Great communicators are made not born.
Great communicators are made not born.
And I hope that encourages you.
With time, and a lot of right reps, we can grow as communicators. What do I mean by “right reps”? Hall of Fame basketball coach, Phil Jackson, was once approached by a member of the media after practice one day when he was leading the legendary Los Angeles Lakers. The reporter pointed out how his star center, Shaquille O’Neal had stayed after practice and was at the free throw line working on his shot. Notorious for his poor performance from the line, the journalist was impressed to see Shaq getting his reps in, a fact he pointed out to Coach Jackson. Phil immediately responded, “Practice does not make perfect; practice makes permanent.” In other words, who cares if you’re getting your reps in, if you are not getting them in the right way. And the same is true for we communicator’s.
Today, I want to give you one thing to practice, where if done the right way will lead to our transformation as communicators. What is that one thing? Passion.
Richard St. John, in his book, The Eight Traits Successful People Have in Common, lists the number one secret as passion. More than anything else, St. John observes, passion moves people. And in the realm of speaking, it is our most potent weapon in moving people from indifference to all in engagement.
Ralph Waldo Emerson agrees. He once said, “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm (hear “passion”).”
Pretty strong statement, and over time I have found it to be true, not just in leadership, but especially in communication. But what exactly is passion? University professor, Melissa Cardon defines passion as “A positive, intense feeling that you experience for something that is profoundly meaningful for you as an individual.” Or to say it another way, passion is the ability to emotionally connect with our audience to raise the hopes of those who have found themselves hopeless or indifferent to the theme of the message we are delivering. If we want to move and inspire people, it begins with us as communicators who have first been moved and inspired by the very thing we are trying to persuade the people entrusted to us.
So how do we do this? How do we appropriately use the currency of passion in our presentation to transform people? I have found the following four things to be essential:
What makes my heart sing? This is the question Carmine Gallo poses in his wildly popular book, Talk Like Ted, where after years of analyzing the most viewed TED Talks, he concludes that what makes the most meaningful messages are those where the speaker is not communicating for a paycheck, or from mere responsibility, but from a deep well of calling. My father, one of the best communicators I know, often poses the question to people who are trying to figure out what to do with their lives, “What makes you pound the table and weep?” Not what pays the most, or what will bring you fame or material possessions, but rather the deep well of calling. Winston Churchill was a transformational communicator because he loved England. Pastor EV Hill was at the top of his field because he loved God and the gospel. And Susan Cain, author of Quiet, gave one of the most viewed TED Talks because she’s passionate about introverts not being overlooked in the workplace. What about you? What makes your heart sing? What makes you pound the table and weep? Draw on that and you will find passion effortless.
Bring more than your mind…bring your emotions. Don’t misunderstand me. We have to have substance in our presentations. Remember, the Greeks said all great speakers had logos, or great content. But if your message is a mere information dump, don’t be surprised if people aren’t inspired. A recipe for transformational communication is the combination of rich content, packaged in appropriate passion.
Spend passion wisely. Every great message has ebbs and flows, mountains and valleys. There should be places in your talk when people feel a slight pinch as they are challenged from any faulty thinking or patterns you want to jolt them out of. These valleys are not necessarily the place to spend the emotional capital of passion, or you run the risk of coming off as mean. It’s best to save your passion as you’re scaling the mountain(s) of your message.
Be free. Years ago, when programs like PowerPoint (yes, it was that long ago) were becoming popular aids in talks, I heard a communicator caution, “Too much PowerPoint and your message will lose its point.” I agree. You know it’s a great talk, where at the end people have stopped taking notes, because their hearts are stirred. While these aids are helpful, don’t let them take the place of you, the messenger.
What I’m Reading:
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver.
Knowledge of the Holy, A.W. Tozer (re-read).
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4 Things Next Level Communicators Do When They Give a Bad Talk
I don’t care how great of a communicator you are, you will give a bad talk. It happens to the best of us.
Mike Tyson got knocked out by Buster Douglas. Tiger Woods got walked down by Y.E. Yang. And world number one Serena Williams' bid to win all four majors in the same calendar year was derailed by an unseeded and unknown Roberta Vinci. If Tyson, Woods and Serena can have their off days, so will we as communicators.
And this bugs me to no end, because there’s no rhyme or reason to it. What I mean by this is I can put in the same amount of work, admire the beauty of my talk as I look at it on the computer screen, only to give it and…crickets. Nothing. If you’ve spoken long enough, you feel my frustration.
So what concerns me in this post is why do we give bad talks, and what to do when, not if, we stink up the joint.
Charles Spurgeon was a nineteenth century pastor whose speaking gift was so big, he was known as, “The Prince of Preachers,” and even he found himself tormented by the occasional errant message. Reflecting on one particular time, Spurgeon recalls, “I could not speak as usually I have done…It humbled me bitterly…Some may imagine that want of study brought me into that condition, but I can honestly affirm that it was not so. I think that I am bound to give myself unto reading and not to tempt the Spirit by unthought of effusions. I always deem it a duty to seek my sermons from my Master, and implore Him to impress them on my mind; but on that occasion I think I had prepared even more carefully than I ordinarily do, so that unpreparedness was not the reason for the lack of force I then mourned. The simple fact is this, “The wind bloweth where it listeth’; and sometimes the winds themselves are still” (Spurgeon: Prince of Preachers, page 280).
Let me translate what Spurgeon is saying: He prepared as best he could. He prayed and asked God to help him. Then he got up to speak and it was one big nothing burger. So what did Spurgeon think the problem was? A lack of power. It looked great on paper, but came out powerless on the stage.
Ever been there? I have. If you’re like me, you can find yourself talking to yourself in the middle of a presentation you are giving to others. And in those moments where it’s not going well I can tell you I’ve told myself to just get this over with so I can go back to my room and crawl under the bed. I put the feeling I get giving a lifeless talk right next to a root canal. So uncomfortable.
Okay, so what do we do when we inevitably lay an egg? I have found these four things to be helpful:
It’s never as bad as you think it is. Give yourself some grace, it’s not as bad as you thnk. I remember one talk I gave to a group of athletes some years ago that I felt particularly horrible about. Like, I was boring myself. Afterwards a couple came up to me before I could make a mad dash for my hotel room. They were in tears (“Of course you are, after that mess,” I thought to myself) as they told me how God used my message to lead them to faith in Christ that evening. Something like this happens nearly every time I give a “bad talk,” reminding me it’s never as bad as it feels, which leads me to my next point.
Learn some humility. You ever put a message together, looked at your notes and thought to yourself, “Oh this is going to be fantastic,” only to get up and give it and it’s fantastically terrible? That’s happened to me so much that I actually get nervous when I feel like the message is great before I give it. But then the reverse is true. There are times I get up to give a talk where I feel like the little boy who came to Jesus with a few pieces of fish and a few loaves of bread to feed thousands- inadequate. And the message is extraordinary. I don’t think these things are random. God oftentimes allows us to feel as if we did bad, only to see people be encouraged to show us it’s really not about us, so be humble.
Learn from it. Sometimes the reason we didn’t do well is clear. Maybe it was a lack of preparation, or we took some shortcuts, or other reasons. Okay, learn from the mistakes and resolve to grow.
Toss it. In golf they say you’re only as good as your next shot. Like communicators, the best golfers will hit errant shots, so instead of dwelling on the last shot, they have to toss it, and look to the next shot. The bad message happened, so you may need to take a peak in the rearview mirror and learn from it, and after you’ve done that, toss it. Onto the next message.
What I’m reading:
Next level communicators understand that all of life is preparation.
Next level communicators understand that all of life is preparation.
One of the most frequent questions I’m asked is how long does it take me to put a message together? My response is less than helpful: All of life is preparation. This is the one thing next level communicators understand about preparation, because when we speak, we are communicating from our head, hearts and a lifetime of experience.
John Wesley, an eighteenth century transformational communicator, was once asked why so many people came to hear him preach. He is said to have responded, “When you set yourself on fire, people love to come and see you burn.” What Wesley meant by setting himself on fire, is how his faith played a daily, vital role in his development and growth as a communicator. For John Wesley, this was the key to his next level communication. People were drawn to him not just because of his intellect, stories or well organized presentation. Wesley said what drew people to his preaching was his life set a blaze in deep conviction by the very truths he was seeking to convey to his audience. The hour or so that he spoke, came from a life that had fully bought into the message.
Next level communicators are all in on the message they are passing onto their audience.
So how do we get to a place where we set ourselves on fire so people can come and see us burn? Over the years, I have found the following to be essential:
Sin will dampen the fire. I’m a Christian. I’m also a preacher. If there’s one thing I have found out the hard way it’s that no matter how good your presentation is, when I am not living out the truths I’m seeking to pass on, something is off with the message. Sure, I understand that God’s Word is “living and active” (Hebrews 4:12), and that His Word will not “return empty” (Isaiah 55:11). Yes, there’s a power in the Word of God independent from the life of the communicator. And yet, somehow, someway, these two things are connected- the unleashed efficacy of the Word and the commitment of the preacher to grow in holiness.
Cultivating a daily walk with Christ is the best communication preparation we can ever do. What does this look like for me? Every day I commit to spend an hour in prayer and bible reading with God. I split this hour up in three twenty minute blocks. The first twenty minutes involves (in this order) prayers of gratitude, confession and then meditation on a passage of Scripture. The second twenty minute block centers around me reading through the Bible, and stopping to pray over verses that catch my attention. And the final twenty minute block is intercession- me praying for others. I have a prayer journal that I work through weekly, praying for my family, government, church, and a host of other people and needs.
Evening reflection. I try to end the day by journaling reflections on the day's events, confessing sin to God, and praising him for ways I have seen him show up that day.
Weekly fasting. Once a week I fast from food. If I can be honest, I hate doing this, and I never look forward to fast days, but that’s why I do it. Fasting is not a good luck charm for me (By the way, John Wesley fasted twice a week), but a way to declare to God that I desire Him more than food. It’s a purifying experience which keeps me in a posture of prayer throughout the day.
I have found when I am committed to these rhythms there is a depth to my preaching which feels…worshipful, and truly transformational for myself and the audiences I speak to.
What I’m reading:
Undivided: The Quest for Racial Solidarity in an American Church, Hahrie Han.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, Wright Thompson.
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Thank You
Thank You!
I just wanted to send a very quick note to say thank you for signing up for my weekly email on communication. I sure hope the insights I’ve shared have been helpful in your growth as a communicator. But I don’t want to limit my thanks to words. You’ll be getting an email from me very shortly with twenty-five of some of the best illustrations around. I don’t know about you, but as a communicator I’m always looking for just the right story or analogy to help bring the point I’m making home. Well, I have found these to be extremely helpful, and I’m sure you will too.
Glad to be on this journey with you,
Bryan
25 Illustrations
Grief
As a little boy my favorite thing to do with my father was to fish. And whenever we went, dad would always attach to my line a bobber. I would cast my line into the pond, and for the next several moments I would fixate my attention on the bobber, as I watched the waves take it up and down, and up and down. There would even be moments when something would strike my line so suddenly and hard, it would take the bobber all the way under the water. In many ways, what I have just described to you is grief. Grief tends to hit us in waves, taking us up and down and up and down. There are even moments when it feels as if we are all the way under, overwhelmed by it all. But in those moments when my bobber would be all the way under the water, I wouldn’t be hopeless, because I knew the bobber was not out there by itself; it was attached to the line that was a part of my pole, which was held in my hand. In order to get to the other side of grief, you need to be connected to and held by something greater than you. For Christians, the one who holds the line that the bobber of our life is attached to is God. God is the one who sustains us in seasons of grief.
Grief
I watched a television show once where in a specific scene there’s an elderly man seated at the dinner table pouring his heart out to his wife. He’s telling her all of the things he had done that day- how many patients he waited on (he’s a doctor), what he ate for lunch, and the interesting people he talked to, along with what they
had talked about. It was a really touching scene and you couldn’t help but come away inspired in your own relationship. And then the problem pulls back for a wider shot and you discover he’s at the table by himself. Come to find out his wife had died, but when she was alive they had this daily ritual where he was always telling her about his day. Now that she has passed he just can’t stop their routine. This man is clearly grieving. And here he helps us to see a very important thing about grief…the definition of grief- love that has no place to go.
Sacrifice
In the game of baseball, right before the batter steps into the batters box, he will always look down the third base line to his coach who will give him a set of signals. Sometimes the signal the batter receives is to bunt the ball. Now to bunt the ball simply means to angle the bat in such a way that when the ball hits it, it dribbles down the infield for what is just about always guaranteed to be a sure out. So why in the world would the coach tell the batter to bunt when he knows he will be thrown out? Because the batter has a teammate on base, and they want to move him into scoring position. So even though the batter may want to swing for the fences and better his stats by getting a hit or a homerun, to bunt means I have to think beyond myself and do what’s best for the team. Great relationships require bunting- doing those things you may not normally want to do, but it’s necessary to do for the good of the relationship. The best friendships and marriages are those who think beyond themselves and for the good of others.
Pride
The story is told of the time when the heavyweight champion of the world, Muhammad Ali, was on a flight which was experiencing some turbulence. The captain came on the public address system and requested everyone to move to their seats and fasten their seatbelts. As the flight attendant was moving to her seat she noticed Ali did not fasten his seatbelt. She quietly asked Ali to follow the captains instruction and buckle his seatbelt, to which Ali remarked, “Superman don’t need no seatbelt.” She replied, “Superman don’t need no airplane, now please fasten your seatbelt.”
Pride
Joe Dimaggio was one of the most beloved baseball players to ever play the game. Not long after America entered World War II, Dimaggio stepped away from the game and enlisted. His first game back after his tour of duty, Yankee stadium was packed with excited fans to welcome their centerfielder back. Right before the game, Dimaggio grabbed his toddler son, Joe Dimaggio, Jr., and walked out onto the field to thank the fans. As he walked out the crowd cheered, “Joe! Joe! Joe!”. While they were doing this, his son, Joe Dimaggio Jr.,
looked up at his dad and said, “Dad, they’re calling my name.” Pride is taking the credit which rightly belongs to God, and ascribing it to ourselves without acknowledging him.
Suffering
The problem with suffering is not so much the suffering itself, but it’s the psychological toll it takes in not knowing how long the suffering will last. I was reminded of this a few years back when the Peloton bike I ordered was delivered to my house. The representatives set up the bike in our upstairs television room.
Without reading the instructions, I hopped on the bike, picked some class which had something to do with interval training (had no clue what that was), turned on the television, and muted the Peloton instructor. Not long into the ride, I looked down and saw that the monitor wanted me to go between 90-110 miles an hour,
but because the instructor was muted, I had no clue how long I was supposed to go at this speed. After a few moments of sheer agony, I decided to mute the television and turn up the volume on the instructor. Now I could hear her say things like, “For the next thirty seconds we are going to go one hundred miles an hour,” and things were a lot more manageable. It’s not that the intensity changed, it’s just that I now new how long the suffering would last. I’ve often thought how much better things would be if God would come to me and say, “Hey Bryan, for the next thirty days your life is going to be miserable. But it will just be thirty days.” The problem with suffering isn’t so much the suffering, it’s not knowing how long the suffering will last.
Fatherhood
I do a lot of traveling, especially from coast to coast, and one of the things that initially baffled me is why the trip between the same two cities took considerably longer going one way than coming back the other way? What I quickly discovered is when you fly from east to west you are battling a headwind, while flying from west to east you are riding a tailwind. Dad’s, by our presence or absence, our intentionality or passivity, our care or neglect, we will either be a headwind in the life of our children or a tailwind. Some of us had headwinds for dads- dads whose poor example worked against our development. And yet the encouragement is we can still get to our destination, even though we had headwind dads. In fact, some of the best dads I know- dad’s who became tailwinds in the life of their kids, pushing them to their destiny- had headwinds for a father, and yet somewhere along the line they made up their mind to not be that in the life of their kids.
Meaning
I grew up down south, but because my parents are from the northeast, our home was not one influenced by southern culture. In fact, I didn’t even know what grits were until I spent the night over a friend's house. I’ll never forget waking up one morning and sitting at the breakfast table, and there is this white concoction with the consistency of oatmeal on our plates. I watched him take a few spoonfuls of jelly, plop it on the grits and stir it up. Amazed, I asked my friend what the white stuff was? He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Grits.” I then asked him what grits tasted like? He paused for a few moments, shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t know. I guess grits taste like whatever you put in them.” By themselves, grits are pretty tasteless, but stir a little butter, or throw some seasoning in there and now you got something. That’s kind of our lives. By ourselves our lives can feel meaningless…pointless. But if Jesus is in the mix- woven into the essence of who you are, now you got something.
Seizing the moment
In the game of basketball there is something called the shot clock. What this means is when the offense has the ball they don’t get all the time in the world to shoot the ball. Instead they have a small window of opportunity. They have a moment. Fail to shoot the ball in the allotted seconds they have (And it has to hit the rim), and you have what’s called a turnover. To be a great basketball player means you have to keep one eye on the defense, and another eye on the clock. No one will live forever on this earth. We’ve been given a moment. Or to say it another way, there’s a shot clock on their lives. To make the most of our moment means we keep one eye on this earth, and another eye on eternity.
The kingdom of God
I’ll never forget the first time I went to Australia. I had this eerie sense I had seen this before. They drive on the opposite side of the road from what I was accustomed to in America. They stop several times a day for tea, and there were roundabouts everywhere. The whole place was giving me England vibes. How did this place on the other side of the world come to look so similar to England? We all know the answer to that one.
Many years ago, thousands of people left England, and came to Australia where they took the culture and practices of the far away place of England, and transported it to this new place called Australia. The result was Australia ended up looking just like England. And that’s the call on followers of Jesus Christ. We are to
take the culture and practices of another world- the kingdom of heaven- and inject them into this place called earth, so that earth looks like heaven. This is exactly what Jesus meant when he taught us to pray, “Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Turning loss into victory
In the game of football there’s a play every team runs called a screenplay. All this involves is the offensive line, whose job it is to block the defensive line, letting the defensive line slip through without blocking them. Now as this play unfolds it looks like sheer madness. It looks like the quarterback will get crushed, and a huge loss will be inflicted on the offense. It really does look like the defense has won. But keep watching, because at just the last moment, the running back will slip behind the defensive line, and the quarterback will pass the ball to him for a substantial gain. What looked like a loss will all of a sudden turn into a substantial gain. As long as you are living the play is not over. What looks like a loss today could be nothing more than a setup for a sizeable gain tomorrow. God is the expert at arranging screen plays in our lives- those moments where it looks like life has gotten the best of us, can turn into victory just like that. Keep running.
Assumptions
Like most people, I enjoy a bag of popcorn. If I’m feeling a little hungry after dinner, I’ll grab a bag, place it in the microwave, and a few minutes later I’m on the couch munching away. But one of the things which continues to baffle me to this day is every time I take the bag out, there’s always plenty of kernels that did not get popped. Chances are you’ve felt this same frustration with me. I mean how in the world could all of the kernels be placed in the same environment, subjected to the same heat, yet some are transformed and others remain the same? I’ve learned a long time ago never to make the assumption that just because a thing or a person is in a certain environment means they will be changed. Jesus said the church will be composed of wheat and tares, good and bad, so don’t assume that just because a person attends church they have been “popped” (transformed) by the gospel. And don’t assume that just because a person comes from a certain background, and went to certain schools and has a certain pedigree that means they are a good person.
Hope
Hope is uncertainty tied to certainty. This is different than optimism, which is nothing more than uncertainty tied to positive thinking. I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always been fascinated by people who are really good at manipulating a yo-yo- you know the round object which has a string which is tied around their finger. I mean they can throw it down, make it stay down for a few moments, and then with a jerk of their finger bring it right back up. They can do tricks, like one called “walking the dog,” where they will throw the yo-yo down for a longer period of time only to bring it right back up in their hands. People who really know how to yo-yo are experts no matter how long that object stays down to bring it back up, and this has nothing to do with the yo-yo, but everything to do with what it’s tied to. Inevitably life will throw us down. We will find ourselves down at times in our emotions, our finances and our circumstances. It’s in these down moments where we need way more than optimism. We need the assurance of being tied to something or Someone that is beyond our circumstances. Someone who has the ability to pull us up no matter how low we are.
The object of faith
The reason why it’s hard for so many to exercise faith is because they don’t really trust what they are being asked to place their faith in. When my kids were little we used to play a game where they would stand on the steps and I’d ask them to jump in my arms. At first they would be scared and shake their head and say, “No, daddy,” all while I was pleading for them to trust me. Finally, I’d stand them on the first step a foot away from me, and they would jump, and I would yell, “Got you!” as I would catch them. Emboldened, they would back up a step to the second one and jump again as I would yell, “Got you!” while I caught them. Then they’d back up to the third step, then the fourth step, and beyond. What gave them the faith to jump? It wasn’t in their act of faith- you know their leaping ability. Their faith was rooted in the object of their faith- their dad. Little steps of faith developed their confidence to take great leaps of faith.
The blessing of adversity
When I was in high school I decided to try out for the varsity football team. In preparing for tryouts I thought it would be best to begin lifting weights- something I had never done before. So I walked into the gym, which was packed, waited for the bench press to clear, and when it finally did, I walked over, put the weights on the bar and did a few reps. In the middle of my third set, one of the high school football coaches walked over to me and told me I didn’t have enough weights on the bar. I’m thinking, “It’s my first time working out, and these ten pound weights on either side seem just fine.” He pulled the ten pound weights off, and put these huge forty-five pound weights on. Standing over me while I was on the bench, he demanded that I lift the bar three times. I’m terrified out of my mind, but a lot of people were looking at me, and to a fifteen year old sophomore in high school, peer pressure is a real thing. So I said a silent prayer asking for divine assistance, and lifted the bar, and struggled to not let it cave my chest in. Seeing that I could barely manage to lift the weight, the coach began to tap the bar up. Once it was up, he told me to do it again. Same thing- the bar came down fast, I struggled to lift it up, while he tapped up the bar. He then told me to do it a final time, to which I thought, “I haven’t done it one time.” Once my third rep was done, the coach said to me something I will never forget, “Son, if you want to get big, you have to lift something heavy.” Like you there’s been moments when the bar of life has seemed beyond my capacity. I’ve dealt with marital weights, financial weights, parenting weights, and so on. But it really is true- what doesn’t kill you actually makes you stronger. We just have to choose to not quit, and to hang in there.
Growth
Growth is not just something that should happen to us during one particular season of our lives. Growth should be a lifelong commitment each of us make. During the press conference to announce Nokia being acquired by Microsoft, Nokia’s CEO ended his remarks by saying, “We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost.” For years Nokia had been a respectable company. Some of my earliest cell phones were made by them. They were dependable products that never really changed, and that was the problem. The world was changing too fast. The smartphone came along, and Nokia kept making the same reliable product that over time, fewer and fewer people wanted. What killed Nokia wasn’t some big scandal, it was their refusal to learn, to grow and to adapt that led to their downfall. What’s true of Nokia, is sadly true of so many people as we age. We get stuck in our ways, become closed off to new possibilities, and along the way we miss out on wonderful opportunities. Growth has nothing to do with age, but is a mindset we all should carry with us to our graves.
Contentment
Do you know where we get the word tantalizing from? It comes from Greek mythology of course, where the Greek King Tantalus thought it would be cool to steal ambrosia from the gods. As punishment for his crime, he was condemned to an eternal torment of hunger and thirst where nothing would ever satisfy him. When he stooped down to get a drink, the waters would recede. When he reached up to pick some fruit from the tree, the branches would jerk out of reach. King Tantalus lived in a state of perpetual thirst and hunger, and
that’s all of us. Everyone in this world knows what it is like to never be satisfied by the things in this life. To be human is to be in a constant state of being tantalized. No amount of money can scratch us where our soul itches. Do you know how many depressed people there are who have thousands of followers on social media? On the flip side, there are plenty of people who have found contentment we never thought possible. One of the most famous passages on the blessing of contentment was written by an incarcerated Apostle Paul. Gandhi, lead a contented life, while at the same time rejecting the riches of this world. And Mother Theresa immersed herself among the poor of Calcutta, without a complaint in the world. All of these individuals (and so many more) broke free from the chains of being tantalized, by finding contentment outside of this life.
Priorities
I wasn’t very good at math, but I do remember a unit of math called order of operations. Remember order of operations? This was where you would have a parentheses filled with an equation, and in that equation would be addition, multiplication, division and subtraction. Now the temptation would be to jump in anywhere in the parentheses and just do the math, but what order of operations says is that you can’t just do the math according to any sequence you want, you have to do it in its correct order. In other words, it’s possible to get the math right, but if you got the order wrong, the whole thing was wrong. Life has its order of operations. For the follower of Jesus, the sequence always begins with the priority of our relationship with Jesus. If I put anything first, in front of Jesus, be it my marriage, work, money and so on, then I make the whole thing wrong, because what I put first becomes my god.
Anger
Anger in itself is not wrong. Therapist’s will tell you that anger is a sign of what you care about, and expressed in the right way can actually be helpful. The bible doesn’t condemn anger, just unrighteous, hurtful expressions of anger. God gets angry in the Bible, and so does Jesus. The apostle Paul actually instructed the Ephesians to be angry and do not sin (Ephesians 4:26). One night, I was seated with my sons around our outdoor fire pit. I pointed out how we were enjoying the warmth of this fire because it had boundaries. I also wanted them to see that if the boundaries were removed, we would run for cover. The difference between something that we are bettered by, versus something we run from is the boundaries. That’s anger. With helpful emotional boundaries in place, it can be something used to improve the lives of others. But unfettered, boundary-less anger, can actually kill people’s confidence and sense of self worth.
Self-control
If you’ve ever seen a NASCAR event you’ve probably been amazed by how fast these cars go. Some years ago I was shocked to discover these cars, which clock well north of a hundred miles per hour, don’t actually go as fast as they could. See, each of these cars have been outfitted with something called a restrictor plate. Motivated by a concern for the safety and well being of the drivers, NASCAR has mandated these plates so the cars can’t go as fast as they could. All of us need restrictor plates, because we all have basic human appetites, which if they are not held in check can actually harm us and others. Food is good, but remove the restrictor plate of self control and it can become deadly. Sex is a wonderful gift, but without the restrictor plate of self control it can destroy marriages. And there’s nothing wrong with a shopping trip every now and then, but without self control it can spell financial ruin.
Gratitude
In October of 1942, Eddie Rickenbacker’s plane crashed into the Pacific. For the next several days he and the surviving members of his crew were adrift at sea, and soon ran out of rations. On the eighth day, a bird landed on Eddie’s head, where he swiftly killed it, and used pieces of the intestines as bait to fish. Sure enough he was able to catch enough fish for he and his men, allowing them to survive. When they were finally picked up, Eddie was filled with gratitude for that bird. For the rest of his life Eddie would never forget that bird, so much so that when he retired you could find Eddie at the end of a pier with a bucket of shrimp, tossing handfuls into the air to a gathering flock of seagulls, and if you listened closely you could hear old Eddie say, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
Serving
It’s the early morning hours of August 28th, 1963. He’s a six foot, four inch basketball coach who has come down from Villanova to witness history. Because of his height he catches the eye of some of the organizers for the March on Washington event, and they ask him to serve on Dr. Martin Luther King’s security detail. This wasn’t what he had come for, but okay, why not. Good choice, George. A few hours later he’s standing right behind Dr. King as he gives the iconic, “I Have a Dream,” speech. Seventeen minutes later, Dr. King finishes, and at the end of the event as King turns to leave, George Raveling (1937- ) follows him and then stops. He notices Dr. King has left his notes to his iconic speech, so George collects them and catches up with King to give them to the leader of the civil rights movement. “You can have them if you want,” King mutters. So he holds onto them. No, “Are you sure’s,” or any questions asked. Today these notes are valued at over three million dollars and still owned by Raveling…all because he decided to not just be a spectator, but to serve. Thanks George for teaching us that when we serve we always get far more than we give.
Everything is for a Reason
I once had to fly to a location to spend the day recording a series of bible studies I had written. Now, in my mind I figured I’d spend all of my time talking to a camera on location. Oh how wrong I was. I ended up spending about twenty percent of my time in front of the camera, and eighty percent filming what’s called in the industry, “B-Roll”. These are shots where a person is standing somewhere looking around, or walking off in the distance. They would tell me to walk a certain way, in a certain direction and at a certain pace, and when I finished they had me come back and do it all over again…and again. Then we’d move to another location and they wanted me to stand a certain way, look at a certain thing. You get the point. And to think I did this for hours. I battled frustration at what I thought was a useless exercise, until I saw the finished product. The director and producers were able to take the most “random, mundane” moments and turn them into sheer beauty. It was then that I realized that what I thought was meaningless, was actually meaningful. There were truly no wasted moments. And the same is true for our lives. So much of our days and weeks and months and years seem to be an exercise in B-Roll. But the apostle Paul had it right when he told the church at Rome that all things work together for good, to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. God specializes in taking every experience, no matter how pointless we may think it is, and use it for our good, ane most importantly, his glory.
Grace
My wife has a dog (Do you like how I said that?). Several times throughout the day she will take her dog out on a walk, and when she does, she takes with her an expression of grace called a leash. My wife does this because her dog likes to wander off and do her own thing. Whenever this happens, Korie will give a gentle tug on the leash. It’s her way of saying, “Harley (the dog’s name), I’m not going to let you venture off and do
your own thing. I want you to be close to me so we can enjoy this walk.” There are plenty of times when God will do the same thing to us. If you think hard enough you can probably imagine times in your life where you tried to do wrong, where you tried to wander off and do your own thing, and God gently tugged on you through unforeseen circumstances, canceled plans and even his discipline, to get you right back to where you need to be. It may not feel good, but at the end of the day it is his grace.
In the early 1990s, the great entertainer, Sammy Davis Jr., was dying of throat cancer. As he lay in his bed the door opened and in walked Gregory Hines- the man he had invested in, helping him to become a better entertainer. At the sight of Sammy, Gregory begins to cry. He bends down and kisses his mentor on the cheek, as Sammy sheds a tear. Gregory goes on to tell Sammy how much he meant to him, and how he would not be the man or entertainer he is without his influence. As Gregory turns to leave he hears a commotion behind him. He looks back to see what it is, and is shocked to discover Sammy has gotten out of bed and is tap dancing! At the end of his dance, Sammy thrusts his hands forward to Gregory several times it’s his way of saying, “What I’ve given to you, take it and run with it.” That’s what investing in others truly is, isn’t it? It’s taking all of what we have been given and passing it on to others, so they can pass on to others.
Next level communicators understand the how is almost as important as the what.
Next level communicators understand the how is almost as important as the what.
Whenever I put a talk together there are two big boxes which contain all of my preparation. The first is what I call the content box, where I am consumed with what I am going to say. Questions like, “What is the message of this particular text? What does this specific word mean? Why is this theological theme important in light of the narrative,” and more, occupy about sixty percent of my preparation. But just because I’ve answered these questions, and have constructed rich content doesn’t mean I have finished preparing the message. In fact, over the years I have concluded that just because I have put together some good content doesn’t mean I’ve constructed a great message.
The second box is the communication box. Here I’m fixated on how I am going to articulate the content, and while the content box is the most important, it shouldn’t be the most important by much, because I don’t care how rich your message is, if your presentation is boring, lacks creativity, is poorly worded and doesn’t engage the imagination and hearts of the people, the chances of your content reaching them is slim. Over the years I have become so struck with this element of speaking, that I reserve forty percent of my preparation time just thinking through illustrations, introductions, conclusions, the right phrasing for my central theme and argument, and more.
As I sit down to put a message together, here are some of my thoughts with this second box of communication:
Are my illustrations good? Here’s the measuring stick for a good illustration: The people get the point before you give the point, and the point of the illustration always ties directly to the point you just made in your explanation.
Are my illustrations varied? Not everyone in the audience likes sports, and history. So I need to ask if I included illustrations that women will resonate with, along with people of different generations? Did I use props to engage people who are more visually oriented? Did I use an illustration which engaged the imagination? If you only illustrate from what you’re interested in, then don’t be surprised if you only attract people who are like you.
Did I use too many illustrations? Remember, creativity is to be used to enhance the content, never to replace the content. It’s like salt to steak. Too much ruins the meat; just the right amount enhances it.
Did I capture the central argument of my talk in a short, pithy statement? For example, some months ago I spoke about grief, and instead of saying grief is a feeling of hopelessness, I said, “Grief is love that has no place to go” (not original to me). That stuck with people. Or, the other week I talked about hope, and I said that hope is, “Earth’s uncertainties tied to heaven’s reality”. Both of those messages built around these organizing statements, and set the table for people to really grab a hold of the message.
Were my main points framed as application statements or questions? When I first began to communicate in what my kids like to refer to as the “Nineteens,” everything was about alliteration. If you had three points, they should all have the same letter. But culture has shifted now. Postmodernism created a dynamic where people no longer wanted the orator with flowery rhetoric. Now they want something more pragmatic, and one of the ways you can connect with your audience is to frame your points as application questions or statements.
Did I use a quote from a reputable secular source? As a preacher, I want to always be aware of people in the audience who are not followers of Jesus Christ. So getting them to connect with my message is especially challenging, and one of the ways I can build a bridge to them is to quote from secular sources they may find credible, like the New York Times, or some author, or entertainer. Paul did this when he was with the Greek philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17.
Have I thought through the pace of the message? Pace is the rate at which we talk, and the communicator's pace is like the score to a movie, it should be varied. Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest communicators to ever live, said this about the importance of pace: “A very useful help in securing attention is a pause. Pull up short every now and then, and the passengers on your coach will wake up…Keep on, on, on, on, on with commonplace matter and monotonous tone, and you are rocking the cradle, and deeper slumbers will result; give the cradle a jerk, and sleep will flee” (Lectures to My Students, page 143).
Have I kept the message simple, not shallow? The way I try to achieve this is by using the explanation/illustration/application method, where every point in my outline I first spend time explaining the point, then an illustration, then applications. This little schematic allows me to obtain simplicity and depth all at once.
What I’m reading:
One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, by Daniel Sillman (I see this being in my top 10 come the end of this year).
Next level communicators understand words are actions
Next level communicators understand words are actions.
Nowhere is this more true than on the evening of March 15th, 1965. By the time President Lyndon Johnson stood to speak, the issue of voting rights was front and center, brought to the fore by the tireless efforts of the civil rights movement, specifically in Selma, Alabama. Just beginning his first full term as president, and eligible to run again in 1968 (which he famously declined), the easy thing for Johnson would have been to delay, to put things off until his final term. Why risk his political future, especially when there were so many in the audience that evening who would be standing in his way? Obviously, Johnson felt otherwise; that the time was now. He knew if he was going to bring about the right kind of actions, he had to use the right words. Here are some of those words:
I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy…At times, history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.
There is no cause for pride in what has happened in Selma…But there is cause for hope and for faith in our democracy in what is happening here tonight. For the cries of pain, the sound of clubs, the protests of oppressed people- like some great trumpet- have summoned into convocation all the majesty of this government of the greatest nation on the earth…
Rarely in any time does an issue lay bare the secret heart of America itself. Rarely are we met with a challenge, not to our growth or abundance, for our welfare or our security, but rather to the values, and the purposes, and the meaning of our beloved nation. The issue of equal rights for American Negroes is such an issue…
There is no Negro problem. There is no southern problem. There is no northern problem. There is only an American problem. And we are met here tonight as Americans- not as Democrats or Republicans…we are met here as Americans to solve that problem…
Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult. But about this there can and should be no argument. Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote…
Wednesday I will send to Congress a law designed to eliminate illegal barriers to the right to vote…
There is no constitutional issue here. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong- deadly wrong- to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote in this country. There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights…
But even if we pass this bill, the battle will not be over. What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches in every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice…
AND…WE…SHALL..OVERCOME.
Dr. King, watching from Alabama, cried. Five months later the voting rights bill was signed into law.
As growing communicators, I want to draw our attention to a few takeaways from President Johnson’s speech:
Clear. You’ve heard me say it again, and you’ll hear me say it many more times in future posts: Clarity is the best friend of the next level communicator, and LBJ models this. He is clear in calling out the problem, and he is clear as it relates to what he needs his audience to do in order to solve the problem. Next level communicators befriend clarity in every talk to bring their audience to a place of action.
Anticipatory. In the future, I will come back to this point, but please notice that exceptional communicators always anticipate their audience's objections to their argument, and answer them before they can raise their critiques. Johnson understands there are people in his audience who are from the north who would be tempted to look down on the southern representatives, and vice versa. Notice he calls this out when he says in essence that this isn’t a southern or a northern issue, but an American one. Brilliant! His ability to anticipate, helps him to unify and bring about his objective. Every time you put a message together, ask what the major objections to your points may be, and build into your talk, where appropriate, responses to those critiques.
Honest. Notice the line when President Johnson admits, “Many of the issues of civil rights are very complex and most difficult”? See what he’s doing here? He’s keeping his audience focused on the task at hand. It would be so easy to allow the subject of voting rights to get held hostage by other important but complicated issues, that it becomes a distraction. LBJ honestly admits the complexities surrounding the civil rights movement, and uses his honesty to help keep his audience focused.
Courageous. I mean this is just throughout this whole speech, which puts it in the genre of the prophetic (not foretelling but forth or truth telling). He ends by quoting the anthem of the civil rights movement, “We shall overcome”. He also calls out the injustice of voter registration discrimination on the basis of color. Do the research and you’ll discover history’s most profound speeches share the common denominator of courage.
Hopeful. Courageous should never mean dour, sullen or gloomy, though. I mean think how easy it would have been to just get up and guilt people with the truth. If President Johnson had taken this approach he would not have accomplished his objective. Instead, if you both read and watch the speech, you will sense a hopefulness, a we-can-do-this posture, which I believe was the key to the bill getting signed into law. In the same way, if people don’t leave your talk feeling a sense of hope that the change you’re calling for can legitimately happen, then you’ve just weighed them down with a tremendous burden. Let’s take a page out of Johnson and be hopeful communicators.
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Next level speakers figure out a way to make their audience care
Next level speakers figure out a way to make their audience care.
When we get up to speak there always exists two agendas between the communicator and the listener. Our audience wants us to talk to them about what they care about, while we want them to listen to what we care about. Great communicators figure out a way to accomplish both at the same time. Speaking of these competing agendas, P.T. Forsyth once said in a series of lectures to young emerging communicators at Yale in 1907, “You are there not simply to speak what people care to hear, but also to make them care for what you must speak” (Preaching and the Modern Mind). And there it is. The onus is on us as communicators to inspire the listener to lean in, engage and truly care about our message. Fail to do this and the message may elicit a few laughs, and provide some momentary entertainment, but it will not persuade and truly move people. Figure out a way to bring the audience with you- to make them care about what you care about- and it will be a transformative experience.
What I am offering to you is not something nice to think about, but absolutely necessary. In every talk, we have to answer the question, “What is the felt need, or the human longing my message will address,” and this question must be answered within the first seven to ten minutes, or we risk talking to a disinterested, unengaged audience.
Recently, I was coaching a young communicator who asked me to help him get better. I listened to one of his messages and pretty much told him he has to make his audience care by addressing their felt need. After a few weeks he sent me a note letting me know how several people had mentioned how his speaking had vastly improved. While they may not be able to put their finger on what changed, their feedback indicates they were more engaged as listeners because he had figured out a way to make them care. I’m telling you, if you do this one thing you will improve instantly as a communicator.
Okay, but how? I have found the following tips to be helpful in making my audience care:
Awareness. For many communicators they do not even think to ask the question of felt need, or human longing. They are not even aware of the different agendas between them and the audience and how it is their duty to make the people care about what they are talking about. I recommend putting a checklist together of things you have to cover with every talk, and having the question, “Did I make the audience care by naming their specific felt need,” right at the top of your checklist. Refer to this checklist every time you put a message together.
Look for it, I promise you it’s there. As a pastor the content I use to speak is the Bible. One of the things which makes every passage in the Bible useful (II Timothy 3:16) is because every passage deals with some human longing. For example, this week I’m preaching on Israel, Egypt and the Red Sea- one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Now unless I figure out what the universal human longing is, it’s just a bit of history with maybe some moral lessons. So as I’m studying, I came across a verse where Israel wants to go back to Egypt because in their minds they had it so much better there. What’s their longing, their felt need? Comfort. Ease. I need to speak to that, and then show them how God’s way is better than our longing. I promise you, if you look for it, it’s there.
Live. In most other professions, the older a person gets, the worse they get at their jobs. Communicators, the older we get, the better we tend to get, and the reason for this is not only experience in speaking, but experience in life. We have a better understanding of the human condition, and are able to quickly connect to the felt needs of our audience.
Create and keep tension. Remember there are two agendas going on while you are speaking- the audiences and yours. By tapping into the felt need of your listeners, you are giving a head nod to what they care about. But your message should either offer the best path for them to express their longing, or a completely different (and better) path to their longing. For example, as I will talk about the life of ease we want, contrasted to the life God wants, I am naturally creating tension, but I also have to show them why God’s way is better. So throughout the talk you want to constantly go back and not only acknowledge their longing, but hold it up to the better way you are providing, and show them why and how it’s better. Nothing keeps an audience engaged like tension.
What I’m Reading:
An Unfinished Love Story, Doris Kearns Godwin
The Anti-Greed Gospel, Malcolm Foley
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
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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