Video Transcript: Different Types of Messages

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, you approach a passage of scripture in  such a way because I got these questions for God, I'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 the dot the  dot that 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 a building program in the last  church that I serve. And what are the areas where we especially needed to grow was that our middle school ministry 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, all the one group would sit on the floor, next group would sit on  beanbags, the next group would sit on low stools, the next group was on high  stools, the next group would stand up. And so that's how she was trying to  organize her class and keep the ministry going. And so we were in a building  program, and one of the things we were going to do was trying to supply room  for middle school ministry. Well, we asked her to do the introduction to the  message to share some of her vision for ministry. And she what she did was she got all of her students in, so there's about 50 students. And they're sitting in one  part of our sanctuary. At that point, our worship center that we held about 500  people. So you bring 50, and you got 10% of the church, occupied by the middle school kids. And she began talking about the percentages now, you know, the  percentages change, but in our country, you know, there's definitely a post 

Christian field, 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 are doing that. And so  she just sharing those statistics, shocking truth, and emphasize how shocking it  was. She asked that percentage of the kids and they'd 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, and and and they responded,  they responded by we did two different building expansions during the next  several years that I served there. That kind of shocking truth. But 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 47% 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 if you  walk down the main street of the for major town in this area, you want 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 and  turning this around what's effective in engaging revival, but it was the shocking  truth that began that 47% not connected with any meaningful, meaningfully with  any 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 2001, or 2021. In the United States, and you know, any, any  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 they will, 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 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 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 said, he just  says, you know, I like to start my, 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, those, 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, but with  a story. It's a fanciful story. But it's two little boys, who are staying with the  grandparents and 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 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 a very, 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 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. But introducing the theme, hooking  people in 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, and then 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.