• Communicate the timeless truths of Scripture in timely ways
• Capture your listeners’ attention in the first 30 seconds of your message
• Uncover real needs in your hearers
• Present the Bible in a persuasive manner
• Motivate your audience to apply the Bible
• Utilize the human personality’s ability to processes information
• Connect with your audience
• Deliver a biblical message without sounding like a history lesson
• Identify the main idea in passage of Scripture
• Transform the theme of a passage into a message for a twenty-first century audience
• Customize your message for the specific needs of your listeners
• Stay on message without wandering down rabbit trails

from The I-Beam of Message Building at logos.com

#1 Write down your top 12 leaders and an action-item bullet point for each one. How can you invest in each this year? How will you spend time with them? What tools do they need? Do they require more support, direction, coaching or delegation? Don’t just look at your existing structure, look to who is emerging.

#2 Schedule a benchmarking trip to visit a church that’s 40% larger in weekend attendance than yours. Ask the church to invest team-on-team time and connect one-on-one in the designated staff areas.

#3 Take the Clarity Quiz in your first staff meeting in 2011. Use the quiz to prioritize a single staff goal for the next 90 days. Make the goal big, measurable, and define how each person will contribute.

#4 Schedule an offsite leadership retreat and make it a bigger event than in years past.Draw a pie cart for how much time to spend on fun stuff vs. strategic work. Delegate agenda development for each side of the pie chart or brainstorm the agenda with your key leaders in early January.

#5 Schedule an “hour of vision” in your monthly meeting pattern. Creating space for teams to have dialogue and to shape and own the vision is a huge move for the senior leader. Ask them a simple questions like, “What was your favorite thing about last year and how to we do more of it?” Or, ask them creative questions like, “If someone wrote a $25,000 check  to your ministry, how would you spend it and why?” If you would like a resource for ideas, consider buying a Vision Deck with 52 “vision-icebreakers” for this time.

#6 Cast a leadership vision to pray for people far from God. In the next several weeks, ask each person on the leadership team to share 3-5 people in their sphere of influence who are far from God. Pray for these people by name as a group every week in 2011.

#7 Schedule values-based leadership gatherings. Design several staff or leadership gatherings throughout based on your church values. For example, is you have six values, plan six special gatherings. During each experience, highlight the designated value in a concrete way. Celebrate and honor individuals who are modeling the value well.

#8 Increase your culture of collaboration. Find a coach or friend in ministry who can provide some staff training. Re-engage that personality assessment that came and went too quickly. Purchase a simple tool for each team member to bring to every meeting in 2011. I use this collaboration cube in every meeting I lead to encourage push-back, transparency, creativity, support and making final decisions.

#9 Create a stop doing list and execute. Whether your church is growing, plateaued or declining you will greatly benefit from identifying and eliminating the 20% of church’s activity that is the lowest return on the mission. Play this short audio from Jim Collins as a staff exercise. As a team, ask the question ruthlessly, “Why do we do what we do?”

#10 Assess your vision and attend an event to boost your clarity. Here is the Vision Frame overview as a litmus test for your vision. If you can not answer all five questions of the irreducible minimums of clarity, then schedule today, one of the 7 best clarity experiences in winter/spring 2011. Events are in San Diego, San Antonio, Houston, Atlanta, Orlando with one being virtual.

#11 Take some new steps to develop leaders at every level of involvement. Many pastors hope to do this but never get to it. But it’s not that hard if you take a little time to plan. Spend 3 months designing, 3 months building behind the scenes and launch a dynamic process by fall of 2011. I co-authored a book, Building Leaders, to guide this process for you. I am giving away five books for leaders who want to engage this planning step. Tweet this post with the hashtag #buildingleaders to win. Two other great resources are The Leadership Baton by Bruce Miller and Mac Lake’s Blog.

 

reprinted from willmancini.com

Biblical Depth

No matter how thoughtful, passionate, or persuasive our messages may be, they are only as powerful as our ability to connect the listener to the heart of Scripture.  Developing biblical depth involves processing the richness of the original context, leading people through nuances of the text and helping them connect the passage to other parts of Scripture.  While people aren’t particularly interested in the conjugation of Greek and Hebrew verbs and the opinions of commentators, they do value exploring the world of biblical writers and connecting the broader themes found in Scripture.

Intellectual Depth

There is often a tendency to focus on what a passage means and then move quickly to application.  We all too easily neglect the “why” questions–Why is this important to God? Why do we struggle with this?–Intellectual depth means reflecting on the main idea of a message, thinking through the questions raised by the text.

Experiential Depth

Strong preaching not only comments on what God had to say long ago but also invites him to speak in the moment.  People need to experience God.  This experiential depth can be achieved in a time of reflection, a moment of prayer, or an activity designed to draw people into the immediate presence of God.

Cultural Depth

Cultural depth provides insight into current cultural issues.  Too often Christians have a knee-jerk reaction to culture–either embracing it uncritically or rejecting it without taking the time to understand it.  Thinking through our time and place in history is an essential part of contextualizing the message of Christ.

Applicational Depth

Depth in sermon application provides a concrete way for people to integrate the message into their everyday lives.  We should always ask ourselves, As a result of this message, what are we asking our people to do, and how are we going to support them in that? This shapes the way we approach our messages.  We regularly provide take-home activities, guides, and resources that help people take the first steps in applying it to their lives.  We should also be finding ways to connect our message to social media such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter.

Perhaps in developing our preaching calendar, we should not only plan the subjects but also the ‘depth’ of various series.  Though we cannot drill down into each of these five areas in every message, we should seek to balance them out over the course of a year.  In an age where we are literally flooded with information, we need to be sure that the message of Christ has staying power with our hearers.  Monitoring these aspects of depth gives us the best chance to leave a lasting mark on the heart of others.

Adapted from “Five Kinds of Preaching” by Scott Chapman in Leadership Magazine.

To be sure, there is no formula for the perfect homily.  It is equal parts natural and supernatural; a balance between one’s own soul and the work of the Holy Spirit.  And yet, there is one common thread that seems woven through most great sermons:

The handle.

The handle is the most important part of a tool.  It is the place where the tool’s potential energy and a person’s exerted force meet.  The handle is the necessary component to making an idea a reality.  Thinking about driving a nail won’t make it happen.  One must make an effort, a concerted effort.

One cannot overstate the importance of what my grandfather would have called “the grip”.  The part of the tool that helps you hold on to the device, and more importantly, control it… use it.

Good sermons have ‘grips’.  They take difficult and abstract spiritual ideas and give an audience ways to grab hold of them.  It’s a well thought out object lesson.  It’s a perfect metaphor.  It’s the tool that allows an audience to take action.

Still not convinced?  Take some time to study Tony Evans and his homiletic style.

When preaching, give your listeners handles.  They’ll thank you.

What are some that you remember?

“Following one of our Sunday morning services, while greeting fellow worshipers, I noticed an older couple waiting patiently. Their eyes were red from weeping, and a few long moments passed while they struggled to find words.

“The husband could hardly get it out. He said, ‘We’re starving. We’ve not been fed like this for years. Our pastor no longer stands strong in the Scriptures . . . our souls are parched.’

“Friend, we’re living in the midst of a devastating spiritual famine. Biblical preaching has been cast aside in favor of motivational speeches. Hard truth has been forsaken for feel-good stories. For far too long, those who comprise the church . . . the body of Christ . . . have been lethargic in their biblical commitment, sleepy in Christ-centered worship, drowsy in doctrine, and sluggish in the engagement of culture.”

In a recent message (Sept. 7, 2010) at my alma mater, Dallas Theological Seminary, he says this:

“Jesus didn’t come and engage in discussion.  He didn’t involve others in participation of his message.  He preached!  The reason that I am driving home this point is that increasingly more so in this generation I am hearing less and less positive statements made about the importance of preaching.  The importance of taking people into the truth and declaring the message.

“I have to tell you that I have been in more group gatherings than I can count, and I today remember very, very few of them.  Maybe enough to number on one hand that was really for me transforming.  But I can tell you dozens of preached messages that gripped me and turned my direction toward a whole new dimension of life.  I can even give you their outlines on occasion!

“A carefully well-prepared, delivered message of the truth is life impacting!  Don’t let any here or elsewhere persuade you otherwise.”

Charles Spurgeon

The “last of the Puritans,” Spurgeon reached millions through his sermons, both spoken and published. But he did not train willing leaders capable of carrying on his theological legacy in his absence. Cleanup crews sifting through the bombing rubble in 1941 discovered the church’s 1680 confession of faith, which Spurgeon had symbolically buried beneath the foundation in 1860. Writing in The Forgotten Spurgeon, Iain Murray found in this recovery a metaphor for the state of Metropolitan Tabernacle and the evangelical movement in England:

“There was in 1941 no influential congregation in England known to stand for the theology which that document contained; nor was there any college preparing men to preach that faith,” Murray wrote.

Notable exceptions to this worrisome pattern merely prove the rule. Martyn Lloyd-Jones thrived at Westminster Chapel in London following G. Campbell Morgan’s distinguished tenure, which ended in 1945. Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia has enjoyed the leadership of Donald Grey Barnhouse, James Montgomery Boice, and Phil Ryken. But even a track record that defies the trend offers no guarantees the next search to replace Ryken, now president of Wheaton College, will identify a worthy heir to the Tenth pulpit.

Perhaps God isn’t so concerned that churches should pass from glory to glory, if history is any indication. Or is it we who become so enamored with star preachers that we don’t share responsibility for the ministry and plan for the future in their absence? Many large, thriving churches today have been blessed by God with gifted preachers whose ministry spans the globe. As those preachers approach the end of their pulpit ministry, however, local churches face difficult questions about how they should prepare for life after their leader leaves.

Succession Without a Successor

Working with a small Bible study group, Tim Keller planted Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan in 1989. The transition from a church’s first to second senior pastor is particularly difficult for a thriving congregation. So Redeemer isn’t even bothering to try. Instead, Redeemer revealed in June that it plans to eventually divide into four distinct but networked congregations, each of which will try to plant another church. Redeemer leaders selected four pastors—David Bisgrove, John Lin, Scott Sauls, and Leo Schuster—to lead these neighborhood-based congregations. But for now these men will share preaching and leadership responsibilities with Keller, who will mentor them closely.

“My ‘successors’ are a new generation of a half-dozen to a dozen pastors,” Keller said. “The difficulty is that to even talk of this as a ‘succession plan’ gives the impression I’m stepping out of my job and retiring soon, but I’m not. I’m 59, and we expect the transition to take eight to ten years. So we don’t call it a succession plan, but that’s what it ultimately is, among other things.”

Indeed, the succession plan corresponds with a larger ministry reorientation for Redeemer. For about 20 years, Redeemer grew as members invited their friends to hear the exceptional music and Keller’s compelling sermons. Without Keller as a draw, however, the church’s strategy will need to change. Church leaders and members will need to become more missional.

“Now, however, we enter a new season, that, God-willing, will last much longer than 20 years,” Keller wrote to the Redeemer congregation. “Our ministry will now be ‘Go and Tell.’ Redeemer is going to systematically impart what theological and ministry wisdom we have to its people and empower them so that, instead of only inviting people in to hear teaching, they will in the power of the Spirit go out into the neighborhoods to love and winsomely share the biblical gospel themselves. It means a culture of training such as we have never seen before at Redeemer. It means coming to grips with one of the most radical aspects of biblical teaching, that every single believer is a prophet, a priest, and a king, not just a bringer and attendee. According to Jesus, ‘the least’ Christian is endowed with the Spirit and is ‘greater than John the Baptist’ (Matt 11:9-11). It also means raising up a new generation of pastor-leaders. The vision is for a family of eight to twelve sister churches-covering Manhattan—ministering in their communities.”

Divesting Power to Empower Others

Pastoral succession looks different depending on a church’s size, personality, and convictions. But Sovereign Grace Ministries has won widespread acclaim for modeling gospel-centered succession. Many are familiar with how C. J. Mahaney, founding pastor of Covenant Life Church, invited the young Joshua Harris to live in his home and learn from him. Mahaney eventually resigned as senior pastor so Harris could take over. Another Sovereign Grace pastor, Dave Harvey, writes in his book Rescuing Ambition about stepping down in 2008 as senior pastor of Covenant Fellowship Church in suburban Philadelphia, the body he led for 19 years. Like Mahaney, Harvey gave way to a much younger leader, the 28-year-old Jared Mellinger. Showing just how deeply succession was ingrained in church culture, Harvey led Mellinger by asking him to respond to this ordination vow the day he was installed:

“Do you promise to begin praying for your ultimate replacement in ministry, with the hope of one day identifying, training, and transferring your responsibilities to him, so that this church may continue to grow and mature in future generations, for the glory and honor of God?”

Jim Collins writes in Good to Great that an organization becomes a monument to the leader’s outsized ego when it falls apart in his absence. Mindful of this problem, Harvey sought to put subsequent generations’ interests ahead of his own by setting up the church for success after he stepped down to take a leadership role in the Sovereign Grace network. But this wasn’t simply a matter of organizational success. Indeed, Harvey contends that succession testifies to what a church believes about the gospel:

“A true test of gospel application is seen in succession—in the health of what we leave behind,” Harvey says. “It’s a biblical way to measure success. If we simply build a church that fragments upon transfer, how does that glorify God or really serve the next generation? It doesn’t. Transfer isn’t about merely protecting programs or salvaging a legacy. It’s about preserving the gospel and passing it on to others.”

And yet few pastors seem to view succession this way. Human nature makes succession plans like those plotted by Keller and Harvey difficult to pull off. Senior leaders don’t want to let go. They realize too late that they’re slowing down, a process that begins in many cases around age 60. Various aspects of the church’s vision become neglected, and the church stagnates. The senior leader’s gifting and experience mask underlying structural weaknesses, as in the case of Spurgeon. Meanwhile, younger leaders don’t want to wait around to take charge. Many capable young leaders know the long odds of a successful succession. So they prefer to plant their own churches or invest in smaller ones they can grow by God’s grace.

Even before the senior pastor steps down, generational tension may be evident as a warning sign that succession will be a struggle. The senior pastor with a long tenure may surround himself with leaders around his same age. Preaching load, administrative tasks, writing commitments, and even personality traits may inhibit him and his colleagues from investing in younger leaders who can eventually take their place. Conscious or not, Hezekiah syndrome sets in, and older leaders leave major problems for the next generation to tackle. “Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?” (2 Kings 20:19)

To avoid this problem and foster continuity, healthy churches incorporate leaders from several different generations. They also rely on a plurality of leaders together seeking the Lord’s leading for the church and sharing the burden of responsibility. In this model, trusted peers can persuade a reluctant senior pastor to take tangible, self-denying actions to divest his power so he can empower others to act in his absence. For example, a senior pastor might return from vacation on Sunday instead of Monday so he can sit among the congregation during the sermon, limiting himself to announcements or prayer. With this simple gesture, the pastor shows he can share authority and recognizes another leader’s preaching gift.

Succession isn’t simple. It isn’t smooth. It’s not often successful. Yet it’s a matter of gospel integrity.

God doesn’t promise our churches will evermore yield wide influence through a preacher’s exceptional leadership. Surely, however, we can testify to his steadfast love by making more of Jesus Christ than ourselves. And that means planning ahead for generations who will never hear the great preacher’s voice.

copied from The Gospel Coalition Blog. Author: Collin Hansen

Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. (1 Timothy 4:11-13 MSG)

Timothy had been given a very difficult task at the church of Ephesus: Leading it. Paul tells Timothy, “Let no one despise your youth,” because in those days one was not considered seasoned until they were in their forties. It was an unusual situation he was stepping into, because Timothy had to minister with men who had already been elders of the church in Ephesus for a number of years. These men had been taught by the Apostle Paul himself, and yet, as the opening chapter makes clear, Timothy was expected to take the lead and if necessary even correct some of the things that were going on in the church. In the third verse of the letter, Paul encouraged:

On my way to the province of Macedonia, I advised you to stay in Ephesus. Well, I haven’t changed my mind. Stay right there on top of things so that the teaching stays on track. Apparently some people have been introducing fantasy stories and fanciful family trees that digress into silliness instead of pulling the people back into the center, deepening faith and obedience. (1 Timothy 1:3-4 MSG)

That was a tough assignment for a young man. Timothy had to know how to go about it in a way that would not arouse the ire and opposition of others. Paul instructs him in the way a young man should minister among those who are older than he. It is clear from this passage that that requires a whole life to be aimed in the right direction. Timothy couldn’t simply give lip-service, he had to daily walk the godly path—in front of others, but especially when no one was looking. In short, it required heavenly doses of integrity.

And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use. (1 Timothy 4:14 MSG)

Paul encourages Timothy to stand up and allow God to work through him. Paul knew Timothy’s ability and trajectory; Paul also knew that those who did not yet see it would, soon, see in Timothy what Paul himself had seen. The point the apostle makes is that, having been given a spiritual gift, Timothy is expected to use it.

A sermon is a living, breathing thing. A good one creates and sustains life through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word. It is equal parts: content and connection. As a preacher, I must have something to say and then say it in a way that they eyes of the heart are opened. It is a, dare I say, supernatural event where the speaker is super-intended and God words are spoken. If the message has not first seared my soul as a preacher, I cannot expect it to ever sear another’s. The most powerful sermons address the concerns of both the mind and the heart.

Though many preachers’ sermons fit neatly into a paradigm box, mine rarely do. I find my style is foundationally expositional yet tends to meander through topical, textual, historical, and biographical paradigms. Perhaps a better descriptive term is: narrative. Every sermon is an opportunity to tell the story of God through the lens of the biblical text. Thus our interpretation and application must always be firmly rooted in the text itself. Matt Chandler, Pastor of the Village Church, recently said to a group of pastors: “I’ve just come to find that a lot of you are really good at clichés and really bad at tying in the Word.” Oh to God that it may NEVER be said of me!

Essentially, I agree with Rob Bell’s assessment. The world needs better sermons and I’m passionate about it. A sermon shouldn’t be boring, it should be electric. It should never be something people sit through so they can get to lunch. A good sermon should rattle your cage, disturb you, comfort you, inspire and provoke you. This is an ancient, primal art form. When you study through the prophets and look through Jesus’ sermons: whatever you did, you didn’t sit back and just evaluate them. You were caught up into something because the communicator was caught up into something.

- – - – -

3:45a – Roll out of bed and into the shower.

4:30a – Arrive at the office and log in to the Mac.

4:31a – Pray.

4:32a – Begin putting final touches on the sermon notes and outline. Why didn’t I finish this earlier in the week?

6:00a – Mostly finished with the outline, time to begin downloading any final media content for the sermon.

6:26a – I really thought that I would be done with notes by now, but I’m not. The stress is starting to build.

7:03a – The music and support teams are starting to arrive.  It’s time to pause and go program the light show for the morning.

7:42a – Back at the Mac.  Time to begin creating the sermon slides that match the message.  This is one of my favorite parts.  It allows for a of creativity and gives me a chance to be sure my notes truly make sense and flow.

8:00a – I can hear runthrough starting in the auditorium.  Now the anxiousness is beginning to set in.  And, as the music pounds through the thin walls separating my office from the auditorium, I realize that the sand is now quickly sifting through the hourglass and the mad rush the start line is on.

8:25a – The slide package is finished and transferring to the presentation computer.  The presenter notes are printed, marked, and ready. Now it’s time to edit my notes for the front prompters, and reset the layout to print notes for my Bible.

8:46a – Doors are open people are everywhere.  I’m in the copy room with my notes, scissors, and a ton of paperclips.  It’s old school, but its how I like my notes.

9:03a – Service has begun.  I’m backstage in the Green Room.

9:04a – Pray. Go over notes. Pray some more. Talk through intro. Pray again. Pace lots. Final restroom opportunity.

9:25a – Cross paths with the band as they exit and I enter the stage.  Walk to thrust. Sweating already. Lights up. Anxiety. Look up. Smile. Calmness.

9:26a – Start line.

…. these intervening moments are completely inexplicable. There is no way to convey the emotions, feelings, thoughts, etc. that occur in the preaching of the Word.  A moment where a man is something of a conduit for the voice of God.  Timothy says simply, “preach the word.” My sermons are typically inductive narratives, one idea building on another until all of the pieces come together at the end to punch through the big idea.  When done well, its powerful.  But it takes every fiber of my skill as well as a tremendous measure of grace to pull it off. By the end, I am wholly spent.  I’ve given everything in me in pursuit of ‘preaching the word.’

9:59a – Head down. Done. Walk off. Final music package starts. For the audience, it’s an emotional breathing moment, an opportunity to let the last few moments of the message sink in.

10:04a – Back on stage one last time before dismissal.  A couple sentences to wrap up and reiterate the main point of the message. Everyone stand for prayer….

10:05a – TRANSCENDENCE

…. I look across the crowd as I am having them stand for closing prayer and I realize that the greeters have opened the rear auditorium exit doors.  The sun is shining outside and the light that is now streaming through the doors and across the crows is nearly blinding.  I suddenly realize that I am sending them out into this light.  In a sense, inside this church is true reality but they are about to leave here for the mission field.  I pause.  The crowd must sense my discombobulation.  It seems like an eternity passes by as I let the light envelop me and permeate every fiber of my being.  It rushes through me like the mighty waters of a treacherous river run and I drown in it.

…. Coming to my senses, I pray.

10:07a – “Have a great week”. Lights dim. Music swells.  Everyone exits.

…. I am, in a sense, in shock. Stunned. Spent yet bathed in the transcendence of what just happened.  In less than an hour I’ll do it all again for the second service. And invariably, again, I’ll be surprised by joy.

- – - – -

That moment.  The eternity where the crowd and this preacher disappear in the light that streams from the outside world haunts me.  I can’t stop thinking about it.  It is one of the few, of not the only, moments where I truly sense God’s wholeness and my complete nothingness.