Back in March I posted a multi-part interview with Andy Stanley that focused on communication. That exchange generated a lot of conversation. Some of you helped to make the conversation profitable, and a few of you... well, not so much. Well, just after this past Easter I spoke with Andy again, this time for an interview to talk more about the issues of preaching and communication. Here is that conversation in two parts. I look forward to healthy, charitable dialog in the comments.

Ed:I had the privilege a few months ago to be visiting there at the church which kind of prompted me to begin this blog series... When you're preaching and when you're communicating, what is the goal that you have for the listener? What do you want them do, be, act, or change as you communicate with them?

Andy: Well, actually I think the list that you just gave me is the goal and I think it depends on the kind of sermon. And so, I think every communicator needs to step up to wherever he or she's communicating with a specific goal, and sometimes it is "I want them to know something," sometimes it is "I want them to do something," sometimes it is "I want them to change something." So, in 35 or 40 minutes of a lot of words coming out of my mouth, in my mind, there's always a specific goal. This past Sunday for us was Easter and I wanted our congregation to understand something. It wasn't an application sermon. It wasn't even a "here's something you've never thought of before" sermon. It was a "I want you to understand something" But I think that's going to shift with the topic and shift with whatever series a communicator's in. That's a good question.

Ed: You and Layne Jones coauthored the book, Communicating for a Change, and many people have found it very helpful. What do you think are some elements that pastors and communicators who are doing messages, what do they need to bring to the message so that people can experience or be motivated to experience that change?

Andy: I think a big part of it is passion. And I coach our communicators. Every week I'm in some sort of coaching environment with our communicators on staff, and one of the things I say to them frequently is I say, "Look, you've gotta imagine there's a 21-year-old guy that's sittin' two/thirds of the way back and he's givin' church one more shot. What, where in your message is the passion to reach out and grab that guy by the throat and say, 'You can't leave here without hearing or doing or understanding.'" And so, when it comes to change, I think it's one thing to look at our outlines and our, whatever script we have in front of us.

That's one thing, but I think we have to step up there with somebody in mind or a type of person in mind because, for me, that's what I think fuels me to communicate for change or to communicate for a life change or to communicate to understand something that's never been understood before. And in my world - and you've been around me enough to know - every once in a while, I pull my stool out to the front of the stage and just it on it as close to the edge of the stage I can and lean as far as I can into the audience, and that's sorta my visual way of saying, "Okay, look, if you forget everything else you've heard today, you got to know this one thing, you gotta hear this one thing." And I think from the stage, that's the compelling change part. Here's what's gotta change.

Ed:When you communicate, you're known and have really promoted and encouraged people to consider that one-point approach to really make it simple, make it clear, make it compelling. Why is that? Why one-point? Because many of us were taught to have these three points, four points. Why have you narrowed the focus down to one thing?

Andy: You know it's interesting, and I'll answer the question directly, but actually at Dallas Seminary, we studied Haddon Robinson's book on preaching which all of us have been exposed to or was a textbook, and the thing is, Haddon taught us to preach one-point messages. I mean, if you look at biblical preaching or you look at his text, he teaches "What's the one thing?" The problem is: nobody did it. Even when I was in seminary and we were using that book as a textbook, even in class, nobody drove us to, "Hey, what's your one thing?" So, I feel like I'm doing what I was taught to do in seminary because I felt like that was the model. But the thing I think - and I shared this in book - the thing that really turned a page for me was, when I was in seminary, I was invited to teach a chapel for a Christian high school and I had this really amazing message I thought, and that morning when I got, or actually it was the night before, as I was lookin' over my notes, I thought, "You know what? They don't care about any of this." I've got all this stuff and all this content. They're seniors and juniors and sophomores in high school. They have chapel every week. They don't care. And they're not gonna remember any of this. And I just felt compelled to say, "Okay, if they're only gonna remember one thing, which they probably won't remember anything, but if they're gonna remember one thing, what do I want it to be?" And I rewrote my whole message towards that one thing. And that was a defining moment for me in terms of preparation and communication and I've just sorta stuck with it since then.

Ed: How do you keep from just making up statements or points, finding scriptural footnotes to kinda make a predetermined point?

Andy: Well, for me, I really, really, really want the text to speak for itself. And there have been so many times I've gone into my preparation with an idea in mind, come out on the other end with a completely different idea, and I really to the best of my ability, I want the text to speak. And I think once we've done our due diligence in terms of really, really, really doin' our textual work, using the languages, usin' the helps, whatever a man or woman or uses to prepare, I think from that, that' where we ask the question, "Okay, what's the thing the author is tryin' to communicate? What's the thing God was tryin' to illustrate through this story? What's the idea that comes out of this narrative?" So, I really think it's all in the text, but it just takes a long time sometimes to get there. And as I've told our staff and I tell my wife frequently, sometimes it's really not until Saturday night or even sometimes Sunday morning when it finally dawns on me, this is the thing that I've gotta carry with me to the platform today. So, it's hard work, for me anyway.

Ed: Well, like you said, "I want the text to speak for itself." What do you say to people that say, "Well, Andy, if you want the Text to speak for itself, just work through it verse by verse"? What are the advantages and disadvantages of that, and how do you come down there?

Andy: Well, I think anyone who listens, not to a sermon I've preached, but anyone who listens to a bunch of sermons I preach know that I, my favorite thing is to take a passage and to work through a passage word by word, verse by verse. I love to do that. That's what I was trained to do. So, I think on any given Sunday, I preach exegetically. What I don't do is pick up where I left off last week with the very next verse. Now, I've done that through the book of Jonah, done that to the book of Nehemiah, but typically, we're picking a topic, and then I'm picking passages that I think speak to that topic, and then I'm exegeting those passages.

I think preaching verse-by-verse through books of the Bible is a fun thing to do. I love listening to that kind of teaching. That's actually how I do my quiet times. My quiet time is verse by verse, take as long as I need to to work through a book of the Bible and write down insights and observations, but in terms of what happens on a Sunday morning, as I'm lookin' at my audience and as I look at the Text, even the writers of the Text don't give equal weight to everything, and verses, I mean, and these books of the Bible, especially the epistles, were written to be read holistically.

I think when I get to heaven, Paul is gonna say, "Wow, you found a whole lot more in there than I originally said because I meant for somebody to stand up and read the whole book of Ephesians at one time to the local church, and gosh, you spent six weeks pickin' through there." So, I think sometimes, if we're not careful, we miss what the author's trying to say because we spend so much time on three or four sentences that the author said as they made their entire argument. And honestly, I think that's a little dangerous, and I think both of us would agree and everybody listening to your podcast would agree, we have heard preachers and communicators make more of Text than the author originally intended because they decided, "I'm only gonna cover these five verses or these six verses this particular Sunday." And I think we can actually miss the message of the author doing that sometimes.

But I do wanna say, I don't think it's a wrong way to preach or an inadequate way to preach. And obviously, John McArthur and others have made a career and have built very, very mature believers and very strong churches around working through books of the Bible over and over. So there's, it's just a preference thing I guess.
And there seems to be a bit of resurgence of that.

Part 2b will drop later in the week. In the mean time jump into the meta and share your thoughts and practices concerning preaching in ways that connect the truth to the people God has sent you to.