Communicating For A ChangeMultnomah, Hardcover, 199 pages, $19.99. ISBN 1-59052-514-0
By: Andy Stanley and Lane Jones
The challenge of communicating biblical truth in the 21st century requires diligent preparation and creative thinking. But does it also require a new structure?
Andy Stanley and co-writer Lane Jones urge preachers to lay aside those “three points and a poem” sermons in favor of one-point sermons. He explains: “If you compare public speaking to taking people on a journey, then it follows that the communicator should attempt to pick everyone up at the same station and deliver them to the same destination. The approach we are developing throughout this book assumes that the communicator has a destination in mind; a single idea they want to communicate; a specific thing he or she hopes to accomplish. And once that point, that idea, that destination is clear, then the goal is to bend everything in the message towards that one thing.”
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Most preachers, they assert, have grown up listening to and learning how to preach “messages built around several points rather than one clear destination. . . . A problem with this approach is that by the time you get to your last point, nobody remembers the first three. Whatever impact they might have made is washed away by the information and illustrations that follow. On a good day, it is that last point that usually sticks. And that’s assuming it was stated in a way that made it memorable.”
In addition to the problem of remembering multiple points, Stanley argues that the average person doesn’t live by points and typically won’t remember them. Even preachers don’t remember them – “That’s why he or she has to refer to their notes. They haven’t even bothered to memorize their own points. How ironic.”
If the preacher’s goal is life change rather than information transfer, Stanley argues, then a different communication model is required. He believes that the entire sermon should be built around a single point: one application, insight or principle, stated in a memorable way. And lest readers think he is just referring to the “Big Idea” as it functions within a more traditional expository sermon, Stanley offers his own “map” which serves to effectively organize material around that single point of the message:
ME, WE, GOD, YOU, WE
Stanley and Lane observe: "With this approach the communicator introduces a dilemma he or she has faced or is currently facing (ME). From there you find common ground with your audience around the same or a similar dilemma (WE). Then you transition to the text to discover what God says about the tension or question you have introduced (GOD). Then you challenge your audience to act on what they have just heard (YOU). And finally, you close with several statements about what could happen in your community, your church, or the world if everybody embraced that particular truth (WE).