pastors who speak at multiple services, and you probably know the feeling of an improvisational moment that killed in the first service, but fell flat at the second (or vice versa). Why? Your context is different. People are different. So be careful of forcing an improvisational moment.
Listen while you talk. Now this takes seasoning, but the main way you will know to improvise is to listen to your context, because they will always tell you where they are and what is required of you as a communicator. You’ve heard this already, but MLK’s famous, I Have a Dream speech was a dud at first; that is until a woman behind him told Martin to tell the people about his dream (she had heard a version of this some months before in Detroit). King listened, played a little jazz, and the rest is history. If your audience is leaning in on a particular point, jazz may require you lingering longer there. If they’re checked out, jazz may mean go to your next point quicker than you anticipated. But learn to listen to your audience while you talk.
Prepare your spirit. It’s not just the audience who talks to you, it’s your spirit as well. I know this sounds mystical to some of you, but it really is something I’ve experienced. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve changed my message at the last minute, or ended a message early and moved to a response time, because I just sensed this is what needed to happen. Keeping my heart pure, and preparing my spirit, only gives me the confidence in those moments.
I just gave a talk on grief, as part of our series, When it Doesn’t Feel Like Christmas. You can listen here.
And I just finished the final round of edits for my new book, which you can preorder here.
What I’m reading:
3 Shades of Blue, James Kaplan (And I’m pretty sure it will make my next top 10 books list).
Communicating Well During Advent
Next level communicators utilize checklists to get the most out of their speaking, and this is especially true during seasons like Advent.
Award winning author, Atul Gawande, argues in his book, The Checklist Manifesto, the more complex something becomes, the more it needs to be simplified, and the way to do this is through checklists. Industries like aviation and the medical profession (to name a few) have utilized checklists, saving countless lives and hundreds of millions of dollars annually. As communicators we are well aware of the complexities involved in our field. Likewise, to be effective we need to have a checklist we employ in preparing our talks which will set us up for success. Nowhere is this more true than this time of year when many communicators will speak at religious services, around the theme of Advent.
Now I more than understand not all of you who subscribe to this weekly newsletter are pastors or will be asked to speak at a religious service; but I do want to take a few moments to address those of us who will, and offer a nine point checklist that will help to set the stage for a meaningful holiday presentation:
Speak like I believe it. One of the challenges with seasonal messages like the Christmas story, is we communicators have heard and given it so many times it can feel stale. Unless we fight this sense of redundancy, our presentation will come off the exact way we feel it- old hat. So speak like you really believe what you are saying is true and fresh.
Have I been creative, not innovative. I’m all for coming up with fresh ways to tell the old familiar story. Having the right prop, or finding the perfect illustration to accent the timeless principle is something we should all be on the lookout for. But…if in your quest for newness, you actually tell something about the story that no one has heard before, there’s a strong likelihood you are wrong.
Don’t be shy. Many churches are so uber aware of unchurched people attending, they overcompensate by attempting to do all they can so it doesn’t feel like church. I’ve got a newsflash for you: When an unchurched person comes to, well, church, they expect it to feel like, well, church. So don’t be shy about who you are and what you believe.
Be mindful. One of the things I always appreciate when I walk into a retail store is when the sales associate who welcomes me, asks if they can help (To which I almost always say no.) and then stays out of the way giving me space to sort through things. This is what I mean by mindful communication during high guest seasons like Advent. When you say things during your talk like, “Many of you are here today for the first time, or the first time in a long time, and I want you to know how happy we are you’re here. At the end of our service some of our leaders will be down front to talk or pray with you,” this is mindful communication that acknowledges the presence of the guest, and gives them space to process.
Remember the hurting. Christmas time can be tough, as this festive season is a reminder of loved one’s who have died, or people walking the road of divorce and having to sort through the family complexities which comes with that, along with a host of other reasons. People will inevitably be in the audience who are grieving. It’s always good to point this out in your talk, and to thank them for simply summoning up the courage to come to church.
Does the feel of my message reflect the feel of this season? Christmas time is not Good Friday. If you are speaking at a Good Friday service where the focus is on the death of Christ, you should be somber and reflective. Good Friday feels like a funeral, and that’s more than appropriate. Christmas is not that. It’s a time of joy, and hope and your message must strike these chords. Give people hope, because that’s what Advent is all about.
Befriend Clarity. When you stand to speak, chances are there will be plenty of people who did not grow up in church, along with others who haven’t been to church in forever. And mixed in among them may be plenty of kids. What this means is you will need to work especially hard to be clear with your language, getting rid of insider language (“you know the story”) and “Christianese.” Keep your communication as simple as possible.
Watch your time. Remember there will be a substantial amount of people in the audience who aren’t used to listening to a weekly sermon, so their listening threshold doesn’t match what regular attendees of your church have developed over time. Add to this some extra programming elements like extended music, and maybe even some dramatic pieces, means you will need to aim for a lesser amount of time than normal when you speak.
Be intentional with what you wear. I don’t know what it is, but in the various churches I have led over the years, long time attenders, along with most first time guests dressed up for our Advent services, and not once did we say to do so. While not a hard and fast rule, there’s wisdom in at least matching what the audience will wear, without overdoing things. I more than understand there are plenty of communities and churches where this is not the case, but the larger point is to be intentional and careful about what you wear.
What I’m reading:
The Challenge of Acts, by NT Wright
If this post has been helpful to you, please feel free to share with others by encouraging to subscribe here.
Top 10 Books I read in 2024
It was the Nobel prize winning poet and essayist, Joseph Brodsky, who once observed, “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
Ooof. Kind of harsh, Joe. But while I would not go so far as to say a failure to read is a crime, a great communicator who doesn’t read is like a talented football player who doesn’t study film: At some point it’s going to catch up with you.
As we are now days away from the close of another year (so hard to believe), I thought I’d share with you the ten best books I have read in 2024:
#10: Black Fundamentalist’s, by Daniel R. Bare
Many in the black church of the Jim Crow era harbored well deserved reservations when it came to being labeled “fundamentalist’s,” because their white counterparts, while having sound theology in some doctrines, did not engage in racial equality, which ironically, is poor doctrine. But on the other hand, there were many black pastors and preachers who did not want to abandon the rich biblical teachings of the faith in a quest for racial equality. There was a way to do both, they correctly argued. Daniel Bare, through sound scholarship, gives us their story.
#9: Dinners with Ruth, by Nina Totenberg
Nina Totenberg chronicles her decades-long unlikely friendship with Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It’s not often you see a journalist (Nina) getting close with a member of the highest court, but that’s exactly what happened. I found myself tearing up as these two women dropped everything to help each other through divorces, cancer and all that life tends to throw at us. In an era of division, this book gave me hope that our differences don’t have to unnecessarily divide.
#8: The Miracle of St. Anthony, by Adrian Wojnarowski
I was playing golf this past spring when my random playing partner recommended this gem to me, and I’m so glad he did. This book is about one of the greatest high school basketball coaches of all time- Bobby Hurley, Sr.- and the school he loved, right in the middle of impoverished Jersey City. While it’s non-fiction, it reads like a novel, taking you through all the highs and lows of life, both on and off the court.
#7: Truman, by David McCullough
Okay, this one’s been on my list for awhile, but it took me several years to get up the strength to read a book that’s well over a thousand pages. But hey, it’s by one of my favorite historical authors, so I did it, and boy am I glad. If your image of Truman is an awe shucks country boy from Missouri, who just lucked his way into office, and held on for dear life, you would be dead wrong. While he had no college degree, he made up for it in spades with leadership. And while I’m thankful for his strides in desegregating the military and government, I was also grieved to read about his deep racism. But isn’t that the point of all biography? Who isn’t profoundly complicated?
#6: On Speaking Well, by Peggy Noonan
I’m always trying to get better as a communicator, and this is one of the best books I’ve read on the subject in years. Punchy, to the point and littered with stories, Peggy does not disappoint.
#5: John Wesley: A Brand from the Burning, by Roy Hattersley
John Wesley is one of my favorite people in world history. Founder of the Methodist Church, and a committed man of faith, Wesley is also one of the most complicated people you’ll ever come across. He was a vegetarian, who loved his work so much that he told his wife on their wedding night she shouldn’t expect to see him much. He was great with the Scriptures, but terrible with people. And he was full of passion. Passion for God. Passionate against slavery. And passionate for other women, leading him to do very silly things that raised more than a few eyebrows. I found myself inspired, and shaking my head in disbelief all at once.
#4: Equiano, the African, by Vincent Carretta
In the late 1700s, the abolitionist movement in England was growing stale. The only voices were from whites like William Wilberforce (and a host of others), who had not really experienced slavery. What was needed was an insider's view….someone who had actually lived it. Enter Olaudah Equiano, a formerly enslaved African, who experienced the horrors of that “peculiar institution,” came to faith in Christ, and wrote a bestselling biography of his travails. A well read man, he engaged in debates with white pro-slavery advocates in the newspapers, gaining him quite the following. I’m kind of mad I’m just now hearing about him.
#3: Estranged Pioneers, by Korie Edwards and Rebecca Kim
I’ve spent my life championing the multiethnic church, and have long looked to Dr. Korie Edwards as a guide for how to go about this. Along with Dr. Rebecca Kim, these two scholars spent years studying the multiethnic church and have concluded those best fit to lead them are people of color, because they have what’s called “bridging capital”. I just about underlined the whole book. Maybe that’s why it took me over a month to read some two hundred plus pages- it’s that rich.
#2: Where the Light Fell, Philip Yancey
Without a doubt, Yancey is my favorite modern author. He writes prolifically on matters of grace, forgiveness and reconciliation. This book- his memoir- tells us why. He grew up in a spiritually abusive home, where his self righteous mother, who once confessed she had not sinned in twelve years, berated Philip and his brother for the least little offenses. The effect was broken young men whose image of God was one who was impossible to please. While I wouldn’t classify this as some fun little beach read, it will stir you, and if you are a person of faith, maybe even inspire you to live a life of grace.
#1: A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles
I do read fiction after all? You happy? LOL. So I came into this year with the goal of having my wife (who reads way more than me, but only fiction) give me four of the best works of fiction she’s read recently so we can have more to talk about. Well, I devoured this one while sitting next to her by the pool on vacation. You know the book is great when it gets turned into a television show.
Looking back on this list it’s amazing how much biography I read this year. I think the reason why is related to something F. Scott Fitzgerald once said: “That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”
Sorry for the long post. If you’ve read something really good that you think I would benefit from, please email me back with your recommendation. Until next week…