Our Core Team received some great training from Andy Stanley about how to mentor.  His coaching:  My responsibility is not to fill someone else’s cup – it’s to empty mine.  So, here goes.  I’m going to start using the leader’s blog to empty my cup of what I feel like I’ve learned so far.

I need to start with communication because it’s at the core of what I do and have done for a lot of years now.  Here’s what I’ve learned about communicating– namely to crowds or groups and, especially when teaching the Bible – but it can be applied to public speaking in general:

1. Prayerfully prepare until you’re passionate:

When it comes to Bible teaching, the trick can be that many people have “heard it before”.  Worse yet, YOU have heard it before.  Looking back, anytime I know I have prepared well begins with a prayerful and personal searching study of the text.  If it doesn’t come alive to me there is no chance it is going to come alive to anyone else.  I have to look at a passage and think about it until it is alive – in ME. This comes through passionate prayer and reflection. Prayer has to be the engine and core of every sermon because God’s anointing is ultimately what delivers the real goods into the hearts of people. I must deeply believe it and apply it to my own life.

As a leader or singer or teacher or anyone trying to get something else across to others – you have to believe it FIRST.  And, I maintain, you can’t fake it.  It has to be real in private before it can ever be felt publicly. Your audience has no chance of caring if you don’t.

2. Know more about the subject than ever goes into the presentation.

After (and only after) I have dealt with the passage personally and prayerfully, I go into the more formal study of it.

I try very hard to examine a passage thoroughly enough to where I feel like I anticipate every objection or question.  I’m sure I don’t achieve the “every” but I sure try.  I wonder about it and ask things that I may never say in the actual sermon.  This is where in-depth study comes in (background study, language, context, all the stuff of good bible interpretation).

One of our One Life values is what I call “intellectual integrity”.  This is not only about bringing your brain to church, but trying to make sure our statements and perspectives are as accurate as we know how to make them.  The sermons that really connect have a primary text that has been looked at and studied deeply.

I think it was Rick Warren who said, “The best sermons are the ones where you leave the most out”.  It’s a way of saying, you should always have a lot more research in a subject than you ever put in the final product.  It’s about depth of understanding that I maintain will ring “in between the lines” that people hear and perceive.  The best sermons and/or speeches are never hydroplaned.

3.  Prepare, prepare, prepare:  by running it as if you were actually doing it.

Assuming prayer is the engine, the most practical thing I have learned and continue to learn is the absolute necessity of physically saying a sermon or speech out loud, many times (more than I ever want to).  I have noticed a pattern from years of having some sermons that seem to soar and ones that felt like I was spitting concrete blocks;  the most practical difference is the physical practice.  I have fallen for the mental lie that I can just have a thought in my head and communicate it well.  Not true. Physical practice forces you to make things clearer, more effective and concise, simply because you are hearing it as it will be heard by others.

I will elaborate on these thoughts in my next post.

For those of you who have had to speak or preach:  what have YOU learned?