Video Transcript: Learning How to Organize the Message/sermon - Part Two

welcome back to this short course on you are asked to speak. And so we've  been looking at, how do you make a message that will impact people's lives and hopefully be a channel of the Holy Spirit to bring about change. So last time we  looked at organization, we looked at the first two kinds, the linear kind, that's  point 1point, 2 point, 3 point, conclusion. And that idea of the flower, that you've  got a main idea, and that you just will reflect on it, reflect on the reality of that  truth, and keep punching home the main point and the powerful way of  presentation. Now it's hard work for those who didn't grow up in this tradition.  I've done this sometimes, and it's so much fun, but it's a challenge. It's a  challenge, especially those of us who have been trained in another way. But if  you can do that, well, know that you can bring a message home with power,  such as Tony Campolo shared of his pastor's message. Now other kinds of  organization, let me go on to another one. There's the narrative kind of  organization. Now this is, if you read a novel, this is the kind of organization, the  flow of the novel, information. It starts with, you know, and maybe a brief  introduction of people that will hopefully draw you into the action. But there's an  inciting incident, you know, if it's a murder mystery, there's a murder, and then  there's rising action until you get to a climax. And then after the climax is falling  action till there's a resolution, and there's the denouement, as the French would  say. Now, this kind is good for telling a story. I recently heard a man use this  style, and what he did is he took, he simply took a story from the Bible, and he  followed the story, and he followed it with that kind of action. First of all, the  inciting incident. And I forget what it was, but it was an Old Testament story. But  there was an incident that all of a sudden it looked like God's people were  threatened, and it looks like things are going to be just, just horribly, horribly  difficult for God's people. You know, right now, the one that comes to mind is the  people of Israel at the Red Sea. Okay, they've had this escape from Egypt, and  now they're sitting at the Red Sea, and Pharaoh's army is coming against them.  So the inciting incident is the fact that God has led them. Remember, he's  leading them by his pillar of fire by day, a cloud by day, pillar of fire by night. God leading him them, and he leads them into this trap. There's mountains on two  sides. There's the Red Sea in front of them. There's no way to escape the army  of Pharaoh that is now coming against them. And so, wow, that is a huge inciting incident. And then there's the rising action of the people who are complaining  and the people who are are fearful and scared, and the rising action of God  moving the pillar of the cloud between the people of Israel and Israel's army.  And then the climax of the fact that the people are told to stand and see the  salvation of their God, and Moses holds out his rod, and they are crossing the  Red Sea on dry ground. And then the people of Pharaoh's army try to follow  them, and the sea comes back and kills them all. Then there's the falling action,  as they have this huge celebration at the end of God's goodness. And there's  that wonderful song of Miriam, you know, the horse and rider he was cast into 

the sea. And then there's the denouement, the fact that they go on from there  toward the mountain of God. This for narrative sections of Scripture. This can be a very effective organization that you can know where you are, what you're  doing, and the people can track with you, because they're tracking the story and  you're just making comments about the story along the way. Another kind of  organization would be textual organization. In other words, you let the text be  your organization. Here's I John 215 Do not love the world or anything in the  world. If anyone loves the world, love of the Father is not in them. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life comes  not from the Father, but from the world. Now, one man made a sermon based on that passage, but he connected it with David in the Old Testament, the David,  the story of David and Bathsheba. And he says, you know, we should resist the  lust of the flesh. And what is the lust of the flesh? Well, it's materialism. And he  talks about David's erosion of faith. We should resist the lust of the eye  sensuality. David was on the roof of the palace looking over and lusting after  Bathsheba. So sensuality damaged David's purity. We should resist the pride of  life, his arrogance in not confessing his sin until he's confronted, and then this  destroyed David's humility until he was called back, etc. That's a textual kind of  organization. So all of these are. Ways that can help you in your organization of  a message. Now, when you organize the message to that point, now, how do  you handle it? From there, you come to the point of conclusions. Now I'm going  to refer to conclusions as the piece that ties and applies my one of my young  grandsons will come over, and he likes to do jigsaw puzzles. And jigsaw puzzle  can be terrible, like they can easily fall apart. You know, you put a couple of  pieces together that you find falling together, and something happens and they  fall apart. But when you get the whole thing connected together, all of a sudden  the picture you've been working with becomes crystal clear. Now, before that,  the picture is rather fuzzy. You've got a picture of it. We've been working on one  now, and it's of transformers, these machines that transform into people, like  things back into cars, etc. So it's a puzzle of one of the movies of that. And so  we're working on it and and you can put together this little piece here. And so we get together tires, we just start looking for everything that's got tires on it. So we  put together a couple of sections of tires, and we understand tires. But it's not  until we get the whole thing together that you see the battle that's going on and  who's winning that battle. And so the conclusion is kind of the thing that brings  that whole picture into focus, so that you begin to see what's real, what's not,  how the message fits all together. That's the genius of a well done conclusion.  Now, if you're thinking of conclusions, there are many, many mistakes to make  in a conclusion. One is, don't plan it. Now I have to give you a caveat of that, I  realized that there were very too many times that I didn't plan well the  conclusion, and sometimes God would take that and create something in the  moment that was far beyond what I can ask or imagine or even think. I had a 

practice at a group of prayer partners that prayed for me daily. And on Sunday  morning, before we I would go into the first service of the day, several of them  would gather around just to lay hands on me and pray that God would use me  today. And there would be times I would come to them and say, You know what,  

I'm working on this message. I've been struggling through it, and I have no idea  how it's going to end like I say occasionally, God would take that and do  something with it. Other times he didn't. And it was kind of at the end where, you know, it was just kind of a, okay, I brought people to this peak in the message,  and now they realize there's no real peak. It's just kind of like we're done. So  don't planning it. If you really trust God, sometimes things good can come out of  that, but it's better to plan it. I believe, I think the Holy Spirit works sometimes in  ways that absolutely surprise us, and the Holy Spirit sometimes works in ways  that maybe humble us. Let's put it that way. So one of the big mistakes in  working with conclusions is don't plan it. Another mistake is what I'm going to  call don't close the deal. Here's a cartoon that it came across Max a closer.  That's why management loves him. Somebody is twisting somebody's head  right now, I include this as a mistake. Don't, don't close the deal, because this is  something that maybe I have been criticized for in my preaching. If anything, I'm  known as a really good preacher because I spend time on conclusion, but  sometimes closing the deal was tough for me. I know that's true. Years ago, I  went through a process of assessment to see if I could become a church  planter. My denomination was asking me to consider moving to Minneapolis  from Southern California to start a new church there. And so I went through this  process of evaluation. And one of the things that came back in the evaluation  was they thought I could do this well, but I had to be partnered with somebody  who was effective in evangelism, because though God has used me to lead  people to the Lord, you know, when it gets down to, would you like to pray to  receive Jesus Christ, I have trouble closing that deal. I don't know why, and I've  worked on that, and I've improved on that to some degree, but with a sermon,  it's similar that you get all the way with all your arguments and you don't close  the deal that all of a sudden, well, you better think about this instead of saying,  here's what God wants you to do. Don't close the deal is a major kind of mistake in. Of conclusions. A third related conclusion. Mistake is simply this, you're  searching for a runway. You know you don't know where to land, and so you  know you haven't planned it. And so you people are expecting you to come to a  conclusion, and then you don't. And they expect you to come conclusion, and  you don't, and that kind of thing. And related to that is this mistake taking off  again. I came across this cute little video of a plane which, instead of landing, it  can't land, and so it takes off again. I think of a time when I was on an air flight. I was going to Michigan. I'd been out in California, and I was coming into  Michigan, and there was a snowstorm, and we were to land in Grand Rapids,  Michigan, and pilot abandoned the landing the last minute and flew on to Detroit,

which is about two and a half three hour car ride or bus ride away. And so we're  we're going on. And I just remember that sense of disappointment when, Oh, I  thought we were going to land and we were coming home. It was at night, my  wife, young child, were there. He was getting a little fussy, and the sinking  feeling? Well, there are some people who have that sinking feeling when they  think you're coming in for a landing and you don't. And I have in mind one man I  respect. I love him dearly, but he has this problem when he preaches, he can't  seem to land, and so he goes around, and people are thinking that it's a landing  and it's not. And so, oh, it's kind of like and in fact, in one church they know of,  they had this practice of singing two songs after the message, and they realized  that at the end of the first song, there were people thinking, Okay, we're done  now, and then there would be this next song, and many people would start  walking out because they had expected a landing and they didn't land. So a big  mistake of you're searching for a runway or you don't land, and, yeah, it's a huge mistake, especially if you take off again you start on another part of the message that they aren't ready for the discouraging finish. This is a dangerous kind of  ending to a message where you end up with a real downer and you say, so  you're preaching on faith in tough times, and you say, you know, so there's no  real help for you. It's a time when you're going to question your faith. It's a time  when people are going to try to offer you condolence, and it's not going to work.  So, you know, good luck with that. A discouraging finish to your message will  leave people leaving there saying, I thought it was good. I thought the scriptures were good news, and so I was coming to hear good news, and that's a way that  just puts you behind the eight ball as far as concluding your message. So  anyway, we are going to continue this next time. And so we'll go on with  conclusions, but move on from problems with doing the conclusions the wrong  way to effective conclusions, one that can nail your message down. You know, in fact, one picture I used in the larger class of this is, you know, hitting the nail on  the head, or in my blog, which is preachingacts.com which is also a way of  encouraging people in various aspects of preaching. And I post there every  week. So nail it. Nail it down. How can you do that? So we'll resume this next  time see you then.