I'm continuing the 2009 blog in review with some highlights from March. Below we've got some good research and a lot of Andy Stanley.

MARCH 2009

Preaching to the Younger Unchurched

Let us begin by saying that not only is it possible to preach to the unchurched, it's quite probable you're already doing so, perhaps weekly. Just because someone has awareness of your church or has attended a service at your church does not make them churched. Consider those that show up for their annual visits on Easter and Christmas. They may have sat through the last 20 years of your holiday cantata, but that doesn't make them churched. Entertained, sure. Inspired maybe. But certainly not churched...

[read it all here]

Andy Stanley

This interview with Andy Stanley is helpful and provocative. It generated a lot of conversation on and off the blog. I actually had to interrupt the interview in between parts 2 and 3 to address some of the responses. If you missed it, it's definitely worth checking out.

Andy Stanley on Communcation Pt 1
Andy Stanley on Communcation Pt 2
Responding to Stanley
Andy Stanley on Communcation Pt 3
Andy Stanley on Communcation Pt 4
Andy Stanley on Communcation Pt 5

Barna: How Many Have a Biblical Worldview?

Barna Research has published the results of a survey that "explored how many [adults] have what might be considered a 'biblical worldview.'" This is a helpful study that will confirm the conclusions many have already drawn - and may surprise some of us as well. What does Barna mean by a "biblical worldview?"

[read it all here]

The Decline of Religion in America

...the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) has caught everyone's attention today as it points out the decline of religion and the rise in secularism in America

[read it all here]

Receptive People

Yesterday I talked with Cathy Lynn Grossman for USA Today about Americans' receptivity to evangelistic contacts and outreach from a church. I pointed to some recent research done by Lifeway Research and the North American Mission Board where we surveyed over 15,000 people (read more on this report via Lifeway Research). It turns out most people said they would be willing to receive information about church in a personal conversation with a family member, friend or neighbor.

[read it all here]

This week I'm teaching a D. Min. class, "Practical and Strategic Issues in Missions, Evangelism and Church Growth" at Southeastern Seminary, and later this week Advance 09 is going down. So, while my attention is very much focused on the people and events surrounding me I have not forgetten that you - my thoughtful and patient readers - are waiting for the last part of my interview with Andy Stanley to drop. Well, here it is!
 

We pick up where we left off, talking about Andy's thoughts on preaching and his approach of preaching one-point messages and how he brings the listener to the Biblical text. We also talk a bit about is views of verse-by-verse preaching and how to help people see why the scriptures matter.

Feel free to interact in the comments.  Also, many of you have mentioned how helpful Andy's and Lane Jones book, Communicating for Change, has been. I told Andy that our last interview made his book an Amazon best-seller for a week. ;-)  Let me encourage you to get it and learn why Andy is such an effective communicator.

Ed: I recently interviewed Craig Groeschel and he made a point that younger adults seem to want to go deeper than the boomers did... Have you noticed any shift? You've been at this for a long time at North Point (and before). Have you noticed any shift in the way that believers and the unchurched have responded to preaching?

 

Andy: I would agree with Craig only because I keep hearing people I respect say that. But I can't draw from any personal experience to say, if you mean by "deeper," that people have a longing for "keep me in the book of Romans for four months." I think that is an expression, but I do think there's a spiritual hunger. I think there is a wonderful hunger for the Scriptures, especially the gospels right now... Generation to generation switches from Paul to Jesus, Paul to Jesus, Paul to Jesus, and if you've been around long enough, you see that it goes back and forth. But, I think there's a huge hunger for Scripture and what does the Bible say, and for people who do what we do, that's a great thing.

Ed: One of the points that you have made is the need to help the audience, the listener, the people to see why this scripture "matters." Why is that so important? How do you do it to help people to see this matters?

 

Andy: I think the best way to understand that is to think about a father with his or a mother with her children. There are things as a parent that I know are extremely important for my kids to know. The problem is my kids don't know they're extremely important for my kids to know. So, for my kids to take my advice or instruction seriously, I have to do a little pre-work to help them understand the gravity of what I'm about to say. Well, the same is true when we open the Scripture with new believers, nonbelievers, or people who have been a Christian a long time, but you're about to present them with something you think, "this is a must have," a "must-understand" truth. But if we don't help people understand why it's so important before we lay it out, it just becomes more information.

As a parent, I have to do that when I really want my kids to embrace the truth or embrace an idea. The new craze right now among teenagers is texting, and so the other day I have a conversation with my two boys about texting inappropriate pictures and all that sort of stuff. Well, as I began the conversation, I began by talking about what's happening to kids who are caught. It's messing up their lives and being associated with this follows them for the rest of their life. So, I began with that before I talked to them about, have they heard of this or are kids doing this. So, again, I had to create some emotion around the topic. It would have, it's almost a waste of time to say, "Hey kids, don't do that. The end."

Well, I think with preaching, as we approach the platform or as we open God's Word, I want people to be hungry for what I'm about to say. The emotion we create at the beginning of a message causes people to "lean in" and causes people to want to take seriously what we're about to say. So, when I sit through a message or listen to a message where it's, "Hey, last week we ended at Romans 4:8. Today we pick up at verse nine," and they just jump in, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait. Make me want this."

Now, as a mature believer, I want it because it's in the Bible, but I'm kind of glad I didn't bring my three unchurched friends because you haven't made them want this. Simply saying it's in the Bible isn't enough.

It depends a little bit on the audience, but I think for all of us, we need to look at our audience like we're shepherds or we're parents and they're children, and there's all these biblical metaphors, and so consequently, to be good stewards of their time, to be good stewards of their spiritual life, I think we need to do the difficult task and the difficult work of creating some desire or some appetite for what we're about to say.

 

Ed: I wrote an article on this topic in Preaching Magazine called "Contextual Preaching."  I basically encouraged people to begin the message in a way that connects with your audience.  Some objected to it.  Some said, "Well, you just need to trust the Holy Spirit." I believe I trust the Holy Spirit. But I think there's a sense that some people think, "Well, we don't need to even worry about those things."

 

Andy: Well, they just need to read the parables. Why would Jesus bother telling a story? He shoulda' just told 'em the truth. Why spend all the time talking about a son and his father. The son runs off. Why don't you just say, "Look, God's the Father and God will take you back if you run off." Let's move on.

I think this is one of the reasons there was some kind of semi-controversy around our conversation last time, I made the point that verse-by-verse preaching is kind of cheating. And my point was, from my perspective, it's easier to do that than to do what I do and what people who do what I do in terms of spending lots of time trying to create a context for Biblical truth. And I didn't mean, obviously, cheating like they were doing something wrong. What I really meant to say was I think it's easier. And honestly, as I work through books of the Bible in my private devotional life, there are so many times, Ed, I think, "Gosh, I wish I could just go in next Sunday and say, 'Okay, here's what I read this week and here's what I got out of it.'" It would just be so much easier and so much simpler, but then I think, you know what? For people who are where I am, for people who just can't get enough of God's Word, that would work, but for the audience I'm trying to reach, I'm going to have to create some sorta creative environment... I'm going to have to create a hunger. And that's difficult. That just takes a lot of time.

Ed: There are people out there who are convictional verse-by-verse preachers. I preach that way a majority of the time. Let's say we're going work through a text.  As you said earlier, we're going to stop at Romans 4:8 and then go to Romans 4:9. How can we help when we begin that conversation at Romans 4:9 for people to engage and to see this as important? Just go up and say, "The Bible says it. Let's go." Or is there something more we can and should do?

 

Andy: Well, I think the good news there is there are many who teach who do a great job at what you're suggesting, and that is: the introduction is everything. The introduction is designed to make me want to listen to what you're about to say. So, the question is always: what can I say up front to make my audience interested or more interested in what I'm about to say?

There's a group of people that as soon as you open the Bible, they're interested. But there's a group of people that as soon as you open the Bible, they're going to suspect anything you say. So, I think it's looking within culture; trying to unearth the tension. That's something I talk a lot about in the book. What is the tension that this text addresses? And the more tension I can create up front, the more interested people are going be in what I have to say. That's just true of general conversation. This is why anybody who listens to the news or listens to the radio or television, what are those news readers do right before they sign off for a commercial? They say, "In a minute we're going to find out why blah, blah, blah, blah, blah," and you go, "Gosh, well, I need to stay on this station 'til they come back." Well, they've just created interest in what they are about to say.

I think good communicators do that intuitively and I think as communicators of God's Word, it's to our advantage to create that kind of interest. I think a person who's preaching chapter-by-chapter through the Bible can do that. I think it's a little more challenging because, obviously, God didn't ordain the chapters and the verses. That was added later, but we find ourselves locked into that.

Ed: Who do you listen, other communicators, preachers, teachers out there, and how do they influence you?

 

Andy: The group I listen to the most, we have probably 12 communicators at our three campuses here in Atlanta combined with our pastoral staff and our student communicators, and I listen to just about everything they do primarily because I feel like I need to be in a coaching role. So, that takes a lot of my listening time, which I enjoy. I listen to Craig; I listen to Perry Noble; I listen to Ed Young; I listen to Joel Osteen. I think there's so much we can learn as communicators from Joel, and, obviously, he gets criticized a lot for a lot of things, but you don't learn anything if you put on your critique hat. You have to become a student before you're a critic. So, I listen to Joel. I listen to my dad, for various reasons, but those are probably the people that I am more intentional about tuning into the most.

Ed: What advice would you give to communicators, preachers of all different kinds about how they might effectively communicate God's Word to their congregations?

Andy: I think we have to create in our schedules the time we need to study.. The more talented the person is, obviously, the more tendency they're going to have to wing it or to just lean hard on their personality or their ability just to be interesting. I think we just have to study. It's difficult. I mean, for me, the better somebody is, that means the easier they make it look, and so the tendency is to think, "Well, they don't spend a lot of time. That just seemed so easy to them." But, when you watch a professional tennis player, you think, "Gosh, I can get out there and just whack the ball over the net like that." Well, the reason they make it look so easy is because they work so hard at it.

I just think a big part of this is just making sure in our schedules we have carved out our best time to do our best work to prepare for our most important jobs which is to open God's Word and say, "Here's what God has said. Here's what we've gotta do. Here's what we need to know." So, I think a lot of this just goes back to every individual communicator finding their sweet spot in terms of studying, preparation, and being prepared for Sunday or Wednesday or Tuesday or whenever it is that they have the opportunity to stand up in front of their audience.

Thanks, Andy, for taking the time and sharing your insights!

Feel free to interact in the comments.  For those of you who are verse-by-verse preachers by conviction, how do you help people engaged the text as you start you message?  Do you just assume that, or do you (as Andy suggests) seek to create tension.  If so, how?

For those of you who preach topically, how to you make certain that you are preaching the scripture and not just your opinions with the Bible as spiritual footnotes?

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.

In the final part of our interview with Andy Stanley he gives some advice to young pastors related to the responsibility of preaching.

In case you missed them, here are parts one, two, three, and four.

I am glad to hear so many of you mention that you ordered Andy's book, Communicating for a Change. If you have not done so, I recommend you do so.

Here is a bit more from our interview and a some additional information from Preaching Magazine.

Question: If you had to give one word to young pastors about communication, what would you tell them?

Andy: Show up every Sunday morning with a burden that is so heavy that you feel like you will die if you don't deliver it. And pray for that. Because if you don't have that, then you just have information. The people will put up with all kinds of a lack of excellence if there is an intensity and a burden that has to be delivered. And many times I have looked at my notes and thought, "Yeah, this might be helpful, but God, what's the thing I can't wait until Sunday morning to deliver? And I honestly can't wait for Sunday morning.

The other thing I always tell pastors, "If you preach from your weaknesses, you will never run out of sermon material."

In an interview with Preaching Magazine, Andy was asked a similar question: "Are there some things you've learned about preaching that you wished you'd known years ago?"1 Two parts of his reply really struck a chord. The first part had to do with how he structured his messages; the second dealt with how he planned his message series. As for how Andy structures his messages, this is what he said:

In terms of how I structure messages and memorize them, what I finally figured out is that there's basically three or four, maybe five parts to every message. What it took me years to learn is this: if I'll just get those in my mind and understand my transitions, I can forget the details. And I am far more free to communicate rather than try to remember something... And so in terms of memorizing sermons, I figured out there are only three or four big chunks and when I can mentally go through the big pieces, then I am ready. It took me awhile to figure that out. This helped my memorization and my communication style tremendously. I became far more conversational. I also discovered it's about a journey and it's about one thing, not four things.2

As for how he plans his messages, Andy described it this way:

All of our series planning begins with a team of people and me just throwing things up on the board and at every level of preparation bringing people into the process and saying, "What do you think about this? Does this make sense?" The average person gives me all the credit for that wonderfully delivered message, but it had a lot of hands in it...I think the whole team approach to series planning is helpful. My best visual aids weren't my ideas but when you get a group of people thinking, they all have a gift. So I wish I'd done that earlier. It takes the creative pressure off sometimes. I'll have other people out there thinking about it while I'm in here working on the details.3

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 "Preaching Without Fear," Preaching 20 (July-August 2004): 32.
2 Ibid, 32-33.
3 Ibid, 33.

In part four of our interview with Andy Stanley he shares his thoughts on the "hard work" of preaching and improvement - including the painful process of personal review and evaluation. In case you missed them, here are parts one, two, and three. Be sure to get a copy of Andy's book, Communicating for a Change.

Question: Andy, you make preaching look so easy. How hard do you work at being an effective communicator?

Andy: I listen to my own CD's all the time. In fact, on some Sundays I listen to all three services. And I want to get better and better, and I work on getting better. I listen for dumb habits that I have. I sometimes watch my own videos, which is horrible. That will either make you better or want to get out of ministry completely. I think I make it look easy, but it's not. I work very, very hard.

And every sermon I think, "What if this is it? What if this is the last time I preach?" And I psych myself up with that thought every single week. I want it to be the best sermon that has ever been preached by anyone anywhere. That is an unattainable goal and nobody cares. No one is giving out awards for that. But I just feel that all these people that got up and fought traffic and they got their kids here and they found a seat...I need to give them something that makes it worth all that. Why anyone would want to come to our 10:30 a.m. service? You must be starving. People are going to go through all that, and they are going to bring unchurched friends. They need to go home with something, just one simple thing. And I don't think I am successful every single time, but it is the goal every single time.

I ask our communicators all the time, "What is the one thing they've got to know? They may have three pages of notes, but what is the one sentence, idea, or phrase they have got to know? That's the thing. That's the take-away." So preaching with that kind of burden, bringing that kind of burden to the communication process is huge.

What do you do to continue to refine and improve your preaching?

I have really enjoyed thinking through Andy's answers to the questions posted so far, and today's post, part 3 of our interview, is no exception. Here Andy talks about part of his process for preparing messages to be sure that the congregation "gets" it. In other words, this helps explain how he brings the listener to the text to find the answers.

His "Me--We--God--You--Us" is more fully developed in his book (published after our interview), Communicating for a Change. Let me encourage you to get a copy.

Andy shares his approach to sermon structure, basic preparation and keeping the message focused. If you are a preacher, you have your process and it hopefully works for you in your context, but we all need to continue to refine different elements of our processes.

Andy and I talked by phone last night and I continue to be encouraged by his passion for communication and his humility. After I post the fifth of these blog posts, we will do a final wrap up together as well. I look forward to that.

Here is the interview:

Question: What is your process?

Andy: At a recent "Grow Up Conference," I diagrammed my communication process as: Me--We--God--You--Us. The communication starts with Me-- let me tell you something about me. Then We, this is something we all have in common. Then God, this is what God says about it. You, this is what you need to do about it. And We, wouldn't it be great if we all did it. So it is a relational outline. Start with you. Connect to them. What does God have to say about this issue? What should you do about it? And what should we do about it?

So I talked structurally about what you hang on each of those pieces. You outline your communication relationally, and not just in terms of information. And it is so much easier. When guys bring their sermon outlines to me I say, "Alright, now where do you talk about you? They need to know who you are. And if you jump to the Bible, they've got to go with you. To me, that is the journey. It is me taking you into a conversation. And we start together and then we end together. We have a common problem and we find a solution. And we are all still on the same page."

It is so simple. You can do announcements that way. You can structure an entire worship service that way.

Question: How far in advance do you prepare your sermons?

Andy: I prepare at least three weeks ahead so I don't really pick up the sermon until late Saturday afternoon. I haven't really looked at my sermons for three weeks. That is how I like to do it. I like to be way ahead. On Saturday night I pick it up, and I usually take out and take out. And simplify, simplify, simplify to where hopefully everything just says the one thing and then I am done. So I make it look easy but making it simple is hard work. I study all day on Wednesdays, and as much as I need to on Thursdays. I spend at least a day and a half on the message, plus Saturday night picking it up and changing it. Or sometimes I start over or cut it in half. Saturday nights are dreadful for me, but I have learned picking it up cold makes me look at it with fresh eyes and it is going to be better. I don't recommend that for the faint of heart because it ruins your Saturday nights. But being way ahead is wonderful. When I go home this week, the next three weeks will be in folders. So if I get sick or we have an emergency and I miss my study day, then I am only two weeks ahead.

As you dialogue around this post, let me encourage you to consider how you do what Andy describes. We believe that the scriptures are complete truth, provide the guidance that we need, and need to be applied. How do we help our people see the same thing? How do we bring them to the scriptures? Is it just "here it is-- ready or not-- come & get it" or do we need to help them to see how the scriptures apply to our life today.

After yesterday's post, focused on preaching to the younger unchurched, I thought it would be helpful to think more on the topic of communication.

Last week I listened to an Andy Stanley message. I've had the privilege to visit with Andy on numerous occasions and we have at times spoken about his approach to communication. He sees that as a primary spiritual gift in his life and I think he's is correct. Andy is one of the most effective communicators we have in the church today-- and I think we can learn from him.

Last week he began a series "God still has the whole world in his hands." I have been considering changing my preaching plans for the spring and doing a series on "uncertain times." That was his theme-- God is still in control even though there is much turmoil in the world today. You can listen to the message on-line here.

A few years ago, my friend, John Shepherd, and I met with Andy for a couple of hours. John and I worked together at the North American Mission Board, which shares a property line (but not a denomination) with North Point Church, pastored by Andy Stanley. (That is another story for another day, but it is not dissimilar to the story of many other contemporary church pastors who were once part of the SBC.)

John and I are both no longer at NAMB. John is now a teaching pastor at Mountain Lake Church in North Georgia. John and I were planning to write a book together called, EPIC Leaders, and this was going to be on one of the chapters. The subtitle was "Church Leaders, Their Stories, and Their Gifts." Each leader would be interviewed, tell their story, and give advice in their area of gifting. So, Andy Stanley was our "communicator." We had others planned such as Erwin McManus (creativity), Bob Roberts (transformation), Mark Driscoll (culture), Rick Warren (caring), Tim Keller (theology), etc. We had even approached a couple of them.

Well, life got in the way and we never wrote anything beyond Andy Stanley's chapter. So, I talked to John and we decided to share it here on the blog in five parts. Today I am sharing part one. John will also be dialoguing here at the blog. Finally, be sure to read Andy's book, Communicating for a Change, which gives much more detail about his communication practices. Andy was very gracious to share his ideas with us for our book, but if you are interested you should get the book. Perhaps you could consider these posts as a teaser for his book!

Andy's Philosophy of Preaching

Question: What is your philosophy of communication/preaching?

Recently, I did a podcast with Michael Duduit at Preaching Magazine. They just posted my interview.

They have a great list of podcasts available here including interviews with Max Lucado, Charles Stanley, and John Ortberg.

To download my interview / podcast, click here.