Welcome back to this short course, you've been asked to speak. 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 1, point 2, point.3, conclusion, and that idea of a flower, that you got a  main idea, and that should just reflect on it, reflect on the reality of that truth, and keep punching home, the main point, and it's a powerful way of presentation.  Now, it's hard work. For those who didn't grew up in this tradition, I have 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, and starts with, you know, 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 towards the 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. 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. 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 and a cloud by  day, pillar of fire by night, God leading 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 of  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 is cast into the sea. And then there's the denouement, 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 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 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the  world. If anyone loves the world, love for 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 to 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?  Materialism really talks about David's erosion of faith. We should resist the lust  of the eyes sensuality, David was on the roof of the palace looking over and  lusting after Bathsheba. So sensuality, damaged David's purity, and 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, and I think can easily fall  apart, 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 now. And it's a transformer, these machines  that transform into people like things back into cars, etc. So the 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. So we get together tires, we just start looking at everything  that's got tires on it. So we've 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 and 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 could ask or imagine or  even think, I had a practice that a group of prayer partners that pray for me daily,

and on Sunday morning, before we go into the first service of the day, several of  them would gather around, just to lay hands on me and pray that God will use  me today. And there will be times I would come to them and say, You know what, I'm working on this message. I've been struggling through it. 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. It was kind of at the end where it was just kind of,  okay, I brought people to this peak in the message. And 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 the 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 I came across, it says, Mack's 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 can 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, 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 either way, 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 In  conclusions, a third related conclusion mistake is simply this. You're searching  for a runway. You don't know where to land. And so 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 it 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 takes off again. I  think of a time when I was on an air flight. I was going to Michigan, I've been out  in California. And I was coming into Michigan. And it was a snowstorm. And we  were to land in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and pilot abandoned the, the landing  last minute and flew out 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 I thought we were gonna land we were coming  home, it was at night. My wife, young child were there. He was getting a little  fussy that night 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 it's kind of like, and, in  fact, in one church, they know, they have 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, and then there would be the next  song. And many people would start walking out. Because they expected a  landing, and they didn't land. So a big mistake. 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 and they aren't ready for it. The  discouraging finish. This is a dangerous kind of ending to a message where you  end up with a real downer when you say so. You're preaching on faith in tough  times. And you say, 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 good luck with that. A discouraging  finish to your message will leave people leaving there saying, I thought it was  good news. I thought the scriptures were good news. And so I was coming to  hear good news. And that's a way that just put 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, I've had one picture I use the larger class of this, 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



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