Reader Survey

I'm curious about who is reading this blog. Would you let me know what's going on in your life so that I can write a blog that will be more helpful to you?

Where are you working?

How often do you preach?

What (if any) presentation software do you use?

What questions do you have about preaching?

What books are you reading?

What websites do you follow?

What's your favorite song?

If you have some time to let me know what's going on with you I would really appreciate it.

Facebook

You need to get on Facebook. You are probably already on the most popular social networking site in the history of the internet, but if you aren't you need to change that. Facebook is where people are going to communicate and connect with new and old friends. Sure, that's nice.

But Facebook is where your sermon can gain the power to really connect to people where they are. It's way too easy to prepare a sermon while sitting in an office behind a desk with no connection to people. But sermons are all about people. One way that I found to connect the two is to pose questions on Facebook as they come up in my sermon prep.

Don't try to clean it up or explain the background or exegete the text. Just ask the kind of honest, gut wrenching questions that real people ask.

If God is good then why do bad things happen?

Do I have to be perfect?

Is it ok to kill people?

Why are kosher laws not in effect any more?

Ask these kinds of questions and then stand back. The results are great and the connection with real people is amazing. I found so much fodder for my sermons using this method, that I don't think I'll ever go back.

Black Screen

Sometimes the Black Screen of Death can spell doom for your re-booting computer. But if you don't have the flashy cursor and you are giving a PowerPoint presentation, the Black Screen can be your friend.

You don't have to have something on the screen all the time. I will say it again, you don't have to always project something. The power of your images comes when they integrate with your message to amplify the total content. If you leave up a picture after the point has passed you weaken the impact of the point you just made and the point that you will be making.

You can either insert a blank, black backgrounded slide, or if you have the computer within easy reach while you are presenting, you can press the 'B' key to send it to a black screen. Some fancy remotes even have a built in button for this purpose.

Don't neglect the power of not projecting anything.

Learning Styles

We are currently in training to become certified English teachers. We're working temp jobs during the week and going to class on the weekend, so I hope I can keep putting out good stuff on this blog.

One thing that struck me is in our class discussion of learning styles. There are a lot of theories and many discussions about learning style, but one thing most people agree on is that people absorb information differently. One theory that I've seen the most is the visual, auditory and tactile learning styles.

If we are only preaching using the spoken word, we are doing a huge disservice to all of the members of the congregation who connect through the visual medium. It's almost like we are refusing to speak their language. It's important to bring the visual element in so that we are honoring the way that God has made people to understand their world.

Then I thought about the tactile (or kinesthetic) learning style. Where does our preaching give people a chance to touch, to taste, to smell, to move? We need to be aware of the fact that there are people in our church that just don't get it from sitting still and being quiet while someone talks to them. They need to be doing things, experiencing things.

Maybe we could bring in some clay for a sermon on the potter and the clay. Or how about hiding bread makers in the room set to start baking at the beginning of the service so that at the sermon on the bread of life, the smell of fresh baked bread is wafting through the crowd. What ways can you think of to engage people in the way they learn?

Windows 7: continuing review

One cool new feature in Windows 7 that I think will be especially helpful for everyone and their Mom is the new file dialogue system. At first blush it looks like what you've used forever, but up in the right corner it has that nifty little "search documents" field. It instantly searches the titles and the content of your documents.

I'll say that again, in case you missed it. It instantly (as in right now, no waiting, or clicking, as you type) searches the titles and the content (if you can't remember what you called it, but you can only remember what you said) of your documents. This is huge. This is amazing. I love it!

If you're like me, you have files all over the place and sometimes it can be difficult to remember where it is. No worries anymore. I know that Mac has had their searchlight going for a while and the search feature from the Windows start menu is just as cool, but having that search feature there when you click "Open Document" is a perfect little touch that makes using Windows 7 a joy.

Collaboration

Collaboration is such a huge value to most people. Having the chance to work together to make a meaningful contribution excites passions and connection. Too bad the sermon is often devoid of collaboration. Very often the sermon is a time where one person is speaking their own thoughts (or reflecting on the thoughts of authors) about the bible. Where is the collaboration?

I will admit that it is very difficult to prepare a sermon collaboratively. It takes a lot of work to get to a place where the sermon can invite other voices. I learned a lot from Ron Clark at the Agape Church of Christ about how to preach so that others are involved. There we would look at a piece of art and discuss it as a church. We would have questions in the middle of the sermon and spend time discussing how the text could apply to our lives.

I know you may be skeptical about how this could work in a large church. I will admit that with 1,000 people the atmosphere is going to be different than with 50, but you can still pose questions. A lot of churches have their greeting time (which is usually pretty lame and boring where visitors feel even more alienated because the members are just firming up lunch plans). What if the greeting time was a time to discuss a work of art shown on the screen? People could walk around and talk with a purpose and it would get them thinking about the sermon.

What could you do to collaborate on the sermon?

Kuler for color themes

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen kicked out a cool review of a web tool called Kuler which you can use to create a color theme for your presentation. If you have a photo at the core of your presentation, you can extract colors from it to create a palate for the other elements in your slide. As you can see in the picture, it makes for a nice effect.

I can think of a few times when I had to fiddle with the colors of a slideshow and this would have been nice. I think this would be more useful if you are doing a series that has one, central image, or if you have some branded artwork that you want to integrate into your presentations.