Sometimes we push the envelope — and probably in certain churches it would be offensive — but in our church because we’re a church plant we’ve created a culture where every Sunday is different.

Preaching: What are some mistakes people make as they begin a message?

Nelson: In Creating Messages that Connect I talk about energy levels of sermons and energy levels of services. I think a big mistake that a lot of people make is they allow the energy to drop — there ought to be sort of an exhale in the service before a message starts but you don’t want to be distracting. I think that having announcements and taking an offering before a sermon are killers, because you’ve basically just unhitched the boat from the dock and let it drift away from shore and then all the sudden you expect to have it there at the dock when you get in it. I think creating a buildup of energy — sort of creating tension right before a message — is important. A lot of churches traditionally do a lot of down time after worship — too much downtime so that you lose people.

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Sometimes we set up messages with solutions like a drama or video clip that already solves the problem, instead of creating some tension and saying this is a real issue: How am I going to answer this? The cardinal sin is not answering the question: why should I listen to you. We just assume that when people plop down and we break into the book of Isaiah that anyone has any sort of inkling of desire to know what’s in this for me. If it’s not evident out of the shoot as why I should listen and how’s this going to help me . . .

That’s one of the issues of adult education. Adult education basically knows that people are only motivated to learn or have a solution for something when they perceive a problem. If they don’t perceive a problem they’re not in the market for a solution. A lot of us in ministry — because we grew up in the Christian culture — we assume people care. Because we’re speaking from the Bible, we assume that they’re interested in listening to us. I think in today’s world we can never assume that. The well-known communicators have done a great job at this, but I think most of us in the pulpit underestimate the gap between our presentation and what (connect with people). We need to break that gap big time.

Preaching: Explain more of what you mean by charting the energy level of a message.

Nelson: I think the best metaphor for that is deep sea fishing, because deep sea fishing is usually where you get the bigger fish and deep sea fishing is a process. I grew up in the Midwest where we never did it but now being near the coast and living in California for a number of years I took my kid deep-sea fishing and its a different game. Getting the fish on the hook, that’s one thing; but getting him in the boat — that’s a whole different thing. You always want to keep a certain amount of tension in the line. If there’s too much tension it will snap the line; if there’s not enough tension a lot of times it will bind up the reel and the line so it will get snagged and knotted.