:: Back to 'Other Articles'
Other Articles sub-menu - :: Book Reviews :: :: Media Articles ::
Book Review: Preaching That Connects ::
Preaching That Connects: “Using the Techniques of Journalists to Add Impact to Your Sermons”.
Source: Perspective Vo3 No1 © Perspective 1999
Author: Mark Galli & Craig Brian Larson
Published: Zondervan
Reviewer: Phil Campbell
What does journalism have in common with preaching? Quite a lot. For starters, the journalist and the preacher are both in the business of communication. Both are trying to grab and keep your attention. Both need to master the art of using language that “connects”. These days, the preacher competes for attention with a barrage of professionals. Let’s face it – we’re speaking to people on a daily diet of John Laws, Ray Martin and Brian Henderson. And that means there’s an urgent need to apply ourselves to mastering the skills of the professional communicator.
“Preaching That Connects” is a book that promises to help you to “use the techniques of journalists to add impact to your sermons.” As the authors, Mark Galli and Craig Brian Larson, say on the cover, “We can say nothing really new – but it must SEEM new.” And the insights in their book offer genuine help.
In essence, this is a book that simply analyses what makes good communication good. Let’s start with the introduction. What makes a good one? Predictably, exactly the same ingredients that makes a good “lead” in a newspaper story. “The most important sentence in any article is the first one,” says journalist William Zinsser. “If it doesn’t induce the reader to go on to the second sentence, your article is dead.” Mmm… is anyone still with me?
PEOPLE WANT TO HEAR ABOUT PEOPLE
With plenty of real life examples, Galli and Larson step through three easy ways to produce attention grabbing openings – and it’s here that they share what I suspect is the most important tip of all. The common element in all good communication is that people don’t want to hear about abstract ideas – they want to hear about people. “The key… when dealing with an abstract subject – like the Trinity, or Eschatology – is to relate the subject to people. One Television journalist associated with the popular 60 Minutes, says that producers never do a story about an issue unless they can find a person to tie that issue to. They won’t, for example, do a story about rain forests being destroyed, but they would do a story about… how deforestation is affecting a particular family.”
It’s a great rule of thumb! Ask “where are the real people in this” before you use an introduction or an illustration – if there are none, don’t use it! (Keep an eye on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald and you’ll see the same principle at work – how often do you see a lead photograph that doesn’t feature at least one person?)
GET THE BIG IDEA
Galli and Larson move on to discuss sermon structure in chapter 4, and again, there’s good, practical advice. “No sermon is ready for preaching, not ready for writing out, until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal.” It’s well known advice, and almost a cliché – but I still regularly fall into the trap of writing a sermon before the “big idea” is properly cooked. The importance of focusing on the key idea, of course, is that it gives us a yard-stick in deciding what material should be left out. “Preachers are notoriously indiscriminate in their choice of material – especially if it’s guaranteed to draw a laugh. But if we’re not fierce with ourselves at this point, the sermon will suffer, losing focus and force, perhaps confusing listeners as we try to do too many things at once.”
ILLUSTRATING THE POINT
A liberating chapter on Illustrating comes next, and it’s well worth reading the book for this section alone. It’s liberating not because it’s jammed with a dozen illustrations you can recycle next week, but because it analyses the different illustration types in a way that opens up whole new vistas. By the time you’ve pored through the sections on True Stories Used Literally, True Stories Used Figuratively, Fictional Stories Used Literally, Fiction Stories Used Figuratively, Generic Experiences, Images, Quotations and Facts – all, of course, used Literally or Figuratively, you’ll wonder how you were ever stuck for an illustration. Again, the important point is made that illustrations should be about “People rather than things” – issues or problems travel best in the communication process when wrapped round a specific person. “While illustrations drawn from nature, mechanics, or mathematics can help clarify, people illustrations are more likely to stir emotion. They are alive.”
OMIT NEEDLESS WORDS
After a useful chapter analysing “storytelling skills”, Galli and Larson move on to analyse the mechanics of what they term “Forceful style.” It’s well worth reading, though perhaps most applicable to those who preach from a closely prepared script. “Vigorous writing is concise.” And so is vigorous preaching! “A sentence should contain no un-necessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts…. Every word should tell.” That means we need to avoid cumbersome constructions, vague adverbs, redundancy and unintended repetition. For added punch, we should use short words rather than long ones. And short sentences, too. Believe me, this is good stuff – if you’re prepared to take the time to analyse what you’re doing, this chapter alone could revolutionise your preaching.
KNOWING WHEN TO STOP
Some sermons, like some marathon runners, stumble across the finishing line, sometimes fifteen minutes late. After detailing four common mistakes, there’s a list of eight good ways to end, and ten good ways to “tell them what to do.” It’s all good practical advice, and I guess if this review is going to follow any of the principles of good journalism, it’s probably time to sit down and shut up. PREACHING THAT CONNECTS is an easy read, and it’s a great tool in helping you analyse what you’re doing, why it works, and perhaps even why it doesn’t. Don’t bother looking for advice on exegesis and hermeneutics here – you won’t find any. But if you’re seeking to hone your craft as a communicator, it’s well worth a read.
Phil Campbell