Reading: Outline and Explanation - Learning how to put a message/sermon together

Outline and Explanation of the Third Session of "So You've Been Asked to Speak Somewhere"

Introduction

• Bruce Ballast continues the course, focusing on crafting effective messages based on biblical and experiential connections.
• The session particularly addresses the importance of constructing compelling introductions for messages.

Significance of Introductions

• Introductions are crucial for capturing and maintaining audience attention.
• Studies suggest that speakers have approximately two minutes to engage their audience before they risk losing attention.
• The modern media environment, with frequent changes in visual stimuli, has shortened attention spans, making engaging introductions more critical than ever.

Purpose and Goals of an Effective Introduction

• Engagement: To hook the audience immediately, much like fishing, where the bait must be attractive and engaging enough to catch fish.
• Information Desire: Effective introductions should make the audience crave more information, akin to the opening lines of a great novel.
• Theme Introduction: Clearly introduces the theme of the message, setting the stage for what follows.
• Tone Setting: Establishes the speaker’s style and approach, which helps in aligning audience expectations.
• Credibility Establishment: Particularly for guest speakers, introductions serve to build credibility and trust by showcasing expertise and passion for the subject.

Strategies for Crafting Effective Introductions

• Use of Storytelling:
• Stories are powerful tools for introduction, as they are relatable and can effectively illustrate complex truths.
• Biblical examples include Jesus' use of parables that were culturally relevant and engaging to his audience.
• Personal or historical anecdotes can also be compelling, such as the story of John Wesley and his struggles with personal decisions and their impact on his ministry.
• Posing Intriguing Questions:
• Questions provoke thought and encourage audience participation in the thought process.
• They can be rhetorical, direct, or reflective, leading to deeper engagement with the message's content.
• Examples include direct questions from Jesus to his disciples, which challenge assumptions and provoke reflection.

Practical Application and Examples

• Bruce illustrates the effectiveness of storytelling by sharing a detailed anecdote about John Wesley’s personal life and its relevance to understanding God’s will.
• He also emphasizes the use of thought-provoking questions that Jesus commonly employed to engage and challenge his listeners.

Continuation and Preview

• The session ends with a promise to further explore introduction strategies and how they can be implemented to enhance message delivery.
• Future discussions will delve deeper into the mechanics of creating introductions that not only capture attention but also seamlessly transition into the main body of the message.

Conclusion

• The third session reinforces the critical role of introductions in public speaking, especially in religious settings where messages aim to connect deeply with personal and spiritual aspects of the audience.
• Bruce encourages the use of narratives and questions to craft introductions that are not only engaging but also foundational to delivering impactful and memorable messages.

Welcome back. Welcome back to this third session of this short course on "So You've Been Asked to Speak Somewhere." We've been looking at the different kinds of messages. And again, my predisposition here is talking about the fact that you've been asked to preach somewhere, you've been asked to give a devotional, you've been asked to give a message. So how do you get that message from the Bible? How do you get those messages that come from connections and put them into a Bible kind of setting? Well, now we're going to move to how do you start putting this message together. And the place to begin with that, of course, is with the introduction.

Now, introductions are important, more important than most people give them credit. Many people, when they start preaching, I found, will simply jump into their subject. And this is a little bit of a dangerous time because studies have shown that if people don't connect with your message within the first two minutes of you talking, they'll start tuning out; their minds will go elsewhere. We who speak in front of people these days face a huge challenge because with the media on television, in particular, wherever you might be, the images change every eight to 12 seconds. And so there's this huge change going on. So if they're not hooked by what you say in your introduction, they'll start tuning out.

So the purpose of an introduction is first, to hook people, to get them to bite onto, to grab onto what you're saying. My grandkids may be a little Nintendo 3DS to play a computer game on. And one part of that game, a video game, there's a part where you have to fish. And I was really quite surprised. I've done some fishing. I'm not a big fisherman, you may know more about than I. But one of the things I had to do was cast this little figure, cast this line into this pool. And that wasn't enough, you have to play with it, you had to tease the fish a little bit before they would bite on and then you could haul him ashore. And you can continue by catching some more. And then you got rewards for the amount you caught. Well, the introduction, you've got to look at that way. It's throwing your lure in and you're playing with it so that people get hooked. And they say, I want to hear more. So we want to be hooked.

So introductions do several things. They make us want more information. In other words, they're going to say, "I want to find out more." When you read some of the great novels in history, at least in English literature—that's my background, of course—they start things like, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." Right away, you're saying, "What kind of time was it? Can you describe that more? Tell me more." And then the writer goes on. And you're hooked in the first page. Novels do that. Great speakers do that, too. They hook you, and you say, "I want to know more." Sometimes it's the introduction of a character. And I'm reading a novel right now where on the first page, we're given a goal and some action that says, "Okay, who is this guy anyway?" And so you read more. One of the things that does is a good introduction makes people want more, it introduces the theme of your message in some way, shape, or form, and it will set a tone. It will say the type of speaker you are, and it will gain credibility for us.

Now, if you're a guest preacher—and that's where I spend most of my time these days—you have to spend a little bit of time on that gaining credibility for us. You're not bragging on yourself. But people have to believe you know what you're talking about, that you've thought this through, you've studied it, that you are serious. So, you know, I will always give a brief introduction of myself just to say that I've been preaching for a long time, and preaching is one of the passions that God has given me. And when I was out of ministry for a while, I felt called back into it just by preaching and saying, "God's saying to me, this is what I called you to do." So I'm glad to be here today to share with you. So it's a way to hook people, but it's also a way to gain credibility for yourself.

So what kind of introductions work well to accomplish these four purposes: make us want more information, introduce the theme, set a tone, gain credibility for us? One of the best ways what kind of introductions work well is a story. Now, when you read through the scriptures and you read the messages of Jesus, you'll find he almost always uses a story as an introduction to a deeper truth. They were often parables, but they're stories that people back then could relate to, grab onto, and say, "Okay, what does this mean? How does this relate to my life?" Think about the parable of the sower, where the farmer goes out to sow various kinds of seeds. You know, that this is something they saw all the time. In fact, some scholars suggested, you know, Jesus was watching somebody, a farmer sowing seed, as he began this message. And so it was that kind of reality that he worked with that people saw what was going on, saw what he was talking about. And so that's how he used the story. And now you can use stories in a variety of ways. I mean, just share one with you. This is John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church back in the 18th century. John Wesley was an incredibly dedicated person. He was dedicated to personal holiness. In fact, when he was in college, he and his brother Charles and some other young men started what they called the holiness club. And their goal was to hold each other accountable. They met every day and they held each other accountable for a holy life. And that holy life was involved by dedicating yourself to the service of God for your entire life. And so the people in the holiness club made a pledge, since the Apostle Paul said, "You know what, I wish everybody was single, so that they can wholeheartedly devote themselves to the work of God. I wish that everybody was single." They made a pledge to be single. Now, John Wesley began to question that. He began to question it when he went as a missionary to the American colony at that time of Georgia, went as a missionary there to Indians, and while there he met a young woman that just captivated him—her name was Sophia Hopkey. And he began rethinking his dedication to singleness because he fell in love with Sophia Hopkey. Now, unfortunately, she was, the story goes, engaged to another person. And so he was struggling, couldn't find himself because he had dedicated himself. He had these other people, these other members of the holiness club, holding him accountable for his singleness. And he couldn't feel like he could break that. And so he struggled with that struggle and Sophia Hopkey finally married the other person. And so what's the will of God for John Wesley in regard to marriage? He ended up going back to England a very crushed person in very many ways. And it's a fascinating story. He came back to England and picked up the work in England of preaching in a variety of places, preaching the Bible, preaching seriousness about receiving Jesus Christ into your life and having him involved in your whole life. And he began rethinking about the fact that he noticed that some people in the movement have found great strength in being married. And he began to rethink his objections to marriage. And seven of them at one time, in his journal, which are voluminous, by the way, a very interesting reading, he wrote in his journal, he'd been relooking at his seven objections to marriage and he's rethinking them. And he's thinking that now, maybe God is calling him to get married, take a wife. And so he's praying about this, thinking about it. And he writes, and I think that maybe Grace Murray is the person that I might be called to marry. And so Grace Murray was somebody who had been working alongside him in a variety of settings within this movement that was Methodism in England at that time. And he's deciding to ask her to marry him. Well, he tells his brother Charles that he's going to ask Grace Murray to marry him. And Charles is so upset by this, that he rushes out the door, jumps on his horse according to the story, and rides pell-mell over to Grace Murray's house, gets off as far as rushes and doesn't even bother knocking, rushes in the door, confronts Grace Murray, says Grace Murray, you're breaking my heart, and he falls over in a faint. Grace Murray was so traumatized by this that she refused to even think about marrying John, and she ended up marrying another man. Well, now Wesley had thought about this whole idea of marriage and decided that God was calling him to get married. And so he married a young woman named Mary Vazeille, V-a-z-e-i-l-l-e. And sometimes she's referred to as Molly in history, got married to her and he had an awful marriage. In fact, she ended up leaving him entirely after about 10 years. But they ended up separating many times in their, they had a miserable marriage, and used that story to introduce how do you know God's will? How do you know God's will as a holy person? Like John Wesley had trouble getting it right? How do you know God's will? And so he looked at various scripture passages as a topical message. Anyway, I suspect you were engaged in that story, people that I was preaching to were engaged too. What's happening? what's happening? And then to hit them with the theme. Okay, here's a situation where it's tough to determine God's will. How do you determine God's will? So the story is a great way to introduce. Now, just a word about that. Personal stories can be especially powerful. This is Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Community Church in Southern California, one of the largest churches in my country, the United States. Rick Warren is an expert at using personal story. I remember hearing him speak before he became famous. And he was talking about marriage. And he talked about the time when he and his wife were having this great tension in their marriage and how it was impacting their children, and how they were looking at the future with great wonder. And everybody is saying, how is this going to come out. And then he shared how it came out. More recently, his son committed suicide. And he took almost a year off from ministry. When he came back, he and his wife said, "We're here to share today why we still believe that a good God." And a pin could drop at that point. Now, one note about using personal stories is you've got to be careful not to be the hero. Like, you know, people struggle with this aspect of the will of God, but I've got it all together. If you do that, people are going to start, well, it's good for you but doesn't work for me quite that way. So a personal story can be a wonderful way of introduction.

Now, another kind of introduction is an intriguing question. In other words, you're asking something, you're wondering something, you're putting it out there. What do you think of this? Jesus used this a lot in his messages. Here are seven questions of Jesus: "Do you believe that I'm able to do this?" That's an intriguing question. "Do you believe I'm able to heal this child?" "Why are you afraid? You're in a storm right now and I'm in the boat with you. Why are you afraid? Oh you of little faith." "What do you think about the Christ? Other people he said don't. Other people are saying, what do people say, they report on that? What do you think?" Or his question to Peter, "Do you love me?" It's a powerful one because he says, "Do you love me? Do you agape me, the highest form of love in scripture?" And Peter keeps responding, "I phileo you. I love you like a brother." And he's failed Jesus. "Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and then not do what I tell you?" "What do you want me to do for you? Well, I want to be healed." But it's an intriguing question, "What is it you want me to do?" "And why do you see the speck that's in your brother's eye do not notice the log in your own eye?" Those are just some intriguing questions. Here are some others: "Why does God allow children to die of starvation?" I heard it preached once and he started out and he said, "I haven't lost my faith over it, but I cannot understand why God allows children to starve to death in Africa." "Can I really forgive and forget? Does God forgive me even if I do the same sin over and over?" "Is God really in control?" Those kinds of intriguing questions are powerful to hook people, to give you credibility, to introduce the theme, and to draw people into the messages you've got to give.

We're going to continue this next time as we explore more ways of how to introduce a message in such a way that it would grab people's attention and hook them for what you want them to hear from God's Word that day. Thank you. We'll see you next time.