“95% of the people in an audience understand what’s being communicated and agree with the speaker’s point of view. However, they do not know how to apply what’s being said to their lives.” John Maxwell - Everyone Communicates, Few Connect
Ever tell a 5 year old to go clean their room?
Our kids understand what we are saying they even agree with what we are saying, the problem is they don't know how to apply what we are saying.
Have you ever had a great message, great delivery, everyone had a huge amen, yet you see no changes? When preparing a message it's important that it's easy to understand how to apply the message. If you really want to see lives, marriages, families even communities transformed put some application to the Word.
I like how the Rabbis taught their Bible Studies. Read the Scripture and then ask a great question for every verse "how do you do that?" Try that with the 23rd Psalm.
Q4U: What do you do to create not only inspiring messages but messages that can be applied?
Great post! And you're so right - most don't know how to apply.
ReplyDeleteLately I've been paring down my "points" and focusing on one thing in a message. It's working well for me right now. I've been studying Andy Stanley's "Communicating for Change." It's really good.
Getting ready to read that one myself.
ReplyDeleteI have just started going back to some sermons that had a huge impact on my life and listened to them all over again asking, what was it that caused me to change while listening to this? One answer that keeps coming up was - I saw myself in their sermon and I was convicted. They connected to me and then they gave me the what to do now. Kind of like after Peter preached at Pentecost that caused the people to say "what do we do about this?" and your right their point was very focused.