A Bridge Too Far

The story of the World War II campaign to take and hold three bridges that ultimately failed, came to mind today. Yesterday I posted about the religious themes in the movie "Avatar" and it got me to thinking about finding religious themes in movies.


Sometimes it can be a great connection for people that allows them to apply the truth of Scripture in a new way. But sometimes the connection can be non-existent except in the mind of the preacher and then add more confusion than understanding.


Just like those paratroopers in Holland couldn't hold the bridge at Arnhem - wait, do you see what I just did? Yeah. That analogy doesn't really apply does it?


The moral of the story is that while video clips can be great in illustrating a point, they can also be detrimental. Don't try to stretch just to get a video clip into your sermon. Just let it happen when it works right.

"Keep your distance, but don't look like you're keeping your distance."

Remember when Han and Chewie were trying to sneak past the shield on Endor? Han told Chewie to "Keep your distance, but don't look like you're keeping your distance." To which Chewie responded "RawrarrrRawrrrrr!" Then Han explained, "I don't know, fly casual."

When putting together a presentation you should keep it fresh, but don't look like you're trying to keep it fresh. In other words, present casual(ly).

As you put together presentations week after week you want things to follow a structure that is predictable and easy for the church to follow, but you don't want use the exact same slides every week for every element of your service. That just gets boring.

So, don't use the same slide for communion every week, but maybe use the same slide for a month, or have a rotation of a half dozen slides that are for communion. Use a similar font throughout your presentations to tie things together. Use a format for your announcement slides that allows you to plug in the details but leave the structure the same.

Also if your church has a logo you should use it a lot. There's no point to having a logo unless you use it to build some brand recognition. But that's another post.

How do you keep it fresh without being too crazy?

Make Terrible Presentations

In order to make good presentations you will need to make a bunch of terrible ones. The story on this blog highlights my point.

I haven’t really talked about this before, but I’ve failed more times than I can remember.  I’ve tried starting up several businesses, tried patenting inventions, tried starting up online communities, tried building several websites, tried to win contests… and failed almost every single time.  But I never chalked any of them up as failures in my head, because I learned so much in the process each time.  So now, when I’ve finally reached a point where things seem to fall into place with far less effort, I can’t help but think about all those times where I didn’t succeed over the course of the last eight years.  And I look back in fondness, because those lessons learned are the reason I’m here.  None of this stuff happened over night — in a way, I’ve been working to reach this point since I was 15.

I actually shouldn’t even call them failures, because they were really just attempts.  There’s a huge difference there. Everyone has failures, but most people never attempt things just for the sake of trying out something that looks fun, interesting, or challenging.

If you want to be good at anything you need to be willing to fail, repeatedly, in order to gain the experience to be good at it. It might be intimidating to start using PowerPoint now because you feel pretty confident in your preaching skills. Adding something new could make you look like a rank amateur instead of an experienced professional.

My advice - get the church in on the project with you. Let them know what you're doing and why and ask for help. Vulnerability like this will actually boost your credibility and be a great example to the church. I dare you.

Sweaty Palms and Fidgity Fingers

One thing that bothered me in all my education is that there was no training in public speaking. For all of the classes (the hours and hours of classes) that I took getting through undergrad and graduate degrees in Bible and Ministry - I had zero classes on public speaking.

Sure, I had several classes devoted to the preparation and delivery of sermons, but none of them looked at the art of public speaking. The one class that I had on how to prepare a speech was my Freshman year in high school. Yeah. That's it. I took matters into my own hands and joined Toastmasters.

I have heard a lot of preachers, and most of them are good at their craft. But too often I come across someone who doesn't know how to communicate to a group. They have learned well the art of study and they are experts at determining the meaning of a biblical text, but when it comes to sharing what they have learned, they fail. This is not for lack of ability or effort, but for lack of training and knowledge.

I came across a review for a book that I want to read called Confessions of a Public Speaker, by Scott Berkun. In this book he examines not only the mechanics of speaking but the emotions and art of communication. PowerPoint can be a boon to an excellent communicator by giving them another way to get their message across, but to a poor communicator, PowerPoint makes the problem worse.

Projectors 101

You'll need to understand a few things when looking at projectors:
Aspect Ratio
Throw
Resolution and
Brightness (or lumens)

The Aspect Ratio is a number like 4:3 or 16:9 - but the easiest way to think about it is TV versus movie screen. All the old tube TV's were 4:3 (because of the limitations of a Cathode Ray Tube, but that's another discussion). Movies were presented in the widescreen format of 16:9. I would recommend getting a projector that supports both formats, but then pick one and stick with it. Fiddling with the aspect ratio can lead to some weird presentations. I personally like the 16:9, especially for movie clips.

Throw can be either short or long. This is the distance between the projector and the screen. Basically if you are going to have your projector close to the screen you want a short throw and if you are going to have your projector far away you want a long throw.

The resolution of your projector is closely tied to the aspect ratio. Basically the aspect ratio is the reduced fraction of the resolution. So a resolution of 800x600 is using the 4x3 aspect ratio. A resolution of 800x450 is using the 16:9 ratio. If you're wanting to use a lot of video clips, then you'll probably want a higher resolution projector. The problem is when you start throwing around letters and number that aren't related. There's VGA, XGA, UXGA, WUXGA, HD, 1080p, 720p and a slew of others. What you can do to same some sanity is to compare apples to apples - they should all have a number-by-number resolution (e.g. 1024x768). Compare those numbers (check out the whole story here).

Finally, brightness is measured in units called lumens. Basically the more lumens your projector can put out, the brighter it will be and the easier to see with ambient light in the room. You might think that you would want to max out on the lumens, but the higher lumen rigs are more expensive, heavier, and cost more to maintain. So there are some trade-offs to consider. For most portable applications you will want something in the 2000 lumen range - that should make it bright enough to handle significant ambient light, but still keep it small enough to move without a team of oxen.

Now it's time to shop. I usually start out looking at a bunch of reviews and see what matches up with my needs and my budget. Happy hunting.

Presentation Gear

This week I want to cover the gear that you need to present well. This won't be an exhaustive list, just some highlights of the things that might come in handy. If you need a full walk through of all the issues, there is a great series over at e-bibleteacher.com. There you can talk about lumens and signal to noise ratio and all that jazz. I'll say this, if you are a preacher and you don't get excited about this stuff and there is someone in your church that does - let them shine and ask for help. It's a recipe for disaster for you to try to do all this without help.

I do like what they say over at e-bibleteacher: "Start simple." Don't try to recreate the dual projector, fully integrated, professionally installed system that you saw at the mega church if your church is small. Keep it simple at first.

My heart is with church planting, so I'm thinking about projection systems that are portable. I know you can do some great things with a permanent install, but even if you have your own church building there are advantages to keeping it portable. When you start it will cost less money, which is good. And if there are any objections from the church you can let them know that you're just trying it out, not making any permanent decisions (usually they'll end up loving it after a few weeks). Also, if you need to do a conference or have a movie night, you can pack it all up and take it with you.

Tomorrow we'll talk a bit about projectors.

SMART goals or DUMB goals?

When I did the Google search for SMART goals, I found this post about replacing SMART goals with DUMB goals.

DUMB stands for Dreamy, Unrealistic, Motivating and Bold. If you stop and think about traditional and realistic goals, they aren’t that inspiring or exciting.

I stand by what I said yesterday about SMART goals, but Roger Bauer brings up the good point that SMART goals are rarely inspirational. If you have something specific that you want to get done, do it SMART. But, if you want to get a group fired up, you might need to be DUMB.

What DUMB goals can you set for your church? Your staff? Your family? How can you be a DUMB presenter? What videos, pictures, skits, or artwork will help to inspire and motivate your church?

New Year, New Start

The beginning of the year is the traditional time to make resolutions and promises about change for the future. But one of the problems is that we usually wait until we're sleepy and watching football on the 1st of January to decide what we want to do. Most resolutions are platitudes, not purposeful.

But if you really want to do it. If you want to look back at the end of 2010 and see what you accomplished, you need to set some SMART goals. SMART is an acronym for
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant and
Timely

Your goal needs to be specific (I want to start running instead of I want to be more healthy), measurable (I want to run a marathon), attainable (I want to complete a marathon), relevant (I want to complete a marathon so I get in better shape), and timely (I want to complete a marathon by the end of the year).

If you set vague, unachievable, nebulous goals you won't achieve them. But if you set SMART goals you are setting yourself up to win.

Maybe you could try to read 2 books about preaching by the end of the year. Or you could take one class in using PowerPoint by the end of the year. Or you could go to one conference on media in church. You get the idea.

How will you set SMART goals?

To Santa, or Not To Santa

I might be getting myself in trouble here, bringing up the guy in red. I know this can by a touchy subject and it has as much to do with the way we were raised as it does with what the bible says about things. Should we use Santa Claus in church?

On the plus side - it connects with what people are already doing, it connects with kids, it helps to get people enthused for Christmas.

On the negative side - it perpetuates an images of Christmas that is focused on consumerism, it has pagan roots, we are telling our kids a lie (how do they know that we aren't lying about Jesus if we lie about Santa?).

What do you think? What do you do?

Watch your Language

Over at the great blog, Biblical Preaching they recently discussed how we can improve our presentations by using better speaking habits when we're not preaching. The idea is to practice using correct grammar and dynamic speech all the time so that when we get into the pulpit it comes naturally.

I think this is a great idea, but we need to be careful. We don't need to sound like preachers. Seriously. What I mean is that we shouldn't sound like preachers when we're having a conversation over coffee - I would be turned off by that. We also shouldn't sound like preachers when we're in the pulpit (we should also probably not use pulpits, but that's another post).

Think about it this way. The bible was written in Koine Greek - the common language. The only other people who wrote in Koine were the business people drafting contracts and things, and the poorly educated. But the bible is written to the lowest common denominator, really. They didn't choose to write in one of the high, literary styles of Greek, but in the common language.

Preaching should be to the lowest common denominator. Not like reality TV where it appeals to the basest side of humanity, but so people can walk into your church and feel like you are talking to them, not over them or about them, but to them.

White Spaces

Garr Reynolds said: "With clutter ubiquitous, emptiness gets attention."

I wonder how we can use emptiness in creative ways. Christmas is an incredibly cluttered time, and not just visually. Maybe it's time to start providing some "white space" in our churches. Instead of piling more and more demands on people - what if we do some things to relieve their stress and calm their spirits?

Master your Toast

A while ago I mentioned a group called Toastmasters as a way to improve public speaking skills.

Wait, I'm talking to preachers, they already know how to speak in public. Right? Preachers know how to preach, but public speaking on a topic other than the bible with a time limit of 3 to 5 minutes is a different game. Being required to speak extemporaneously for 30 seconds to a minute with no warning is different.

As preachers we are called by God to speak the eternal truth of Scripture into the lives of people. But we are also professional speakers. Sometimes we need to strip away the bible stuff and just work on our craft of speaking.

I strongly recommend that you go to Toastmasters - it's a great way to hone your craft (and you can emphasize a new skill like telling stories or jokes), it's a great way to meet people, and it's a great way to get out into the community.

K.I.S.S.

An oldie but a goodie via Garr Reynolds:

"Worried you're not using the right words? Use simpler words. Worried that your sentence isn't clear? Make a simpler sentence. Worried that people won't see your point? Make your point simpler. Nearly every writing problem you have can be solved by making things simpler.

This should be obvious, but people don't like hearing it because there's the assumption that simple = stupid. But it's not true; indeed, I find from personal experience that the stupidest writers are the ones whose writing is positively baroque in form. All that compensating, you know. Besides, I'm not telling you to boil everything down to "see spot run" simplicity. I am telling you to make it so people can get what you're trying to say."

— John Scalzi

This could probably be rule #1 for using visuals in your presentation. Keep it simple. Don't over think. Don't over produce. Just make your point as clearly and simply as you can.

Don't insult your audience by condescending to them. But don't try to impress them either.

Tweet out the News

Ideo Labs points out that Twitter is a huge part of many presentations, but usually the presenter is left out of the loop.

Increasingly presentations to large audiences are happening in the context of a ‘backchannel’, where attendees are responding in real time to what is being said at the podium. That’s a pretty interesting development, but one that’s a bit off-balance: while the audience can converse with one another and respond to what they’re hearing in the room, the content of the presentation doesn’t make it into the stream unless someone (re)tweets it.

One solution is to build tweeting into your presentation software: KeynoteTweet. This only works for Keynote on the Mac right now, but it's a cool idea. You can use that notes section below your slide and drop in a tweet that will be sent out when the slide comes up in the presentation. That way you can be a part of the conversation even while you are presenting.

What do you think about using this in church? How do you stay connected with the Tweet-crowd?

Tell a Compelling Story

Garr Reynolds over at Presentation Zen posted about how to tell a compelling story with statistics. I recommend that you watch the TED video to which he refers - it's great.

I know that most sermons don't have a ton of statistics for you to get through, but if you're presenting for a mission trip or missionary, this could be huge. If you're showing budget numbers or the average income in your neighborhood, this could make a big difference. See, most people avoid statistics because it tends to be dry, but it doesn't have to be. Using statistics well can create a powerful call for change.

How do you tell a compelling story?

Stupid Rupert

Seth Godin says:

Rupert Murdoch has it backwards

You don't charge the search engines to send people to articles on your site, you pay them.

If you can't make money from attention, you should do something else for a living. Charging money for attention gets you neither money nor attention.

How does this apply to preaching? It tells us that we need to look at the whole picture. Murdoch just sees news and money - it cost money to report the news, therefore people should pay money to get the news. Godin sees a bigger picture of the internet economy - money gravitates toward attention.

Look at the whole picture - don't just use images because you think you're supposed to. Think about the "economy" of your church - do you have a lot of artists, bankers, college kids, retired people? What will connect with them?

Text Boxen

Over at Slides that Stick they posted about the difficulty of reading text over different backgrounds. This picture is very cool and compelling. The image tells a story and draws the viewer in.

The text looks like it was added by a 5 year old. The effect is ruined by the way the text seems to be superimposed on the image rather than part of the image.

It is important to get great images to communicate with your audience, but it is just as important for your text to fit. Avoid putting text over multiple backgrounds/colors - it's hard to read and distracting. Sometimes it can be nice to put a shaded box around the text to set it off from the rest of the image.

Motion Background Overload

Easyworship is a popular piece of software for projecting the words of songs and sermon presentations. A lot of churches use it, and a lot of churches over use it. It has the ability to project moving backgrounds behind the text. This is one of those cool ideas that tends to be over used and distracting.

We were attending a church and one Sunday they had a different moving background behind just about every slide. I asked the computer guy after the service if they had gotten a new background pack. He said that they had. And they used every single one that Sunday.

Don't do this. Please. If you absolutely need to use a moving background, then only use one. I'm not a fan of using any moving background myself. But that's just my opinion.

The important principle here is to make sure that whatever you project will get your point across and not distract from it.

7 Pathways to God

John Ortberg's "God is Closer Than You Think, has a section in which he describes the 7 spiritual pathways in Christian history.

1. Intellectual Pathway - "... draw closer to God as they learn more about Him."
2. Relational Pathway - "... have a deep sense of God's presence when they're involved in significant relationships."
3. Serving Pathway - "... God's presence seems most tangible when they're involved in helping others."
4. Worship Pathway - "... have a natural gift for expression and celebration."
5. Activist Pathway - "You have a passion to act."
6. Contemplative Pathway - "God is most present to you when distractions and noises are removed."
7. Creation Pathway - "... have a passionate ability to connect with God when they are experiencing the world He made."

These pathways describe different preferences and connection points for us. None is better than any other one, but too often we emphasize just a couple to the exclusion of others. The intellectual and worshipful pathways are given prime position on Sunday morning, but the activist who cries out for social change is often ignored. We need to allow our people to explore all the different pathways. Have a time of quiet contemplation right there in church on Sunday morning. Spend time looking at art and discussing it. Go outside and experience creation first hand.

How can you help people explore the 7 spiritual pathways?

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.