Reading: Different Types of Messages

This transcript outlines various techniques for crafting effective introductions to speeches or sermons. It emphasizes the importance of gaining credibility, grabbing the audience's attention, and introducing the theme in order to make the speech effective. The speaker suggests several methods for achieving these goals, including using stories, asking intriguing questions, presenting shocking truths, and incorporating humor.

1. Introduction to Effective Introductions: The speaker introduces the topic of crafting effective introductions to speeches or sermons, highlighting the importance of credibility, audience engagement, and theme introduction.
2. Storytelling: The speaker discusses the effectiveness of using stories to hook the audience's attention, gain credibility, and introduce the theme. Stories can be sourced from personal experience, literature, or online resources.
3. Intriguing Questions: The speaker explains how asking intriguing questions can engage the audience and provoke thought. These questions can arise during the preparation process and serve to stimulate curiosity and interest in the topic.
4. Shocking Truths: The speaker explores the use of shocking truths to capture the audience's attention and emphasize the seriousness of the message. However, the speaker cautions against overuse and emphasizes the importance of accuracy in presenting shocking truths.
5. Humor: The speaker discusses the role of humor in introductions, highlighting its potential to engage the audience and establish rapport. Humor should be relevant to the message and not detract from its credibility or significance.
6. Sources of Material: The speaker suggests various sources for finding material for introductions, including online platforms, literature, personal experiences, and observation.
7. Organizing the Message: The speaker briefly touches on the importance of organizing the body of the message in a coherent and structured manner, either before or after crafting the introduction.
8. Conclusion: The transcript concludes by signaling the transition to discussing the organization of the message in future sessions of the course.

Overall, the transcript provides valuable insights and practical strategies for creating engaging and effective introductions to speeches or sermons, emphasizing the importance of capturing the audience's attention and establishing credibility from the outset.

Welcome back to the short course on "So You've Been Asked to Speak Somewhere." Last time, we were looking at what makes an effective introduction. And we saw that there are these aspects to the introduction: you want to gain credibility for yourself, you want people to grab onto the theme, you want to hook them into their attention so they want more. There are these purposes of an introduction that will make your speech effective. And so you spend time crafting an effective introduction.

Well, last time, we looked at the first two of these on screen, a story will do that very well; you can use a variety of stories. Now, somebody asked me when I was recently teaching this at the CLI convention, you know, where do you get this stuff from? Where do you get stories? You can get them online from illustrations from, like, sermoncentral.com. Other places, you can put in a story about the will of God, you can find it there, you can find it in books that you would study about the will of God or whatever subject you are looking at. You gain that from your own experience, a time when you were struggling with the will of God or whatever, a variety of ways to get a story.

An intriguing question is one that maybe will come to mind as you are preparing your message. And so you approach a passage of scripture in such a way because you've got these questions for God, you've got these questions around. Recently, somebody asked, "Is God angry with me because things are going wrong in their life?" That's an intriguing question to share. Look at all these things that went wrong with losing a job and an eye disease and dot, dot, dot. They just start wondering what went wrong? Well, so those two are powerful, you can get them from a variety of sources. But they're powerful.

Now, to go on to the next one, a shocking truth. Sometimes when you shock people, they're grabbed, they want to know more. And this can happen in a variety of ways. I was preaching on leaving a legacy, and we were in a building program in the last church that I served. And one of the areas where we especially needed to grow was our middle school ministry, which had grown from about two or three students to over 50 over a period of time. We had a dynamic teacher in that group. And so she was in a room that was designed for 12 students. And so she had it all arranged, one group would sit on the floor, the next group would sit on beanbags, the next group would sit on low stools, the next group on high stools, and the next group would stand up. And so that's how she was trying to organize her class and keep the ministry going.

We were in a building program, and one of the things we were going to do was try to supply a room for the middle school ministry. Well, we asked her to do the introduction to the message to share some of her vision for ministry. And what she did was she got all of her students in, about 50 students, and they're sitting in one part of our sanctuary. At that point, our worship center held about 500 people. So, you bring 50, and you got 10% of the church occupied by middle school kids. And she began talking about the percentages. Now, in our country, there's definitely a post-Christian feel, what's going on here. And one of the things that people have noted is that as kids grow up in the church, when they go off to college, they often lose their faith. In fact, a huge percentage of them do that. And so she was just sharing those statistics, a shocking truth, and emphasized how shocking it was. She asked that percentage of the kids who had already been identified to leave, and so you get this huge group, which was more than half the group, standing up and walking out of the sanctuary.

I didn't have to do much to introduce my shocking truth that day because people caught on and we talked about leaving a legacy and what does the church have to do to prevent that from happening. And people were ready to listen and respond. They responded by doing two different building expansions during the next several years that I served there. That kind of shocking truth. Another shocking truth I've shared in messages in this area where I live is the fact that 47% of the people in this community have no meaningful connection to any religion. I shared that with a group when I was preaching as a guest preacher in a church. That's 47%. Just imagine, almost one out of every two people you walk down the main street of the four major towns in this area, one out of every two people is headed toward hell. Now, what do we have to do as a church? What ministries do we have to begin? How do we have to look at ministry in a more positive way that will reach those people? What's effective in turning this around? What's effective in engaging revival? It was the shocking truth that began that 47%, not connected with any meaningful religion, not just Christianity. That kind of shocking truth.

Now, one word about a shocking truth, and that is, you better make sure it's accurate. I'm recording this in 2021, in the United States, and if you're familiar with the politics here, we've had all kinds of shocking truth being claimed as facts. But when you start exploring them, you find out it's not true. So when you are going to use a shocking truth, make sure you do the study. Because there's a lot of fake news out there. And when you get enough fake news out there, people stop believing it, and they'll start turning you off. And if you overuse this method, if you overuse the whole idea of shocking truth, people will start to tune you out because people get tired of being shocked. So, shocking truth can do this well.

The next category is humor. You can use humor very well in introducing a message. Now, a couple of words about humor. One is, again, you can't overuse it. And two, you've got to make sure that it is focused on your message. There's one famous preacher, who I won't name, but his approach every week is that he begins his message with a joke. It's just a joke. He's heard his joke, he looked at where he gets his joke, but it's just a joke. That's all it is. It has no relation to the message he's about to bring. And he just says, you know, I like to start my messages with a joke. Well, that is not fulfilling the purpose of the introduction. You remember those purposes: to get people's attention, to make them want more, to gain credibility for you, to introduce the theme. That's not doing it. There is a way you can use humor to do that. And it's a worthwhile thing to do.

Recently, I was preaching on the prayer of Jabez, it's a little-known passage in the Old Testament, but it's a prayer, and it says at the end, "God granted his request." So this is a prayer that we should learn something from. But I introduced it with a story, a fanciful story. But it's two little boys who are staying with the grandparents nearing Christmas, and they're having a sleepover. And according to the tradition in that family, when these two little boys went to bed, they would kneel by the side of their bed and they would pray. And so that was what they did. The one boy started praying really loudly, "Dear God, for Christmas, I want a new bike. And I want a Nintendo Switch. And I want..." and he started making this list in a real loud voice. And his brother looked at him and said, "What are you doing?" He says to him, "God is deaf." And the other boy replied, "No, God isn't deaf, but Grandma is." People laughed, but then I could jump into, you know, how does God answer prayer? What kind of prayers does God answer? Intriguing question. And I have people hooked and hooked into the messages. It's one of my favorite messages.

So, yes, you can use humor very effectively. Now, where do you find humor-type things? Where do you find those bits of humor that can effectively get people hooked into your message? Again, it comes from reading, through listening, through making connections, through places like sermoncentral.com, or pro preacher, or whatever. You can just find them in a variety of places, but make sure if you're going to use humor, that it is connected to your message. It's not just out there on your own.

So, there's a variety of ways that you can introduce your message. And these are ways that will accomplish the purposes of gaining credibility for you, introducing the theme, hooking people into your message so that they want more. And use them well. Now, sometimes you don't do the introduction first. Sometimes you'll do the message first. And I've found that often, I'll get into the body of the message and then I'll say, "Okay, how can I introduce this more effectively?" Next time we're going to start talking about how you organize, let's say, you either do the introduction first, or you're doing it later, either way. But how do you, when you have a body of information that you want to present? How do you present that in an organized way that people can follow and people can experience just the joy of being with you along the way? So, we'll see you next time.