For twenty years or so, the head of the Willow Creek Association was Jimmy Mellado. He's now the new head of Compassion International. He probably knows as much about the church as anybody I know, and he has heard about as many sermons in as many different settings as is humanly possible.
Someone asked him once what single improvement could make the biggest difference in the effectiveness of churches. His immediate answer: "Better preaching."
Few moments are more fulfilling than communicating effectively, touching people at their deepest level. Few moments are more painful than standing in front of a group of people with words coming out of your mouth … and not connecting. Over the years a few observations about communication have embedded themselves in my work—mainly because it's so painful when I violate them. Here are my four laws of communication.
1. Begin with what matters
Years ago I was excited about giving a particular talk, but it didn't come out right. It was flat from the beginning and never perked up. When I was done, I sat down next to Bill Hybels and said, "That seemed kind of … blah." He said he totally agreed. (This might have been the only time I ever wished Bill had disagreed with me.) Then he told me something I've never forgotten.
Anytime you're listening to a really good speaker, they will answer this question in the first few minutes of their talk: Why is it urgently important that we discuss this topic?
Up till then, I had always thought that good talks start with an attention grabber—maybe a story, or something funny, or a news item everyone is talking about. But the problem with merely trying to get people's attention is it may not tap into their hunger for the topic. It can miss the why.
If it's not urgently important to talk about something, maybe I'm talking about the wrong thing.
2. Find the passion
Once I heard an interview with the woman who ran the largest speakers' bureau in the world. (By which I mean the world's largest bureau, not a bureau of the world's largest speakers.) She was asked, "What's the number one characteristic that makes for an effective speaker?" I thought she might suggest intelligence, or charisma, or the ability to articulate well. No. She had a one-word answer: passion.
"If a speaker has passion," she said, "we will put up with all kinds of stumblings and flaws. Without passion, though, all the clarity and fluency in the world will not sustain our attention or our hearts."
Just think about the teachers who have most impacted your life. Passion is contagious. But it cannot be forced. When a speaker is genuinely held in its grip, the listeners know. They can feel it; they are swept up.
If I can't find any passion for my topic, maybe I shouldn't be talking about it.
3. Think in "moves," not "points"
In David Buttrick's Homiletics: Moves and Structures, he observes the way we talk to each other in everyday life. We don't arrange our conversation by a series of points. ("Today I'm grocery shopping, gardening silently, and gambling secretly.")
Rather, our conversations unfold in a series of moves. Someone tells a story about their father, and that prompts a response from another person about a recent experience with their father. A disclosure of sorrow elicits a response of comfort. Conversations travel in moves.
It's the same with talks given to larger groups. The mind naturally wants to move from one related thought to the next. The biggest difference between a talk to a large group versus a private conversation is that in a public talk I need to be more careful about the moves I make.
Where might I lose folks? Does a particular thought require an illustration? Will there be a common objection I must address? Will people know what difference it makes in everyday life? Are the transitions clear? I may have two ideas that I'd love to talk about, but if one does not flow directly into the other one in my audience's mind, I'm headed for trouble.
Anyone who's ever given a talk knows the experience of a sudden loss of energy around a transition, or the difficulty in crafting a sentence to get from one idea to another. Thinking of talks structured by moves rather than points helps me organize my thoughts more naturally.
If I'm having a problem crafting a living, breathing, flowing talk, it may be that I'm making the wrong moves.
4. The real work happens after the words are spoken
Dallas Willard said the most helpful advice he ever got about speaking came from God. One day when he was going to teach, this thought came to him: Remember, it's what happens to the words after they leave your mouth and before they reach peoples' ears that matters.
A talk's ultimate outcome has little to do with the worth of the talker or the art of the talk. We work, we work hard, we seek to cultivate the gifts we've been given, but we don't trust in either ourselves or our giftedness.
When we speak words that are as true and faithful to the Word as we can make them, they become the raw material that God can use to move and transform the lives of the listeners. But once we've spoken them, then it really is up to God.
It's a lot like bowling. Once the ball is out of your hand, or the word has left your mouth, there's no use dancing around or torturing yourself as if you're in control.
Once you let it go—let it go. God is at work.
John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership Journal and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California.
