Life Here and There

My favorite classes at Western Kentucky University weren’t the Religious Studies courses (my major), or even the History courses (my minor). My favorite classes were in the area of speech and professional communication (what I wish had been my major). I grew up super-shy like almost every other Pastor I know, but have grown to love speaking to crowds of people. I’m a student of public speaking, in fact.

But when I enter the pulpit to preach on Sundays, something is different. It’s more than a speech somehow. I think there are several factors that cause this to be reality.

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Today, President Barak Obama addressed public school kids across America. The video…

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No, this is not a post about the loss of our religious freedom – it’s a reflection on a quote I’ve looked at many times since I first wrote it down about nine years ago at a conference on preaching…

If you think the gathering of biblical facts and standing up with a Bible in your hand will automatically equip you to communicate well, you are desperately mistaken. It will not. You must work at being interesting. Boredom is a gross violation, being dull is a grave offense, and irrelevance is a disgrace to the gospel. Too often these three crimes go unpunished and we preachers are the criminals. ~ Charles Swindoll

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Pastors have a bad habit of forgetting that we are ultimately communicators. We fall into the pattern of preaching and presenting God’s Word the way we always have, or the way other preachers always have. That’s why we get made fun of! That’s also one of the reasons people don’t listen to us.

In addition to studying God’s Word deeply and serving people all week, we also need to become students of the arts of persuasion, communication, and public speaking. If you can’t connect with the audience on Sunday, you’re already facing a major growth roadblock in your own ministry and in your church’s ability to reach your community.

I wanted to pass on this link to one of my favorite sources of inspiration concerning the art of public speaking. It’s really a condensing of multiple links, all of which are valuable. Check out Best Public Speaking Tips and Techniques: Weekly Review [2009-03-14] and subscribe to their rss feed. And don’t stop being a student of communication – that’s what preaching is all about.

The title of this post is attention-getting for an obvious reason – most people fear the thought of standing before a group of people and speaking… out loud. I was too, and still am to some degree. When I was a kid, I was painfully and awkwardly shy. In the fifth grade, I had to give an oral report on the life of Will Rogers. I handled it by self-interviewing. I sat in the teacher’s chair and rolled left and right, pretending to be Will Rogers on one side, and something of a Johnny Carson on the other. Did it work? Well I turned red, teared up a bit, and sweated profusely, but I got an “A.” I didn’t have to speak before another audience for about seven years.

Now, I’m a Pastor. I preach three times per week, teach classes, lead Bible studies and small groups, and occasionally speak in a revival or conference. Because of my role, I’ll speak before an audience between 150 and 180 times this year. My church is not large by modern standards, but our Sunday morning crowd often runs about 230 to 250, so there are plenty of potentially intimidating faces to be concerned with.

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I often peruse websites about web design and last night noticed this article about giving an elevator speech. I thought about how it applies to Pastors. There are often crucial moments when we have an opportunity to be vision-casters with people, one-on-one. It may be a car ride making a visit, coffee with a fellow member, or a staff meeting with five extra minutes at the end. It begs the question, could I state my vision for my church if I only had a few floors to travel in an elevator with someone?

You see, vision is great, but it needs to be transferrable. Members of a church should be able to share their church’s vision with their friends, relatives, associates, and neighbors, but they can only share a vision that has been concisely articulated from their leadership. And a vision isn’t “reaching people” or “glorifying God.” Those are eternal purposes, universal to every church. A vision (in an elevator speech format) would be more like, “I want our church to be a visible and active change agent in Bentonville. I want us to share the gospel outside the walls of our church through our words, our integrity, and our acts of service. And I want us to help leaders have greater confidence in sharing the gospel in their circles of influence.”

I suppose that’s my elevator speech, or at least one version I might share in an elevator this week. What’s your elevator speech about your vision for your church?