Andy Stanley on Communication (Part 5)

Tuesday March 17, 2009 ~ 10 Comments

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

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

Posted on March 17, 2009 at 8:52 PM ~ 10 Comments

Tagged with: advice, preaching, stanley

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10 Comments

By Matt Larson on March 20, 2009 10:38 AM

Andy's a great communicator. I love the stuff about having a burden for what you're teaching. It seems like if that isn't there... it's time for the pastor/teacher to refocus his mission.

By Jeff Jackson on March 20, 2009 12:13 PM

I agree with Stanley on the benefit of the creative TEAM in developing series. But...what about us guys that serve as the lone staffer? We have no TEAM to rely on for series planning. It is all we can do to get somebody to cover the nursery. Any advice for us?

By Jason Reed on March 20, 2009 8:41 PM

Jeff, I am a layman at our church and privileged to be a part of the worship planning team. The team consists of the Pastor, the Minister of Music, and about 6 laypeople. We meet every Monday afternoon. We look at the sermon and the order of worship for the coming Sunday, review from the previous Sunday, and we also do some long-range planning and brainstorming. As a seminary student and pastor-in-training, I consider this to be a very effective practice and one that I will implement in my future ministry. I would encourage you to enlist the help of some congregants that are trustworthy and mature in their faith to help you. Plus, this shows that you are interested in the needs of your people and not just pushing your own agendas.

By Kevin in Manila on March 21, 2009 3:45 AM

I've really enjoyed this series, Ed. The Lord has used Andy tremendously, and we would all do well to learn from him (even if we disagree on some of the finer points of preaching).

One thing I've started doing is asking for feedback after my messages. Planning my message during staff meetings just isn't doable for me. But I bet most of us have some godly people in our lives/churches that would be willing to take notes and give constructive, Christ-centered feedback.

I'm not talking about asking "deacon grumpy pants" if he liked your sermon. I mean truly spirit-filled people whom God can use to help you deliver better messages.

Such people can also be a source of encouragement--because they would understand the need include positive feedback as part of the critique.

By Bobby Warren on March 23, 2009 8:28 AM

The team helping him prepare a message was surprising. I have never heard of that before (of course I'm sure I haven't heard of a lot of things).
I have to admit I was annoyed by that for some strange reason. I thought, "That's great for him, but the vast majority of us don't have that as possibility," and I thought back to the whole "verse by verse preaching is lazy" comment. In reality though we all have a team. I listen to podcasts of Francis Chan, Erwin Mcmanus, Mark Driscoll and yes Ed Stetzer, so I sort of have a team that contribute to what I am trying to produce. I know it's exactly the same because there is no back and forth interaction, but it helps keep things refreshed and refueled.

By Trevin Wax on March 23, 2009 7:18 PM

Thanks for this series, Ed. Andy is a gifted communicator and I have benefited greatly from his insights here.

I am especially challenged by his appeal to urgency. It is easy to get so caught up in what you want to say that you forget the urgent motives for why you are compelled to say it.

By Adam S on March 24, 2009 10:56 AM

I know a group of pastors that jointly plan their sermons each week. They are all church plants of a single church but they have decided that one way to stay in community as churches is to preach on the same thing. So they gather together and jointly plan the sermon.

By Jesuspadawan on March 24, 2009 9:10 PM

Adam that sounds great. I think that is a great way to promote unity when it comes to ministering to the community.

By Brian on March 28, 2009 3:43 PM

I know that this is a little late; however, I wanted to thank you for recommending Stanley's book. It really helped me change the way I think about communication.

By Bo on April 5, 2009 7:16 AM

Thanks for posting this series. I practically consumed these posts and ordered Stanley's book. It is 'exactly' what I've been looking for and I can definitely see myself changing the way I preach, beginning on Easter.

Several months ago, I assembled a worship team made up of key leaders in the church. And their work has been pivotal. All in all, it seems like I've been gravitating to this style of worship prep and delivery. Stanley's insights have put meat on the skeleton I've been developing and I can't thank you enough for posting about this.

Blessings to you,
Bo

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