Video Transcript: Session 28 Make it memorable, use visuals

Welcome back to preaching. Preacher presentation, presentation a class on  making and preaching sermons. We've been talking in these past sessions  about how do you present your message in a memorable way, acknowledging  the fact that people remember only 20% of what they hear. So how do we  increase that percentage and so we've been talking about that a little bit. Well,  today, I want to continue that theme. You'll notice the title on here is use visuals.  Now, the sermon I remember best in my life happened because of the visual  that a person use, it was a friend of mine. And we invited him we had an evening service, and he was a missionary that we supported. Now, this was when I lived  in Southern California. And so this was a man who was a friend of mine who  was a missionary, as an Anglo living in South Central LA, which is almost all at  that time, African American. And so he worked in a church there in a very difficult setting where he often had guns pointed at him, that sort of thing as they tried to close crack houses and, and things like that. But we invited him to come and  preach and one of our evening service services, and he brought with him two  visuals that were rather powerful. That one is one we talked about earlier, as we  showed you that video of the guy creating a visual by cracking one of these  cheap clay pots, you can buy them for a couple of bucks somewhere. And  sometimes you can get them a whole lot cheaper for that as a garage sale here  in the United States. Well, he had one that was dirty, and it was yucky, and it  was just kind of sat there. So he had that one. And then he had this absolutely  beautiful vase. This isn't a picture of the vase he brought but it's it's similar to  what we were talking about. And, and he used those as a visual at one point in  his message now what the point he was making in the message at the  beginning with this simple clay pot was that God takes us as clay pots, right?  We're clay pots. But sometimes we get dirty. We sin, we we fail to live the way  he wants us to live. We don't just sin by not obeying God, we sin by disobeying  and we sin by not living up the way he wants us to live as far as the goodness  that we should be doing in the world. And sometimes he said, the stench of our  dirt and our filth go to God and He gave the example of Sodom and Gomorrah,  how the stench of Sodom and Gomorrah, we read, reached into heaven, so  much so that God had determined to destroy those cities. And then there's a  whole story in the book of Genesis, about the angels coming to Abraham and  Abraham kind of bargaining with God about saving the city. If there's just five  righteous people, would you destroy it, there are five righteous people in the city. And anyway, he says, so Lot gets rescued from the city. But God's judgment  pours down and destroyed that city. And he put a towel over the gray pot, had a  towel under it, took a hammer out and smashed it to smithereens, and then  opened it in there it was. That's what it's like to be under God's judgment. And  then he took this beautiful vase. And he just told a story about this vase. He said this was a very valuable vase vase to him, said, one it's beautifully made, but it  was given to him by a friend. And this was a friend that he had met when he was

in Vietnam as a as a servicemen in Vietnam of the United States fighting there.  And he said, this friend that he just kind of clicked when they were first got in the same platoon together. But over a period of time, you know, this friend had  saved his life and at least one maybe more occasions. And so they have this  bond that lasted even after they got home. Back to the United States, there was  this bond that lasted and one time when they were going to meet once again  and talk to this friend gave him this beautiful vase. He said, It looks similar to  what they used to see in the marketplace, when they were in Saigon and  Vietnam, said, I give this to you, just because I want you to think of me every  time you see this beautiful vase. And then he talked about God's relationship  within himself, about God's love of the son, where he could say up Jesus  baptism, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So this is my son.  Listen to him at the Transfiguration, that mystery of the Trinity of God we talked  about being one God but in three different persons, three different persons, and  and that love that existed there. And then he said, but what did God choose to  do with his beloved son? And he wrapped this beautiful vase in a towel just as  he had the clay pot? And he said, he chose because he loves you and He loves  me to send his judgment on his beloved son. They raised the hammer and there was something into that just wanted to cry out no Don't break it. And other  people reported the same reaction. I said, I'm sure everybody who was in that  service that night, experienced that same kind of feeling as he raised the  hammer, and then smashed this beloved, valuable vase. I will never forget that  message. Now today, we're going to talk about using visuals in your messages.  And the question, always an argument, should you use visuals or not? Now,  there are a variety of arguments about why not to use visuals. Here's some of  the better known ones. One, people will remember the visual, not the point. Yes, that can happen. It can happen that some people would think oh, yeah, I  remember the visual. But what was that point? Again? That can happen but you  know, I'd rather have people remember the visual, remember something and  maybe get the truth out of it, then not remember anything I'm going to tell you  later about the pastor, my teen years. Another one is as change of senses, you  know, going from the auditory sense, to the visual sense, might be distracting for people. It might be I don't, I don't know. And there are no studies that say so.  And some people argue against using visuals like PowerPoint saying, you know, PowerPoint, and bullet points creates kind of a simple message, it simplifies  things. To a point of the ridiculous like, you know, you always end up with  sermons that have three points, you know, three ways to save your marriage.  Five things you can do to grow more spiritually are are 10 ways to do this or that that reduces the wonderfully complex and Yet, beautiful message of the  Scripture, to bullet points, and so we shouldn't use them. That's, those are the  main arguments that I'm aware of. As far as the not don't use visuals. But there  are some big arguments for using visuals as well for once. For instance, God 

does it. God uses visuals. The fact you can't read the Scripture very far, where  you become aware that visuals are important to him. He uses visuals to  communicate to his people. You see this throughout Scripture, but when you get to the prophets, it becomes almost an every page occurrence. recently  completed the book of Jeremiah and my devotions, and you know how does  Jeremiah start? Well, it starts with a call to being a prophet on the part of  Jeremiah, when you read Jeremiah 1, you read that God calls him saying,  before I formed you in the womb, I knew you before you are born, I set you  apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. And that's how he lives out  his word, but verse 11 of chapter 1, you get a picture of this call of his message.  It's a visual. We read here, verse 11, the word of the Lord came to me. What do  you see Jeremiah? In other words, there was a visual. I see the branch of an  almond tree, I replied, The Lord said to me, you have seen correctly for I'm  watching to see that my word is fulfilled, to understand how the people would  interpret that how Jeremiah would interpret that here's a theologian, Bible  commentator, reflecting on that passage, said in the first vision, Jeremiah saw  an almond branch, the almond Bush was the first to come to life in the spring,  the blossoming of the pink flowers of the almond tree was a sure sign that spring was coming, the flowers come before the leaves. So the almond branch was a  symbol of the coming fulfillment of the Lord's word, the Lord will carry out his  word without delay. The period of waiting and warning was almost over the time  of judgment for Judah and Jerusalem had come. So that message came with a  picture. And the picture affirmed the message and so every time Jeremiah  thought of the urgency of his message to God's people, he could think of that  almond tree, or the another marvelous picture later in Jeremiah, where we have  him getting direction from the Lord verses chapter 18. This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord. Go down to the potter's house. Excuse me there's  the almond branch, here's the potter's house. And there's a message there. So I  went down to the potter's house and I saw him working at the wheel but the pot  he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hand so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as he seemed best to him. Here's a visual right, a potter  at work. Then the word of the Lord came to me said can I not do with you Israel  as this potter does, declares the Lord like clay in the hand of the potter, so are  you in my hand Israel, if at any time I announced that a nation or Kingdom is to  be uprooted, torn down and destroyed to this nation I weren't repents of its evil I  will relent and not inflict on it's a disaster I plan. And if at another time I  announced that a nation or Kingdom has to be built up and planted, and if it  does, even when my sighted does not obey me, then I reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. Now say this to the people in Jerusalem. It came with a  visual aid. And so one of the arguments for it is this is the way God  communicates to us. He communicates to us in pictures, he communicates us to in, in these object lessons that are visual that have to do in life. And certainly, 

God in the Old Testament does it Jesus in the New Testament certainly uses  visuals, you can't read the parables, you can't read some of the stories about  Jesus without seeing him use the visual. One of my favorites is when Jesus  takes this little child and puts them among them, that the disciples are talking  about, you know, who's the greatest among them, and it takes a little child,  here's a visual lesson, an object lesson, different than illustration in some ways,  but a visual illustration. And he said, unless you become like this little child, you  will in no way enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, what did Jesus intend with  that? Well, there are probably many things that could be interpreted that way to  be interpreted that he meant that they should become trusting like this child, or  are joyful, like most time, children are, you know, there have been studies done  about how often little children giggle, and how we lose that as we move into  adulthood. Maybe he was just saying, approach the joy of life. But I suspect in  the context, it was the trusting character of children, that says, I'm going to be a  child, but I'm going to trust you. And I'm going to recognize that I'm not an adult.  And so they would be able to turn more and more over to God. And so Jesus  does this all the time. He said, Look at the birds of the air, visual birds of the air,  said, see how they don't so they don't reap and yet, they don't have barns to  store up their stuff in in yet. Your father takes care of them, how much more  important to you than the birds now that comes in a context and Luke 12, where  Jesus is talking to a man who called out as he was teaching, Lord, bid, my  brother divided the inheritance with me and Jesus response is, who made me a  judge among you in that sense? And he says, first of all, beware of greed. And  you recognize the greed in this man's heart. And so it becomes an object lesson  to say, I trust God, I can't just try to get ahead financially, the seed and the  sower, how does the word get spread about grass in the field, all of these kinds  of things he uses. So we have arguments for God does it. Church history shows  that we've been doing this for a long, long time. For many, many years in  churches, they would have stained glass windows in the stained glass, where  there were visual lessons in people where they were mostly illiterate. They use  these pictures to teach people. And we still do that with children yet today, only  now we do that in more sophisticated ways. So we do this, because God does it  the church's history shows that and today we are in a visual world and the  United States are two and a half television sets per household. And they watch it 35.6 hours per week. Now, that has created us as people, though, I think we're  born that way. And certainly God has done in a long, long time. But we're born  with a tendency to take in things more visually, even that we are orally with me  speaking to you. So it's important that you see me not just hear me not that you  can't learn things from just the audio. We're going to talk about that another  time, too. But we need to have visual stuff for our interpretation of things. So  how do you do it? Well, movies, television clips, if you've got the capacity to do  that, those can be powerful. There's this back. Here's an example. This is from 

Indiana Jones. And he has to take, he has to get the chalice that Jesus  supposedly drank at the Last Supper. And unless he gives liquid to his father out of that challice, his father is going to die. And so he has to go but he sees  between himself in the cave, where the chalice is held that there's this huge  chasm, and how will he ever get there? Well, he has to take a step of faith. And  as he reads and reflects on the stuff, he's willing to take this step of faith, and all  of a sudden, there's a trail that appears before him. Something like that is a  wonderful thing to talk about taking a step of faith. You can find all kinds of  examples of these, oh, I didn't say anything about copyright laws there you must be aware of using copyright laws. In other words, you can only use certain kinds of material and you can't use it for financial gain. So beware of that. But there  are even services like sermonspice.com where you can get visual video  declarations of some kind or another or or skits, those kinds of things that can  illustrate your sermons. Or you can use common objects. A friend of mine just  recently used this one of the lifesaver rings. We talked about what Jesus does  for us and he threw it out into the audience and pulled it out with or pulled it back with a rope. to say, it gives us as we're being swept away by life as we're being  swept away by our own self and our own desires, we get this life ring, and  there's a power that pulls us back to life. You can find it in all kinds of common  objects, you can find it like a rope, saw one message where the guy used a rope was encompassing the whole front of the church. And he walked from one end.  And so that represents eternity past that represents eternity future. And then he  goes to the Middle East says, and here's your life right here. That's it. That's all  you get a rope. The gate, powerful sermon on Jesus being the gate, as he  claims in the Gospel of John is one of the I am statements, and that this guy had built up small sheep pen onstage, just roughly put together. And then there's a  gate where the shepherd sat, so no thief or wild animal could get in without  going past him. And so he sat there and gave his message, a large part of it  from there. And that became a visual, a gavel about judgment. You may wonder  why this is here. This was one of my visual aids that I remember, well, there was a time in my life where I felt a friend of mine had betrayed me. And I could not  believe there was it was, it was a tough time in my life. I was going through  some really difficult stuff. And then I felt like this man on who I depended was  not shared so much, was now cutting off my legs in life. And so I was going to a  counselor during this time, I said, What do I do with this anger? He said, well,  you've got to somehow externalize your anger. And so he says, find some way.  So if you're a runner run, well, I had some knee problems at the time, so I  couldn't run. So I determined, I got out my sledge hammer, and I just sat in the  backyard just pounding on the ground, pounding on the ground, pounding on the ground. The message that day, was about forgiveness. How do you forgive  someone? But for me, the visual was, we get that was several people said, you  know, I know what that's like. And then we talked about the importance of 

forgiveness. So you can do it in a variety of ways. With very, very common  objects. How do you do it? Well, movies, television, clip common objects, get a  team of creative people if you can, that's a marvelous thing. use PowerPoint for  punch. Now I'm running out of time here for this session. And so I want to show  you a video, it's a short video, but it just gives all the problems with PowerPoint,  PowerPoint is a wonderful blessing. And if you're able to use that if you have the technical capacity to use it, it can provide a great deal of good visual aid for your messages. But there are problems with it. And there's a rather humorous  presentation embedded in this video. And when you watch that, you'll just see  that yeah, this is there are some problems with PowerPoint too. So just be  aware, and I'll see you next time. So this is a thing I do called Life After Death by PowerPoint basically, don't do these things in PowerPoint. These are the things  that people do that drive me nuts and the only way to show them not to do this is to show them what not to do. So the biggest one I see most common how  present number one people tend to put every word they're going to say on their  PowerPoint slide. Although this eliminates need to memorize your exercise  category and boring you lose your eyes or even reach the bottom of your first  slide second most common font size is important size matters too small and  that's not that's not good for anybody on the other hand too big and he just looks like an idiot don't have your fonts moving keep your text stationary there's  nothing more annoying the text does blinking don't have it blinking don't have it  spinning don't have stuff flying around the screen. You got people with ADD  crazy just like whoa what's happening now since I'm talking about font people  are really into fonts I've noticed this. Here's a great isn't that by the way. One of  the best joke jokes that I know a Comic Sans and Helvetica, a walk into a bar  and the bartender and ask the bartender for a drink and the bartender says,  Sorry, we don't serve your type here that kills it upon convection you choose Be  very careful. Everybody has their their favorite font. The font you choose sends  a message about who you are as a person. There's a long list of fonts, we pick  one that reflects your personality, we're sending an unspoken message. So for  example, if you choose Courier New it means you're organized and structured  and like to pretend you're still using a typewriter. If you choose Comic Sans it  means you think you're funny. And if you choose Times New Roman, it means  you're lazy, apathetic and unimaginative. And you always use the default If you  choose Georgia, it means you speak with a southern accent. You choose the  Arial that means you like The Little Mermaid. Arial people you choose Old  English it means that you enjoy malt liquor we got a few more helvetica  Helvetica. That means you're a mayonnaise lover. That's a stretch. Blackadder  that means you're an African American accountant. That one requires some  thought. sorry. And if you like Wingdings, it means you're a nerd and you have  no life. Now, if you type in all small letters, some people do that all small letters,  that means you're quite shy and unassertive, you type in all capital letters. That 

means you yell a lot of somebody. If you take a small letter followed by capital  letters, that means your caps lock is stuck on. Don't you hate when that  happens. You're going along for a while and oh darn. And it finally got a mix of  capital letters and small letters. That means this is a ransom note and you are a  kidnapper. Very hard to avoid excessive bullet pointing only bullet key points, too many bullet points and your key messages will not stand out. In fact, the term  bullet point comes from people firing guns at annoying presenter. This slide but  when it has crashed PowerPoint, apparently, there's a max about how many  bullet points you can add. The other thing you do is have animations. People  love animations. zooming in and out and left and right. You get seasick What  does that even turns out if you're a visual learner, your effectiveness as a  speaker will go up with the more animations but if they're easily distracted,  they're not even paying attention to what you're saying. They're just watching  the cool stuff. And there's reasons for this graph. There's a simple but effective  reads in the act of a confusing the effective and boring the active and ineffective  the Dilbert static region. The busy uses region over there the add only region  they're up in the use of amusing the stupid confusing the double triangle, the  hyper triangle, the sleepy square, the visiting Pentagon, and then everything  else is just grouped into what's called pointless motions. Just one slide by the  way, it's been three and a half weeks to make. Now one of the biggest dangers  today, and I'm telling you I hear it more and more every time you hear  conversation is like how S.A.O.D. or severe acronym overload disorder. Have  you heard people talk recently? There are no words going between? Yeah, I am  my CFO about our ROI and our CRM and RFP and a printout or EPS is really  SOL so we better do something ASAP. Like kind of can I buy a vowel like can't  solve your conversation. And it may not resonate, but this could be a real  resume in today's world. Look I got an MBA from USC and MSW from MIT a  BSc E from IBM HP VLSI. Remember vi Triple E it NCAA NAACP, a RPA AAA, I  want to position the CEO CFO CFO, CIO, CTO, cmo CFO, CTO CIO, VP, EPP. I want to be the EIA of a company. Especially my dream home. Yeah. Call me on  the top. That's kind of my final point. And this people do all the time. They'll just  have graph after graph just to impress you with their with their graph prowess.  And I chose that acronym is my real time acronym, it's pretty much goes up and  down. I know why you need to graph. But you can see pretty much peak there.  I'll use some more acronyms later. And there's just a chart. That doesn't make  sense. It doesn't make any sense to you. But I just want to, here's the acronym  letter distribution C's ies E's, ns and Ss are the most common letters that I use  in my acronyms. Here's a pie chart letter distribution. Here's I have no idea what you use that for. You can generate that automatically in PowerPoint. figure what  the heck and here's the line graph. The number line graph throughout my show  here is a bar chart or a bar charts pretty much goes up and down here is a real  bar chart. Bar Chart I'm into here's the candy bar charts. Here's a salad bar 

chart tomato sprouts, spinach and the different calories of each. Here's the sushi bar chart. This is a probability of illness, depending on there's a lot of detail and I actually pay close attention. Here's a bar chart number bars business versus  age throughout my life. Most people don't take the time to do this. But you see  when I was 17 I had to fake ID so it was confiscated when I was making my bar  use has dropped dramatically. I spent way too long making these charts. When I was 21. I went nearly every day of the year if he was about 342 it's kind of gone  down through the years I plan to drink a lot when I'm 40 a lot when I'm 50 and  then retire a drink constantly. That's my plan here's a spreadsheet a  spreadsheet get back to the charts. Here's a free He does spreads butter  margarine I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. Mayonnaise Princetonian cheese was  in patriots plus five over every possible spread you could imagine. Here's an org chart of org charts in Miami. Org Chart my sales marketing engineering org  chart and here's your reward chart every company should have those. And then  it was interesting is my actual family work chart make one of these. It's  important. Steve our cat runs our family. If you have a cat, you know that is true.  Any animal that goes hey, I just pooped in there. Somebody clean that up.  Clearly head of the family. My wife Laura reports to Steve I report to my wife and the remote control reports to me. That's my entire region of domain right there.  Back to the charts. Again, here's a pie chart of chart types 3d charts, bar charts,  pie charts. Here's a pie chart a pie for dessert, lemon, pumpkin, cherry pecan  apple. Here's a pizza pie chart. Here's your pot pie chart. There's a better pot  pie chart. Here's a pie chart with value to pi but the nerds out there yet. 3.14159  22 Seven 3.14 and a pie itself. Here's we have a pie chart. I'm always thinking  why don't we have a tick chart so there's a cake chart. Why don't we leave the  cake out there they a birthday cake. There's a wedding cake chart. There's a  bundt cake chart chart and then really that's an upside down cake chart. Alright,  I think I've covered all the charts any questions at this point?