Radicalis Session 2b: Radical Preaching (Andy Stanley)

Session 2 at Radicalis also had a sermon from Andy Stanley on preaching. If you haven’t picked up his book on preaching, you need to. Totally changed the way I preach.

Here are some thoughts from his session:

• If we are not careful, our approach to preaching will trump our goal in preaching
• People in our country abandon churches today because they went to one
• In marriage, approach is everything, it’s the same with preaching
• Having the right goal is not contingent on being right, it’s contingent on approach
• Andy Stanley’s goal for preaching is “for people to live their lives as if God is with them”
• My goal in preaching, must shape my approach
• What is your goal when you preach?
• I want to lure people into the Scripture and rub their noses in it, take one sticky statement and jam down into their heart and then send them out
• What is your approach?
• Five questions Andy Stanley asks each week when he preaches (in bold)
• Who is this about…really?
• As long as the preaching is about me, I will fail in my approach to draw people in and give them something to do when they go out
• The pressure we feel is “What am I going to say” instead of “Who will be there and what do they need to hear”
• If someone I care about said to me, “I’m coming to your church one more time and if something doesn’t happen, I’m not coming back”
• The way you get over you, is you get so thoroughly prepared that you don’t even have to think hard about what you are doing
• What’s my burden?
• This the one thing you have to say and you will die if you don’t get to say it
• Dig it til you find it
• Build everything around it
• Make it stick
• If you only had 1 minute, what would you say?
• To understand why, submit and apply.
• What is the 1 thing that you have to say?
• Where’s the tension?
• If there is no tension, no one will pay attention
• What is the question this message answers?
• What is the tension this message resolves?
• What is the mystery this message solves?
• What is the issue this message addresses?
• For people to do something, they must be interested, they won’t be interested if there is no tension
• Do I own this? Have I internalized this message?
• If you don’t own it, it won’t flow
• The best way to internalize the talk is to memorize pieces, not points
• We don’t preach point, we only have 1 point
• If you can think through the pieces, you don’t need notes
• Our minds don’t work in points
• Am I allowing the text to speak?
• Bring your energy to the text
• You need to uncover the energy in the text
• Don’t spend all your energy on your cool stories
• If you are afraid of losing people’s interest in the Bible, you aren’t prepared

This was a great session. So many things to chew on. If this session was the only session I came to so far, it would have been worth the trip (and the money).