RADICAL PREACHING

Key Points & Quotes

Speaker: Pastor Andy Stanley

Date: 2-9-2010

Radicalis-Session 2

One-liners from Andy during talk:

·               If we’re not careful, our approach to preaching trumps our goal to preaching

·               18-35 year olds in this country have abandoned church

·               Approach is everything – if the approach is wrong, we drive people away

·               Andy’s goal when preaching - “Have people live their lives as if God is with them”

·               Everything that is memorable is portable

·               Our goal much shape our approach

·               First Question: What is your goal? Second Question: What’s your approach?

Andy’s approach when preaching – Lure them into the scripture, rub their noses in it, take one sticky statement, jam that statement in their hearts, send them out to do something about it

5 Questions Andy asks Every Single Week:

1)      Who is about (long pause), really?

a.       Has to be about them, not me

b.      Concern for the audience must overwhelm my concern for me

c.       Prepare so well when preaching that I don’t have to worry about me

d.      Going over time when you preach

                                                        i.      Is because you were unprepared

                                                      ii.      Is about you not them

                                                     iii.      Is selfish

                                                    iv.      Stresses out the rest of the “body of Christ” (volunteers with children, volunteers in the parking lot, those trying to prepare or attend the next service, etc…)

2)      What’s my burden?

a.       What’s the one thing that I’ve come to deliver – that I MUST say

                                                        i.      Dig until you find it

                                                      ii.      Build everything else around it

                                                     iii.      Make it stick

b.      Be able to put the whole message in a sentence – what’s the main thing?

c.       Examples of “main thing” message sentences

                                                        i.      To understand why, submit and apply

                                                      ii.      Purity paints the way to intimacy

                                                     iii.      My irresponsibility become’s someone’s else’s responsibility

                                                    iv.      Pay attention to a-tension

                                                      v.      You are the only legitimate source of intimacy for your spouse

                                                    vi.      The decision you make in your garden will effect the rest of your life (My message “main thing” when I preached my first sermon)

3)      Where is the tension?

a.       What’s the problem? What are we trying to solve?

b.      What’s the question this message answers?

c.       What is the tension this message resolves?

d.      What is the mystery this message solves?

e.       What is the issue this message addresses?

4)      Do I own this?

a.       Have I internalized this message?

b.      How hard is it going to be to preach this?

c.       If I don’t own it, my audience is going to know

d.      The key is to memorize pieces not points

                                                        i.      There should only be ONE POINT

e.       If you can think through the pieces you don’t need notes

f.        Moves and stories go by quick – sermons take forever!

5)      Am I allowing the text to speak?

a.       Bring the energy to the text – don’t use all your energy telling the story

b.      Need to uncover the energy in the text

c.       Don’t economize the Bible – if I do that I forfeit the Word and I haven’t properly prepared

                                                        i.      This means don’t spend so much time talking about other areas that there is no time left to explore the text properly